Greetings and Salutations! How is everyone today?

I just had to wake up at 6:00 AM today to tell you about another of my travel obsessions. Do you love to maximize your airline miles? Do you want to know about great deals and promotions that may save you beaucoup bucks? Does the prospect of finding deals that will place you in the front of the cabin make you tingle all over?

If so, you MUST check out The Points Guy. Their byline is “Maximize Your Travel”. I found them over the summer and I’ve been a faithful follower ever since and I’m not even kidding. I just have to say that they are amazing and you should drop everything and check them out right now.

TRAVEL TIP: The Points Guy

But I know we’re all very busy people so, to save your valuable time, I want to share with you two of their recent posts that may be of interest:

Their first tasty tidbit was posted just yesterday, and it seems the American Airlines is deeply discounting first class fares on its transcontinental service between from JFK to LAX or SFO (or versa vice, of course). When I say “deeply”, I’m talking about R/T fares as low as $1,198. May I just say that’s CRAZY???

You may already know that American introduced new equipment in 2014 that’s used on all nonstop transcon flights on these routes, the A321T. It’s a cute aircraft and AAC CPA and I have flown it several times, both in business and in 1st class. In fact, here’s AAC CPA settling in on a recent flight to the right coast:

And here’s a better look at that 1st class seat:

Nice, huh?

Says The Points Guy:

“All of these flights are eligible for AA’s lucrative bonus miles promo for premium-cabin travel, earning you up to 24,000 bonus miles on a round-trip. Additionally, as these are P fares, you’ll earn 2 EQPs per mile flown. Note that the cheapest fares to LAX are only available for Saturday-Saturday travel.” These fares are currently available from October through February.”

BTW, as of now, flights between JFK and SFO are running about $100 more.

So, if you feel like a flying to or from the coast and want to get an amazing deal from which you can travel in style, check out the link:

TRAVEL TIP: American Air First Class Promotion

The Points Guy also gave me a heads up on another fab promo regarding steeply discounted fares to Europe over the upcoming holidays. In fact, it’s THEIR fault that AAC CPA and I are returning to London during Christmas week. Darn them.

While several airlines offer these discounted fares, the best deal is actually a cross-promotion between British Air and AARP (and, no, you apparently don’t need to be – gulp – 50 to become an AARP member, in case you were wondering).

The Points Guy advises that:

“You’ll get the deepest discount on flights operated by British Airways or OpenSkies, since you can apply an additional 10% off coupon when you pay with a Visa card. Note that flights are also available on American Airlines, though the additional 10% discount won’t apply. First class is discounted as well — New York to London will run you $2,967 round-trip, for example.”

This promotion is available for departures either during Thanksgiving week or the latter half of December.

Let’s fly to Europe for the holidays!!

In our case – and, yes, we are proud and out AARP members – I went right to the BA/AARP Cross Promotion link below and started playing with dates and flights. Just for fun, I priced business class flights over and 1st class flights on the return. In addition to the $400 per person AARP discount for booking the flights, we also had a lotta Avios miles (from British Airways) and, in exchange for chunk of them, we got a further $1,200 discount. The bottom line for the two of us was just about $4,000 for everything. Not bad, right?

And the cherry on the cake is that we’ll be in London for Christmas. How much fun is that?

TRAVEL TIP: British Air/AARP Holiday Promotion 

or, to get you directly to the AARP webpage to book your BA flights:

TRAVEL TIP: BA/AARP Cross Promotion

LESSON FOR TODAY: If you fly and have accrued miles or are looking for a great deal, The Points Guy is your man.