Hack Your Way Into a Free Flight in 2020
- Chasidy Delgado
- Jan 20, 2020
- 4 min read
They say traveling ain’t cheap, but when I first heard about travel hacking a couple years ago, I was amazed at how people can just get up and travel the world FOR FREE on business/first class. My first thought was “That seems impossible” followed by a very robust “but HOW?!?!?!”. But as in everything, there’s no such thing as luck, yet, there’s always a system and an unconventional way of doing things. You just gotta do your research & get your feet wet a little!
If you’re reading this, I’m assuming that you, too, want to be in on the game & how it all works. However, for starters, let me make a
disclaimer:
First off, I am in NO way, shape, or form a pro at this as there are other more qualified people who know way more about this than I do. Second, if you live in an international area, some of this may not be applicable depending on your airline. I just somehow find myself traveling PRETTY OFTEN & I want to share some tips and tricks with you along the way!
The other day, I was looking at flights for my 2020 summer, and since I will be doing back-to-back traveling for 2 weeks, my end goal was keeping it the cheapest as possible because my budget was under $400 for roundtrip flights between Hawaii-San Francisco-Denver.
I had already booked my Denver flight for $175 (HELLO BASIC ECONOMY!), and for my Kona trip, I found a round trip flight for $340 from the bay area to Hawaii. However, hours after, I realized I had one more way to drive the cost down & MAKE THE COST EVEN LOWER. I immediately hopped on my computer and booked an “almost-free” one-way flight the other day to Kona, Hawaii for a couple dates IN THE SUMMERTIME AKA the most expensive time to fly.
How you may ask? Keep reading;)
To start off, you need to pick an airline to stay “loyal” to, and then sign up for their loyalty program.
(Most of the time it’s free, and if you’re going to fly anyway, why not save up everything you can get?)
For me, I’m not exactly loyal to any airline, however, I do fly to Hawaii pretty often (1-3xs a year) to visit close family. With that said, most of my flights in the past 2 years were on Hawaiian Airlines because they just ended up being the cheapest compared to their competitors at the time of booking.
Side Note: Loyalty Miles/Points CAN expire. Hawaiian Airlines’ does after 18 months of inactivity, however, United’s points don’t. So make sure to research the one that’s best fit for you, especially if you have to keep up with preventing them from expiring.
Once you have signed up, it’s time to start racking up points/miles!
Depending on your lifestyle, you can generate points to book a lot of economy seats for different destinations. Or save them all for an upgrade or a first class seat to somewhere exotic. I opt for the former as in my opinion, getting to my family/friends is 10xs more important than how I get there.
There are 2 ways you can do this:
Use an airline-partnered credit card (i.e. Hawaiian Miles Mastercard, United Explorer Card) Some cards will have an awesome sign up bonus if you meet the minimum spend which give you enough points to book free flights. For example: If you spend $2000 within your first 3 months of opening an account with Hawaiian Airlines, you receive 60,000 points which can help you land free round trip flights to Hawaii or a one-way ticket to Japan.
Fly to accumulate miles/points.
At the moment, I do not have an airline-partnered credit card. Therefore, I used the latter. You can pick one way, or you can do both to rack up points even faster. You can sign up for a credit card and add your partner as a second user & BOOM, points will be coming in in no time! If you have multiple family members who fly with you, racking up points is really like CAKE. Either way, you’re going to be spending money & flying anyway, so why not get a free flight out of it??
Here’s a chart of my most recent flights (but not all) which contributed to 19,729 miles:
Note: flights before 2018 aren’t available for me to screenshot on my Hawaiian Miles account
As you can see, the going rate for most flights in the summer for a one-way ticket is anywhere from 40,000-50,000 Hawaiian Miles.
However, I was able to find this gem!😱:
Note: The $6 charge includes extra taxes or fees that’s added to your award travel.
Naturally, I was just at 19,729 miles, I was just 271 miles shy of 20,000 so I bought a couple more to top off my account.
After everything, I only ended up paying about $21 for my SJC to KOA flight (but it would’ve been $6, if I had flown one more extra flight to accumulate the extra miles.)
From there, I booked a $199 Delta trip back & BOOM I only paid $220 to fly round trip from the bay area to Hawaii and back!
SJC to KOA = $21 Award flight
KOA to SJC = $199 on Delta
Total Round Trip Cost = $222
& There you have it! :D
This is the basis of "travel-hacking" and scoring free flights around the globe.
If this helped you, definitely drop a comment and let me know!
Happy Travels!
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