Award Drop: New Zealand for 42k miles (round-trip)

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🇳🇺 Apparently, it’s possible to sponsor an ocean. The island of Niue released a new plan to partner with generous individuals in protecting their waters. Pretty cool, huh? Read more about it here.

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, the Skinamarink of newsletters. We’ll make you question what you know about travel and keep you up late at night thinking about us nonstop.

Hopefully, you won’t be afraid of us though. That movie was terrifying. And I’m afraid of the dark now. So that’s fun.

But you know what I’m not afraid of? Excellent travel hacks:

🇳🇿 Award Drop: U.S. to New Zealand for 42,000 miles round-trip
✈️ 25% transfer bonus to JetBlue
🥂 First-class Friday: Beond Airlines
💳 Current transfer bonuses

🇳🇿 Award Drop: U.S. to New Zealand for 42,000 miles round-trip

Y’all must be pretty confused.

A couple of weeks ago, I told you about how Delta is dead and everyone should jump ship.

Then, earlier this week, I told you about a deal to save money on Delta flights.

And now I’m telling you about a way to book an amazing set of flights using Delta SkyMiles??

Bear with me.

Right now, you can fly from the U.S. to New Zealand for 50,000 Delta miles… ROUND TRIP.

Here’s the deal:

Early next year (January and February), you can book flights from Los Angeles to Auckland for 50,000 miles round-trip or from San Francisco to Auckland for 54,000 miles round-trip.

As you can see from the image above, the added taxes and fees are only $90 for the trip, which is also pretty amazing.

For reference, the same flight in business class costs a pants-soiling 820,000 SkyMiles. It’s painful.

But it just goes to show how difficult it can be to burn your Delta miles, especially if you have plans to jump ship after their recently announced program changes.

But this deal could potentially be even better for some of you…

If you hold a Delta co-branded credit card, you get a 15% discount on Delta-operated award flights, meaning this ticket would only cost you 42,400 miles round-trip. 🤯

So, while I have a feeling most of you will be canceling your Delta cards in the new year, you might want to hold off for a while to continue taking advantage of this 15% benefit - clearly, there are still some ways to extract some value out of it.

So, if you want to get rid of miles or transfer some of your MR points over to top up your balance, this is a fantastic deal to book a once-in-a-lifetime trip at a reasonable rate.

I recommend jumping on this sooner than later, as inventory is likely to go fast!

✈️ 25% transfer bonus to JetBlue

Woah… a transfer bonus to Jet-freaking-Blue? That’s not something you see every day.

Until November 30th, you can get a 25% bonus when transferring MR points to JetBlue.

This is a little different from most transfer bonuses, however.

The normal transfer ratio from MR points to JetBlue is 250:200, meaning 1,000 MR points will turn into 800 JetBlue miles.

With this bonus, you simply get a normal 1:1 ratio, where 1,000 transferred points will result in 1,000 JetBlue miles.

Still, there is definitely some value to be had here.

For example, you can fly nonstop from New York to the Bahamas for only 4,600 JetBlue miles.

Getting from the northeast to the Caribbean for 4,600 MR points is actually amazing, and certainly a better deal than you’ll find with other programs.

Even if you need to book a long-haul domestic flight like Boston to Los Angeles, you could do so for only 7,000 points/miles with this transfer bonus, which is also a good deal.

Given how easy it is to earn MR points (thanks to some hefty signup bonuses) combined with the long window to take advantage of this, I’d highly recommend looking into it and considering JetBlue for your upcoming travel needs.

🥂 First-class Friday: Beond Airlines

The latest in all-business class flights is launching next month in hopes of taking you, in style, to destinations beyond your wildest dreams…

…or beond your wildest dreams. Because we’re talking about Beond Airlines.

This idea of an all-premium model aircraft isn’t new—but Beond is set to launch next month as the self-proclaimed “world’s first premium leisure airline.”

Not exactly sure what that means? Me neither 🤔

Their planes have the typical 2-2, lie-flat configuration that you see on most all-business class aircraft, and I’ll admit, they are pretty gorg 😘

Courtesy of Beond

The carrier is headquartered in Dubai, but its main hub currently sits in the Maldives… which is an interesting choice.

There’s only so much growing you can do in a destination that’s quite confined, physically, am I right?

Plus all the big-name competition that already flies there, ahem, Qatar/Emirates/Etihad…

Especially when Beond says their goal is to expand to 60 destinations within the next five years.

But starting in November, they’ll be rolling out different routes between Malé and Riyadh, Munich, and Zurich. In 2024, we’ll also see flights between Malé and Dubai and Milan.

Doing a quick search for roundtrip flights from Munich to the Maldives gives me price ranges from $2,800 to $3,400 depending on the level of fare you choose 👇

I’m a bit torn because if I’m paying $3,000 cash for a business class flight, I kinda want to get some points out of it…

So Beond’s lack of a frequent flyer program or partnerships is definitely a negative… but flying in an all-business class cabin is also just a super cool and unique experience 😎

And I think that’s why most people would choose to fly this way—for the experience and not the points and status-chasing.

Would you forgo a typical flying experience to enjoy Beond’s all-business class cabin??