jetsetter

As has been the case before, US and CO are running various offers where you can obtain significant bonus miles if you travel on a round-trip full coach (usually Y fare).

I'd like to take advantage of such a bonus, but as crazy as it is, I don't want to pay pay a lot.

So, I'm wondering what the least expensive full coach fares might be out there? I mean if I could get a full coach fare round-trip for say under $300-$350, it might be worth trying for one of these bonuses. I would be flying out of BOS.

So far I have not found anything too appealing:
BOS-EWR full coach is about $480 round-trip;
BOS-BWI is around $500 or so round-trip;
etc.

I'm going to check PVD-BWI to see if there are any exceptionally cheap Y fares...but if anyone has seen any such Y fares, please post.

The CO offer gives you 5,000 bonus miles for each full coach round-trip. The US offer (from Marriott statement) gives you mileage bonuses for your next I think 3 full coach round-trips, and the total bonus is 20,000 miles.

CO FF

Try EWR-ABE - $169.00 round trip (per ITN, for travel this afternoon).

It gives a new meaning to "riding the 'bus"...

jetsetter

CO FF,
Thanks for the research on EWR-ABE.

Let's see:
Pay $169 round-trip;
1,000 status miles;
1,000 online booking bonus;
5,000 High Yield Fare Round-trip Bonus;
?actual/500 mile: Amex tripple mile bonus;
?actual/500 mile min: extra mile bonus after 11/01.
So at least 7,000 (plus some miles) for $169.

zrs70

Anything to/from/via LAS will get a low Y seat.

MileKing

CO FF beat me to it! CO's EWR-ABE bus run is the route I always cite for cheap mileage runs. Full fare at $169...that is a bargain!

Vulcan

I believe that the bonus is PER TICKET, NOT RT. Read carefully. It appears that if you book it as two separate one way Y tickets you will get 2-5,000 mile bonuses.
============================================
Got this today from Continental today--
To thank you for flying with us we are offering you bonus OnePass miles for
roundtrip travel to and from any destination between September 20, 2000 and
November 15, 2000.

Purchase a First Class or full-fare Y ticket and receive 5,000 OnePass miles
or receive 2,000 OnePass miles when you purchase any other coach fare
(excluding Q & T) for Coach Class travel. And, you'll earn 1,000 additional
OnePass miles for every E-Ticket you purchase on continental.com. It's our
way of thanking you for trusting us to make your flight as enjoyable as
possible.

TO SIGN UP FOR THIS OFFER: Call 1-800-346-6090 and use code 40002 to
register your OnePass account. Please have your OnePass account number

jetsetter

Vulcan,

What makes you think the bonus would apply for a one way ticket, since the first few sentances refer to round trip travel? Believe me it would be great if your right, but when I read it it sounded like it was 5,000 miles for a Y round trip? Has anyone actually had the bonus posted for a one way? If it works for oneway tickets, the EWR-ABE is looking like a great mileage run instead of a pretty good one!

jetsetter

I called the Onepass svc center this morning, and they advise this promo (#40002) applies only to round-trip tickets. So where does this leave me for EWR-ABE which would cost $169 for about possibly 9,200 miles? Is it worth it?

BoSoxFan45

Sorry, duplicate post.

[This message has been edited by BoSoxFan45 (edited 10-23-2000).]

BoSoxFan45

No. Not when you factor in time. Plus you get very few status miles. I would not do it. It's a great promo if you have to go somewhere on a Y fare, like I do 2 or 3 times a month. But would I get on a plane to do this? Nope. Not unless I didn't value my time at all...

BillMorrow

Hmm....

This got me thinking. I was probably going to do one of my 'long haul' BTV-PLB mileage runs to get the 10,000 bonus miles for the USAir Book 3 online/fly by the end of the year.

Currently, the discount RT is $70, but Y is $106! This is a route that has a great deal of frquency with 9 connections each way, each day.

Conceiveably, I could fly 6 RT in one day. This would yield:

40,000mi (2x20,000 US-Marriott bonus)
20,000mi (2x10,000 US Book 3 Online bonus)
6,000mi (regular online booking bonus)
6,000mi (12x500 minimum miles per flown segment)
6,000mi (12x500 Gold Tier minimum miles bonus)
--------
78,000mi Not bad for a day's work and $636

BTW, the total distance flown is 23 air miles per segment. That is 282.6 FF miles per mile flown.

dgordon

Earlier this year, I flew to Brussels twice for about the money you are talking about and got close to the miles you are talking about and I got two trips to Europe!!!( AA ) All you are doing is buying miles, and spending a whole day doing in. I don't think it is worth it if you don't really want to go to where you are flying. I will get close to 40,000 miles on my upcoming trip to London (on AA) and the fare cost me about $275 (using a voucher which waived the tax and volumebuy certs which gave me 25% off) and I get to have a vacation in London. Yes, the mileage possibilities got me looking into this trip NOW, but would I fly to Londong and immediately return just to get the mileage? Hell no.

------------------
DtG

MolsonMiler

Everone to their own, but this looks like the best deal I can see this week! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/003577.html

jetsetter

BillMorrow ,
That BTV-PLB sounds like a fine opportunity to me, and thanks for posting it. I am currently in that Silver for 10 segments promo with US, so while I would not get the preferred bonus.....it's still a lot of miles for the money. I am going to seriously look into doing this for 1 or 2 days. Plus flying is more fun probably than the bus.

The UA 1K plan being discussed on the linked thread is interesting too....though I would have to get over to wherever it is, stay in hotels, etc. Yet it is intriguing.

Personally so far as mileage/segment runs, I don't really care what the destination is....after all I may never leave the gate area of the airport. Of course, if possible, I like for them to be on nice planes and airports in first class, etc. But the point is to get the miles, not where you are going. To me its like playing a strategy game, where the object is to get the most miles for the money, and also to in general get a lot of miles for little money spent. I typically use my miles for upgrades on intl flights, and I think it pays off (e.g. I might spend more if I bought a J class ticket instead of using the miles). Plus buying the J class ticket wouldn't be much of a strategy game. Well, if I could buy a J class ticket without thinking about it, I wouldn't mind that either. If people are interested in having some kind of event re the BTV-PLB flights, post on FT or let me know by email. I can just picture the expression on the gate agents face "Hello, I am going to fly BTV-PLB back and forth all day, how are you?" "What...(pause) (clicks of computer keys) your flying back and forth all day?"

jetsetter

I priced out a BTV-PLB round-trip on the US web site for Monday 10/30/2000....first possible outbound and return flights. Indeed, the fare shows up in the fare quote for $106 I think, but the total price including tax for a Y8 fare is $157.00. So that makes 6 rt trips = $942. Per above calcs, a non-elite would earn 72,000 miles. Thats $.013 a mile. Still seems like a pretty good deal to get 72,000 miles in a day for $942. It's like paying $13 for 1,000 miles. This is almost enough miles for a business class ticket to Europe, which is going to cost you more than $942 if you had to buy it. Plus this would be enough to quallify for the Silver Challenge via flying 10 segments.