The Rare completely “free” flight

When people speak of using points and miles to book travel it is often incorrectly described as “free”. Nothing is ever actually free. It is more accurate to say that award travel is discounted travel since most points come with some cost. Points earned from flying or hotel stays are like rebates where you earn something back for money that was spent. The same is true for using shopping portals, credit card signup bonuses and dining programs. You spend some money and you get points in return.

However sometimes points can be truly free. Points for taking surveys, being a Seattle Seahawks fan, answering football quizzes on Marriott’s twitter account are some examples. Typically these points are so small that they just help you top off your account or keep them from expiring. With the recent announcement of Alaska Airlines acquiring Hawaiian Airlines I am reminded of a flight that I booked using nothing but points I received completely free. It was this flight that convinced my then girlfriend (now wife) to become my player 2 in this hobby.

As I often tell people, you should open loyalty accounts for airlines and hotels even if you have no current plans to fly that airline or stay at the hotel. In September 2016, Virgin America offered 500 Elevate points just to open an account. So I did just that. A few days after opening the account and getting my free 500 points, I received an email with an offer of 500 points to sign up for a newsletter for Virgin Hotels. Once again, I signed up and received another free 500 points. The following month I received yet another email offering 500 points, this time for a newsletter for Virgin Sports. I did that one too.

Fast forward a few months and Virgin America announces they are being acquired by Alaska Airlines. I assumed my 1,500 Elevate points would simply become 1,500 Alaska Mileage Plan points. Imagine my surprise when I received an email from Alaska giving me details on how to open an Alaska account and letting me know my 1500 Elevate points would become 1950 Alaska points in January 2018! Alaska had one more surprise for me after the merger. For all customers who had both Alaska and Virgin loyalty accounts, Alaska deposited an extra 10,000 points!

So to recap, at this point I had not only never flown Virgin America or Alaska Airlines, I had never even seen their planes in real life. I opened an account for each, signed up for 2 email newsletters, and was now sitting with 11,950 Alaska points.

The Flight

So I have covered how I received the free points, now lets talk about the flight. Around this time my girlfriend had a work trip to San Francisco. We decided that I should tag along to spend a weekend in Napa. It just so happened that there was a nonstop flight from IND to SFO for 10,000 points + $5.60 one way. So yes this was just a one way flight and I did have to use Delta miles to get back, but the moral of this story is that small points can quickly add up to redeemable points. If points are being offered for free, take them!