Delta’s Weirdest Card Offer & Google’s Huge Points Play

The Thrifty Traveler Podcast

In this lively news roundup, Gunnar Olsson and Kyle Potter dive into major developments in the points and miles world, including Google Flig

Key takeaways

• Google Flights' AI-powered points search is an early but potentially transformative move that could disrupt award travel pricing by increasing competition across airlines.
• Delta's new credit card offer stands out as unusually generous, possibly the best in recent memory, though its long-term impact remains to be seen.

Main topics

• Google Flights' new AI-based points and miles search feature
• Delta's latest credit card promotion

Notable quotes

"If they suddenly have to do this with award flights, I think there's an interesting element there that there will be more competition on award fares."

"This is Google we're talking about... it will do what it wants to do. If they've decided to get into the points game, it's not going to stop at adding a few programs."

Conclusion

While Google Flights' entry into points and miles search is still in its infancy, it marks a

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Yo, welcome to the show. I'm Gunnar Olsson and with me as always is the smartest man in points and miles Kyle Potter and Kyle you and our listeners may have noticed I'm a little horse for today's I did notice record. I do want to address that. But first today we have a big news roundup episode. We're going to go discuss all the new route announcements from American United in Alaska. We're going to play a round of translate that airline CEO. Everybody's favorite game show. Everybody's favorite game show. Maybe. We don't know. There's no data on that. We're going to take a look at a tantalizing new Delta credit card offer and check out Google Flight's entry into the Points and Miles game, along with some rapid fire news at the end. But before we do any of that, we need to announce a winner. Speaker 1 (0:41) of the five card travel credit card draft from last week's episode. That's episode 77. For those who haven't listened yet, it was really awesome. The draft ended up really even, I thought, and I think all the listeners agreed because the numbers are kind of crazy how close this was in the end. But one of you pulled ahead and secured the win. I was up late last night watching Steve Kornacki take in all the vote totals from Wayne County and Macomb County in Michigan. We've got them now. We have a winner. with 51.5% of the votes. The winner of last week's five-card draft is... It's you, Kyle. How does it feel? Speaker 1 (1:14) It's a relief. I could not have have stomached losing another draft after losing to you last year in our airline program draft. I will say not a huge margin, still a W. I like to think that if there were some kind of points and miles sicko electoral college, I would have I won that more handily than I did the popular vote here. But a win is a win. Good. A win is a win. Remind us, what is Nick's punishment now that he has lost? Nick gets to clap when our plane for our company retreat to Mexico City lands in both Mexico City and then back home to Minneapolis. And that is why I really, I honestly don't care about winning a draft. I do, however, care very deeply about the indignity of clapping on an airplane. So the fact that this falls to Nick and not me is just the best. Speaker 1 (2:05) Man, I can't wait. I'm just trying to think like how I could make it even more awkward for him. And my mind is racing. So the lead in this vote changed a couple of times. And when it was going Nick's way, I was like, what have I done to myself by challenging Nick with this punishment? I can't wait for it. So I guess I'll address my voice. There are theories out there that. tying the fact that I flew through O'Hare three times in the last 10 days. O'Hare will do that to you. It's the O'Hare flu, I guess, is maybe why my voice is gone. Some are saying it's my daycare attending daughter that gave me some sort of sickness. And others are even saying that it was the 75 beers I had over the weekend at my best friend's bachelor party. I don't know. Nobody can tell. Science is a mystery. Which one of those explanations seems most plausible to you? Speaker 1 (2:49) I'm going to go with 75 beers and related activities to said 75 beers. That seems like the most likely culprit here. Could be a cocktail of things. Who knows? It does. It does. All right. Today on the show, we're talking New Europe Routes, a Delta card offer, United and O'Hare. We've got some mini reviews of Delta One Lounge at Seattle, KLM, and a glamping adventure with Hyatt Points. It's all that and more. Hi, this is Kaylee, and after running into Gunnar at the KLM Lounge in Amsterdam, my family has spent the last two weeks in Africa. I'm coming to you from the beautiful Savannah Private Game Reserve in Sabi Sands. