letsgomaizeandblue

Hi, I am a beginning churner and I'd like some advice with my honeymoon. I thought I had everything figured out until today, when I noticed the cash price for the flights I want went down in price. I'd love to find the best value for the trip.

Here is my situation:

-Flying from IND-BZE October 4-16 with inflexible dates.
-I will soon be receiving 150K Aadvantage miles from CC signups
-Saaver flights unavailable for dates and times that I want
-Anytime award costs 55K

I planned to use Aadvantage miles at first to cover the flight because I could get a lot of them quickly and the tickets were looking to be $750. I was just checking again and the AA price has dropped to $498 and Delta now costs $473 for acceptable flights. I know that redeeming my Aadvantage miles for <$.01/mile is a terrible value, but at this point I feel somewhat stuck.

As far as I can tell, here are my best options:

-Suck it up and get a lousy rate of return for Aadvantage miles
-Wait until May 5 (2 Citi apps since 3/2/15) and apply for Citi Prestige and MS $10K to get 60K TY Points and book AA flight with those.
-Try to get Chase Ink asap and book Delta flight with 75K UR (just landed a CSP)

Other helpful info:
-Really want don't want to pay cash to fly. Budget is tight right now.
-No other immediate plans to travel. But would like to do some next winter/spring.
-0 Delta points and Delta award is 45K.

Please let me know what you think my best option is. I know I messed this one up a little bit from the beginning! Are there any other options that I'm missing?

KennyBSAT

Open the Prestige and book with TYP. While AAnytime awards can increase in price, it's not likely for that time frame.

I leave for BZE in the morning, would have waited a year if I'd know WN was going to announce service there. But it won't be there in time for you either.