It’s Alive! Or how to purchase two international plane tickets for $22.60.

Even after informing our friends and family of our upcoming plans, the trip didn’t seem quite real, as if we were making up some story that started with, "Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if…"  Plus, whenever someone responded with, "Cool!  When are you leaving?", we’d end up hemming and hawing with vague sentences like "sometime at the beginning of September" which added to the unreality of our plans. 

But now, it’s official.  We have purchased our plane tickets to Bangkok (a quick change in our plans from Vietnam due to visas) leaving September 5.  I’m excited to be flying on Asiana Air most of the way there as there have been nothing but good reviews for that airline.  Plus, I read on Chris Guilleabeau’s “Travel the World” guide that economy class on an Asia-based airline is equivalent to flying business class on a US-based airline.  Best thing was the cost of the flight: $22.60.  To which my mom responded with, "Are you flying on a paper plane?" 

Well, all right, $22.60 plus 65,000 miles. 

Considering I’ve flown maybe five domestic flights in the last three years, plus one international flight (our honeymoon), it’s pretty amazing that I’ve racked up over 65,000 miles, huh?  It’s because, while US airlines aren’t the most comfortable, their mileage programs are awesome.  Rick and I both have United Airline Mileage Plus accounts, which is part of the Star Alliance, an alliance of different airlines banding all their frequent flyer mileage programs together.  That way, I can fly airlines like Asiana using United Airline miles.  Or when I fly Virgin Atlantic, I can earn United Airline miles.  The two main alliances are Star Alliance and One World, though tons of airlines, like Alaska Airlines, have partnerships with each other.  This way, you don’t need to juggle 50 different frequent flyer accounts for each individual airline. The cool thing is that Star Alliance and One World have great RTW (Round The World) tickets.  You can find out more on this great blog article here.  Unfortunately for us, RTW tickets won’t work well for our plans, but they’re an awesome idea nevertheless. 

Anyways, we both signed up for the United Airlines Chase Mastercard, which came with a great sign-up bonus of 50,000 miles, plus two lounge passes each year (lifestyle inflation here we come!) and other benefits. The cards give us 1 mile for every $1 spent, so we’re gaining miles for items we’d purchase anyways.  Our cruise to Alaska two years ago was also partnered with our mileage program so that was a great boost of miles.  Finally, every so often, I glance through ads as part of the E-miles  program.  I never actually do any of the offers, so earning miles is slow going through them, but it doesn’t take more than 5 minutes of my time most days and every mile counts. 

In purchasing our tickets, I’ve only used my accrued miles, so, hopefully, when it’s time to come home, we can use Rick’s miles.  I’m so excited to know our actual start date.  Now there’s a real deadline to work towards, an actual countdown!  Our trip’s officially ALIVE!