Limits: You can t build in stopovers that make no sense. For example New York to London with a stop

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(This post is focused on maximizing Delta awards. Future posts will focus on American, United/Continental, four seasons hotel costa rica US Airways, Air Canada and British Airways. four seasons hotel costa rica If you have any other suggestions, feel free to comment below or email me ).
There are a lot of things I love about using miles and points for travel. Beyond the fact that it makes super-luxury travel in premium cabins attainable, award travel gives me flexibility to visit several different places on one ticket all for the same price.
While it s difficult four seasons hotel costa rica for many people just to get a simple round-trip ticket four seasons hotel costa rica booked, you need to understand that huge value lies in being able to build in stopovers, transfers  and open jaws into your award.
What exactly are those things? A stopover is a stop in a city for more than 24 hours and a transfer is less than 24 hours (or 4 hours on a domestic award). Delta also allows an open jaw, which means coming home from a different city from where you flew into (this is great for planning flights around a cruise that ends in a different city).
Limits: You can t build in stopovers that make no sense. four seasons hotel costa rica For example New York to London with a stop in Los Angeles. That wouldn t be the most direct routing and it would violate the maximum permitted mileage between New York and London. To find out the maximum permitted mileage, you can call the airline or use Expertflyer.com - Travel Information - Maximum Permitted Mileage. Once you enter in JFK-LHR and Delta, it shows a MPM of 4,149. I use the Great Circle Mapper to find out flight distances, which shows me that JFK-LHR is only 3,451 (ExpertFlyer also shows it under TPM at 3,458). Note that MPM can be exceeded four seasons hotel costa rica by 5% or even more if you can make a compelling reason to a ticketing agent why you need to exceed the MPM. In general, I ve never had to even worry about MPM when booking Delta awards.
Another limitation is that the distance between your two open jaw destinations (for example Rome and London) can not be further than the distance of your outbound leg (New York to London). For example, you could not do New York to London, Johannesburg to New York.
While some people four seasons hotel costa rica want to minimize the time spent traveling, for me I like to maximize the places I go with miles. Let s take my summer trip for example. My best friend lives in Madrid and I wanted to spend a couple four seasons hotel costa rica weeks in Europe in July. I could have booked JFK-MAD-JFK for 100,000 miles in business class and dealt with the intra-European legs later, like most people do. However, I know that Delta allows a stopover and open jaw on award tickets.
So if I wanted four seasons hotel costa rica to spend a couple days in France, then continue onto Madrid and then come home from Barcelona, I could have done; JFK Paris (stop), Paris Madrid (Destination), Barcelona JFK. That would allow me to visit three cities, for the same award price 100,000 miles in business class.
Let s say I wanted to try out Air France s new A380 and spend a night in Montreal visiting friends on the way home. In that case I could have still done the same itinerary JFK Paris (stop), Paris Madrid (destination), Barcelona Paris Montreal (22 hours in Montreal), Montreal JFK. All for 100,000 miles, all in business class (except the last leg Montreal JFK, which is an all-coach regional jet, but would still be included for free).
Spending 100,000 miles for Europe and  building in a bunch of cities can be a great value, but what is an amazing value is that for 20,000 -40,000 miles more, you can also add on a trip to Africa . Delta just instituted a new region for South Africa, so that costs 140,000 miles total, but everywhere else in Africa is 120,000. I took advantage of this last summer with my trip to Seychelles. Originally I was planning to go to Paris for 100,000 miles, but for a mere 20,000 miles extra, I tacked four seasons hotel costa rica on a side-trip to the Seychelles on Air Seychelles (code-shared four seasons hotel costa rica with Air France, which is why I was able to book it on my Skyteam Delta award). I wrote all about that trip  here (there are also detailed in flight reports of Air Seychelles , which I was very impressed four seasons hotel costa rica with overall, even though the seats were outdated). If you ve never been to Seychelles and are looking for an out-of-this-world experience, I highly recommend it.  Le Meridien Barbarons just  lowered the amount of SPG points needed to 10,000, which can be a great value. There is a Four Seasons four seasons hotel costa rica and a Banyan Tree Resort in the Seychelles, both of which are apparently other-worldly, but you might end up needing to take out a second mortgage to pay the bill.
Since I did Seychelles last summer, four seasons hotel costa rica I thought I should do South Africa this summer, even though it s winter there. I had no issues finding award space Newark Paris -Johannesburg (with 14 hours in Paris, so more than enough time to get a nice lunch and relax for the day), but the return segment Johannesburg Paris had no availability on the days I wanted. Instead, I pulled up my trusty tool airfrance.us and found routing through Nairobi and London on Kenya Airways (a Skyteam member).
I kid you not, I then found out I had to be in Los Angeles at the end of the trip. So instead of flying back to New York and then buying a coach ticket New York Los Angeles (and praying for the upgrade), I used the valuable open jaw option to just end my trip in Los Angeles. In essence four seasons hotel costa rica I d be flying from New York to Johannesburg and then Johannesburg to Los Angeles, four seasons hotel costa rica with a stop in Paris (and a couple overnight transfers on the way). What I ended up booking was:
Outbound: Newark Paris Johannesburg (destination), Return: Johannesburg-Nairobi (overnight transfer 18 hours), Nairobi London (overnight transfer 14 hours), London Paris (stop for a week), Paris Los Angeles.
To further complicate things, several factors changed four seasons hotel costa rica and I had to scrap the beautifully orchestrated trip I put together above and instead rebook something else for a different time-frame. four seasons hotel costa rica As a Diamond medallion, Delta allows unlimited changes/award redeposits for free. So when I had to cancel the trip, my miles were instantly redeposited and the fees refunded to my credit card. This policy is the same for Platinum Medallions everyone else has to pay $150 to redeposit/change an award, which still isn t that bad considering you have to pay $250 plus a refare when you book revenue tickets.
My new trip is to Mauritius, so I actually got 20,000 miles back and will get to try out Air Mauritius, which codeshares with Air France. My goal on this trip is to learn how to scuba dive, which I ve always wanted to do.
JFK Madrid (Air Europa business class), Barcelona Paris Mauritius (destination), Mauritius Paris (20 hour overnight transfer), Paris Montreal (to test out Air France four seasons hotel costa rica s A380 and then a 20 hour overnight transfer), Montreal JFK.
So, to sum it up the point of this post is not to brag about my awesome upcoming trips (though I m pretty excited for them). It s to empower you to think creatively and get as much value as possible out of your hard earned miles and points. Many people make fun of Skymiles for being SkyPesos, but they just don t know how to use them. I ll admit that Delta.com is broken and it is a bit of a wild-goose chase getting low awards, but once you figure four seasons hotel costa rica out how to filter out the noise and search four seasons hotel costa rica for availability, the rewards are enormous especially four seasons hotel costa rica since it s pretty four seasons hotel costa rica easy to accrue Skymiles.
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