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Speaker 1 (3:30) Okay, welcoming us back this week was Staley in South Africa. If you missed it last week, Kyle and Nick spent the open of the show making fun of me after Staley recognized me in the Crown Lounge at Amsterdam Skipple. When Staley came up behind me, I was taking video of the buffet, which is something that normal people do at lounges. Everybody does it. It is one of the weirdest things that we have to do is take photos and videos of food and people think we're crazy for it. But Staley came up behind me. He goes, are you Gunnar Olsen? I couldn't believe it. It was awesome. Her whole family was there three generations on their way to Cape town for that safari that she just showed us. And man, I floated to my gate after that, after she recognized me, I couldn't have felt cooler. I I'm well over the legal limit of, do you know who I am since that moment happened? That was, that was special. Speaker 1 (4:17) Staley, thank you for sending in this video. I will forever curse your name for inflating Gunner's ego. All right, let's get to the news. Kyle, we both initially wrote this story off as kind of a nothing burger. And then I think we all came to our senses about it too. The news is about Google Flights, namely that this, the best airfare search engine on earth is starting to show you the cost of flights or hotels in points and miles, but it's only an AI mode right now. So that's kind of where it lost us because one. Speaker 1 (4:44) I don't get a ton of value from the AI mode because I am a Google Flight super user already. But two, it's only American and Alaska award fairs right now, plus Choice, Hilton, and Wyndham for hotels. But Google says it's adding Flying Blue, Lufthansa Group, LATAM, and Accor hotels in the coming weeks. So what made you decide that this is actually big news and not a nothing burger? I think... on its face, just with where things are starting, a only an AI mode to only with two airlines and a pair of hotel chains, it it isn't much. But this is Google we're talking about this is Google deciding that it's going to get into a warfare inventory. And this is a company that not just in our in arguably owns the internet, it will do what it wants to do. So if they have decided, you know what, we're going to get into this points game, it is not going to stop with adding flood. Speaker 1 (5:37) Flying Blue and Hyatt and other programs. As long as this goes well, and I have no reason to think that it won't, this is going to continue, which is going to have some, I think, pretty drastic ramifications, both good and bad, for how we all find award fairs and find the best deals using our credit card points or airline miles or hotel points. Yeah, I think my mind is racing just the fact that all the airlines are probably going to have to be here at some point. Speaker 1 (6:05) Because they want to be competitive. And then once they're listing what their rates are, I mean, think about the airlines like Delta who have historically had higher rates on various flights than other airlines. Does Delta want to get beat on price every single time on every single flight? Maybe they have to lower some rates. That's a really good point. We're truly thinking long game here. But this is where I think this is truly important. You know, right now, it is a very imperfect system because there's only two major airlines participating. Speaker 1 (6:33) The rates, what the data that they pull in can be flawed in some cases, but this is, you know, the first prologue of a very long story that's going to play out over the coming weeks, months, and years, as long as Google continues doing this. And, you know, I think there is an element of this where, you know, airlines may decide that they need to compete on price with this stuff to the point you made because, you know, sites like Google Flights. Speaker 1 (7:00) have in some ways, I think, forced airlines to compete on price because there is a marketplace that you can go to, to not just go to delta.com or aa.com, but see every airline's fares and pick the deal that works best for you. If they suddenly have to do this with award flights, I think there's an interesting element there that there will be more competition on award fares. The flip side of that is if you think that tools like Seats.Aero and PointsPath and point.me and Points.yeah and services like ours and others have played a part in making it easier to find the best deals and get outsized value from your points and therefore encourage airlines to raise award rates and raise taxes and fees and make it harder to book these things. This is Google we're talking about with billions of users and not all, you know, two, three, four billion of them that are using. Speaker 1 (7:52) these kinds of services are going to be booking flights with points, but there's going to be a whole lot more than any of these existing services can ever capture that could in the future, go to Google to find the flights to book with their miles, which means there would be even more incentive to control those costs on the airline's behalf, which means more of the devaluations, more of the sweet spots getting closed that we've been talking about for the last, you know, going on two years on this podcast. Yeah, for sure. It's worth noting that. the seats that arrow and points path extensions for Google flights are still way more powerful than what Google is offering right now. But like you said, it's Google. It might only be a matter of time, but right now we'd recommend either of those two extensions to get the job done for what you're looking for right now as well. Speaker 1 (8:38) Let's move on to some United cardholder discount data. For years, United has given cardholders and flyers with mileage plus status expanded award availability. And now they've taken that to the next level. There are bigger discounts, additional discounts, and they bring business class awards to Europe from 200,000. miles each way to as low as 72,000 miles each way. United, unlike or like