Maximizing miles

Having traveled to Europe several times during my teens with my father, I've come to appreciate long haul flights.  Yes, they're cramped, long, the food sucks, everything's overpriced, etc.  Anyone who's been on a long haul flight knows these things and has their own "opinions" (read: grievances) about the matter.  The thing is, I still enjoy being in that far off place, and giving myself 10 hours to do nothing while I'm getting there.  :)

That's why I'm going to show you an ongoing deal.  It's not quite mileage-run worthy, but if your goal is to see as much of the world as you can't afford, this is one cheap way to visit a new country and earn a TON of miles doing it.  What you want to do is find your nearest Major City (tm) and search on Kayak for the cheapest tickets and availability to Istanbul.  Now, the way I do it is to use kayak.com/explore, but I know everyone has their own strategies (Bing Travel, ISA software matrix...).  For the sake of this post, we'll use Kayak.  Go the website, click on "Explore from" in the upper left and fill in your Major City (tm).  It should update the page within a few seconds to show a map with prices from searches that Kayak users have done originating at your selected airport.

That tiny green plane?  That's Chicago.

Now, find a location that's relatively far out and start zooming in a little to find that diamond in the rough.  Or needle in a haystack.  Whatever.  Anyway, for me, that's apparently Istanbul.  I remember when people got excited about $500 fares to IST from New York.  Apparently it's a once a year thing.  From Chicago, it looks like there are $550 fares around Thanksgiving.  I love Thanksgiving.  And what more appropriate place to celebrate it than Turkey?  Go to milecalc.com, or any of a million similar sites, and figure out the cost per mile (CPM) to get from your Major City's (tm) airport to Istanbul (IST).  In my case, that means going ORD -> MUC -> IST.  On MileCalc, that automatically sets itself to a round-trip setting.  Plug in the cost of the ticket (this is why we use Kayak; it gives us the "all inclusive" cost with taxes, fuel surcharges, etc. built in) and voila!  You have a CPM calculation.

At 11,016 elite qualifying miles, you're well on your way to status.  Remember, as a member of the Star Alliance, you can give them your frequent flyer number from any Star Alliance airline and they'll credit the miles to that account.  At $544, my trip works out to 4.94 cents per mile.  Add in a couple of points per mile from a mileage earning credit card (e.g. the Zync from AmEx with the travel package!) and you've brought the cost down to 4.49 cents per mile.  Now, the "pros" are looking for 3.5 CPM or lower, but 4.5 is not bad at all!  Especially for all the travel you get!

Unfortunately, I already have plans to see my girlfriend graduate that week.  That doesn't mean I'm going to stop looking at nearby dates though.  We don't have plans for Christmas, after all.  :)