Reader Michael has a friend living in Tonga for a couple years who he
wants to visit next March, but he doesn’t want to spend the $2000+ it costs to
get there. We here at WenneTravel feel this is understandable, so we’re going
to help Michael figure out the right credit cards and miles to earn in order to
make flights to Tonga as inexpensive as possible. As a bonus, we’re going to
add in New Zealand as a stopover and not make him pay a cent more! Here is our
itinerary:
DC to Auckland
Auckland to Tonga
Tonga to DC
And the credit cards we’ll be signing up for:
Chase Sapphire Preferred
40,000 points after $3,000 spend in 3 months
No annual fee first year
Chase Ink Bold
50,000 points after $5,000 spend in 3 months
No annual fee first year
Total General Points: 98,000
Total Cost: $0
Tonga
For those that don’t know, Tonga is a small island nation in the South
Pacific. The whole island has a population of 100,000, and the capital, Nuku’alofa,
has a population of about 25,000. Therefore, as you might imagine, the airport
that serves the capital is not a big one. In fact, only three airlines even fly
there from outside of Tonga. These three airlines are Air New Zealand, Air
Pacific, and Virgin Australia.
Flights
Fortunately for us miles users, Air New Zealand is part of the Star Alliance,
meaning we can use United’s website and miles to find and book flights to our
destinations. United MileagePlus is a transfer partner of Ultimate Rewards,
which are the points you earn with Sapphire Preferred and Ink. So I will
transfer 70,000 miles, the cost of the roundtrip, to United.
Thanks to United’s generous stopover rules on award tickets, I can not
only fly to Tonga, but also to New Zealand or another city in the area for no
additional miles. I can also add an “open jaw” if I want, which would allow me
to start and end my trip in different cities, or allow me to break my trip
somewhere in the middle. I don’t need to take advantage of that today.
To find the flights I want, first I’m going to do a one-way search for
each leg of the trip, just to get an idea of what’s out there. I started with a
flexible search to get an idea of the available dates for each of the segments.
Anything in light green means we can book in coach at the Saver level on that
day:
DC to Auckland
Auckland to Tonga
Tonga to DC
As you can see, there isn’t a ton of availability between the U.S. and
the South Pacific, but still enough that we should be able to work with. Given
the constraints we have there, we should pick those dates first and then decide
when to go to Tonga based on our transpacific dates. One item to note is that
it will take 2 full calendar days to travel from the U.S. to New Zealand.
I’m going to now select those dates and
pick my flights:
DC to Auckland
The only availability is pretty much
exactly what I’m looking for. One stop, and it’s not too bad a layover in LA. Perfect!
Auckland to Nuku’alofa
Only one flight that day.
Nuku’alofa to DC
There are a lot of choices for this day
heading back to DC. Personally I think it would be nice to come straight back
to DC, instead of having to stop somewhere in the U.S. United operates a flight
from Tokyo to Dulles, so I picked the itinerary that looked most interesting
and went through Tokyo. Now I will search for all three flights in one
multi-destination search (accessible from the United homepage), and I get a
price:
Total Miles Used: 70,000
Total Cost: $119.50
We have 23,000 Ultimate Rewards points remaining. Michael will be
staying with his friend in Tonga, but if he needs a hotel for his few days in
New Zealand, he can use these points to pay for a hotel. Since each point is
worth 1.2 cents, he would have $276 to spend on hotels.
Here’s a look at the actual price for flights on the same days:
Total Savings: $2,269
Need help thinking about the right credit cards for you, or how to book
this kind of trip? Head over to WenneTravel at www.wennecorp.com and we’d be happy to chat
with you.
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