other airlines, has gotten much stingier with allowing its partners like Air Canada Aeroplan or ANA Mileage Club to book Polaris business class seats. That's how I've done it in the past. And that option pretty much no longer exists. Does not exist anymore, period. Speaker 1 (9:18) Yeah. So these cardholder discounts have become the way to book United Business Class if you want to, which brings us to a question. How easy or hard is it to actually find these discounted seats? Are they pretty widespread? So this is where this conversation started in the office. It's just trying to quantify. How good are these deals? How readily available are they? And how should that then shape how people think about United credit cards if you would never even dream of picking up a United Explorer, United Quest card? And, you know, we have to give some credit to the guys at Frequent Miler who were the first to kind of go through the wall on this and look at this. And they determined that there is some amazing availability, as they put it, that... Speaker 1 (10:00) People who either have a United credit card or have status with the airline see far, far more saver award availability in the neighborhood of 80,000 to 72,000 miles each way for a player's business class to Europe than any everyday United flyer like you and I. Neither of us have United status nor a credit card. And that is true. We wanted to figure out not just how much better is it for credit card holders, but how great is that award space? So we did a ton of analysis using seats.arrow and analyzing the data that polls for just how often these kinds of discounted awards are available to cardholders and travelers with status. And the answer is, it's pretty nuanced. It is a lot better than you and I get as everyday United Flyers. It is still not great. The big picture number is just... Speaker 1 (10:52) 5.4% at the time when we looked at this in late August is when we pulled that data. 5.4% of flights globally to Europe, to South America, to Asia and Australia, New Zealand, French Polynesia, Oceania, whatever you want to call it. 5.4% were bookable at these discounted cardholder only rates. So this is not floodgates are open. You still have to be incredibly selective. And some of the other things we found was, you know, how you can be more selective to find more of these awards. Yeah. So is there anywhere you should target if you want to find some of that 5.4%? I mean, the big, maybe the single biggest takeaway is that you have far, far better odds flying home from Europe or Asia or Australia than you do flying to any of those destinations from the U.S. The availability is just so much greater. Globally, you're... Speaker 1 (11:45) two times as likely to find a discounted Polaris Business Class Award. Coming home from Europe, you are three times more likely to find these Polaris Business Class Awards at 72,000 miles, somewhere in that neighborhood, than you are from the United States to Europe. And most importantly, London is like the biggest outlier in all of this. The flight from London back to Newark in Polaris Business Class is 50%. It's a coin flip as to whether you can find that, whereas on some other routes, it's like 1% or less. And London as a whole, whether you're talking about to Newark, to Chicago, from Chicago to London, a handful of other routes, 20% of all of these discounted exclusive business class awards are to and from London. It's crazy how much that one stands out. Speaker 1 (12:35) What about any guidance on the calendar, the time of the year when you're able to find any of these discounted awards? I mean, again, it's not like you're going to pull up a calendar and you're going to see them everywhere. You really need to be selective. And naturally, that's going to mean off-peak travel. So, you know, to and from Europe, the most likely, the most prevalent time you're going to find these deals is in January and February. Is that exactly when you want to go? It might not be. Should you anyway? I mean, if you have the United Miles and you have... Speaker 1 (13:04) status or one of these credit cards, these are some pretty good deals that you're not going to find in many cases through any other airlines. And then the other one is off-peak days too. I mean, it's like the pinnacle of all things cheap travel, the cheapest days to fly, not the cheapest days to book, but to actually put your butt in that seat Tuesday, Wednesday, and to a lesser extent Thursday. Exact same thing carries over here to these to the point that 50% of all of these discounted exclusive awards. Speaker 1 (13:32) are flying on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. On like a Sunday, it's below 5%. Yeah. Okay. That sounds pretty restrictive to me and probably does to a lot of people too. Is it worth it to pick up a United card just to get 5.4% of international long haul routes, the ability to book Polaris for that cheap? Well, I think this is why this research and analysis is important is because it depends on how you travel. Can you be this flexible? Can you really bank on flying home from Europe or home from Australia instead of starting your trip that way in United Polaris business class? And you know you can find a different way to get where you're starting your trip. Then probably. Can you structure your travel so that you're traveling during off-peak times and increase the odds that you're going to find one of these great deals? Speaker 1 (14:21) then yes. Can you fly