Is Award Travel Actually Getting … Easier?

It’s the news every points and miles aficionado has been waiting for: After years of pain, award travel is, in fact, getting easier. Alongside an undeniable trend in red-hot cheap airfare, outstanding deals keep popping up to redeem your points - whether you’re on the hunt for a discounted economy deal or a notoriously hard-to-book lie-flat award ticket.

So Gunnar and Kyle dig into what’s driving this lovely new trend and, most importantly, the dozen or so deals that have us thinking that award travel has finally turned a corner. We’re calling it (working title) “Hot Flight Summer.”

Come for Hot Flight Summer and stay for Gunnar’s hot fireworks take, a revelation about Kyle’s reality TV viewing habits, and why Virgin Atlantic really ticked us off this week.

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00:00 - Introducing … “Hot Flight Summer”

03:16 - Something Hot: Cash airfare continues to drop (think sub-$300 roundtrip flights to Europe!)

08:45 - Something Cold: Virgin doubled taxes and fees on biz class awards

13:50 - A word from our sponsor (us, and our Thrifty Traveler Premium service that’s finding more deals than ever!)

15:43 - The Extra Mile: Hot Flight Summer, or why we think award travel is (finally) getting easier

21:00 - The rise of the elusive “Unicorn Alert” (even if Emirates hates us)

24:30 - Business class award deals to Australia and across the Pacific are back!

29:15 - Gunnar gushes about the Cathay’s The Pier First Class Lounge

34:45 - Booking partner awards – including the rare Delta One redemptions

36:00 - And don’t forget about economy flights, too!

40:15 - The exceptions: Star Alliance ,Iberia’s biz class devaluation, and Amex transfers to Emirates

43:15 - Listener Questions: How to fly to Australia/New Zealand using points and miles, in biz class or economy

48:45 - On the Spot: A listener checks in from Kyle’s favorite hotel in the world while Kyle taps into his Love Island fandom to couple up with – and dump from the island – two recent deals

Produced by Gunnar Olson & Jackson Newman
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot

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