the Jebba Journal: Ninth Edition
An East Coast trip redemption, my first time at the US Open, and new Flying Blue award costs
We’re back after a long hiatus with another trip redemption, using only points of course! Many, many months ago I decided to go to the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York, something I have wanted to do for years now. Kayla and I both have friends and family in New York and Boston, so the tournament was a perfect excuse to go cross-country. All-in-all, we booked five nights between the two cities.
I’ll break down the cost for each part of travel below, but the the Too Long, Didn’t Read (TLDR) version is that I spent 118,000 points on our flights and 133,000 points on our hotels. While this wasn’t cheap, my goal was to maximize comfort over cost. There was plenty of room to make this trip significantly less expensive, but as they say, “when in….New York…” (am I getting that phrase right?).
If you want help booking a similar trip (or really any kind of trip) and don’t know where to start, feel free to comment here and I can do my best to help out.
Flights
Despite having limited flexibility with dates, points prices weren’t atrocious, mostly because New York has three major airports (JFK, EWR, and LGA), and I also booked far in advance.
Accomplishing my goal of maximizing comfort and minimizing travel times, I settled on a United flight arriving at 3:30pm, which offered the “premium plus” seats for only 40,000 points per person. The regular economy seats were 23,000 points, so it didn’t seem absurd to splurge for the more comfortable option.
This seat is akin to what international flights would consider “premium economy.” Did I need to spend 80,000 United Points (the rough equivalent of about $1,000 cash) for two people to fly only 5.5 hours? Hell no! Did I have enough points from a recent United credit card sign-up bonus allowing me to say “fuck it” and book the more comfortable seats? Yes, yes I did.
For reference, Kayla and I sat in essentially the same seats on KLM when we flew to Amsterdam (a 10.5 hour flight), and the points cost was the exact same: 40,000 points per person (the rate has decreased since, see bottom of this newsletter). So I kind of overpaid for this United flight, but I don’t regret it at all.
I recently convinced two friends to upgrade to premium economy on this same KLM flight to Amsterdam as well as my cousin who flew on United over 14 hours to Israel in early September. In short, they all agreed it was worth the extra money to pay for the upgrade.
Premium economy upgrade includes:
Extra checked bag for free (or first checked bag free on domestic flights)
Priority Boarding
Comfy, spacious seats on all sides with a separate leg and foot rest (7 inches extra legroom, 1.5 inches wider, a few extra inches of recline, and wider arm rests)
Better food with real silverware, plates, and glasses
Free alcoholic drinks
Larger TV
Nicer pillow and blanket (on long-haul international fights)
Pro Tip: if you want to try and fly in premium economy but don’t want to pay the often absurd cash price, book an economy ticket and wait until a day or two before your flight.
Often if these seats haven’t sold yet, they will offer a paid upgrade for a few hundred dollars. Just know this won’t always be the case, but it can be worth gambling if you’re okay flying in economy if the price is too much to upgrade.
For our return flight from Boston, we were a bit more limited, but I found a 7:55 am non-stop flight on Delta in Comfort Plus seats for only 19,000 points each. Comfort Plus is just their standard seat with added legroom. Since I’m 6’1, the extra legroom is very welcomed on any flight longer than 2-3 hours. It was better than expected, but nowhere near as nice as the premium plus seats on United.
We took the Amtrak from Manhattan to Boston, which was only $60 total for the both of us and easily beat out the cost and inconvenience of flying.
Total cost -
80,000 United points + 38,000 Delta points
Hotels
At the time of booking, I had a plethora of Chase and Hyatt points and fortunately there are tons of Hyatt hotels all throughout Manhattan with various price ranges.
For New York I booked the Andaz 5th Avenue for 29,000 points per night (the cost of the hotel has since increased in price). While not the newest Hyatt in NYC, it was the same price as several other nearby options and offered the most square footage per room.
It also had a great location in Midtown, directly across from the New York Public Library. Kayla and I have stayed at several other Andaz hotels and loved them, but this one was kind of a letdown.
The room was spacious, but seemed to have an identity crisis. The entryway and bathroom were sleek with dark wood and lots of glass, but take 7 steps into the bedroom portion and you’re met with blank white and blue walls covered in scuff marks.
There was minimal art (which is kind of the *thing* Andaz hotels like to emphasize), just a mounted TV, chaise lounge, and desk. It also just felt sort of dirty and having carpet instead of hardwood floors in the bedroom portion didn’t help.
In Boston, we stayed at the Hyatt Regency Boston in Downtown (not to be confused with the Hyatt Regency Boston Harbor) for 23,000 points per night. Thanks to some light nepotism from someone who works for Hyatt (thank you Stef!) we were upgraded to a suite with a bedroom and separate living room. While it was more dated than the Andaz in New York, we were both far more comfortable here for two nights.
Total cost -
133,000 Hyatt points (mostly transferred from Chase)
Activities
Like I mentioned, the main purpose of this trip was to attend the US Open tennis tournament. I had never been to a live tennis match and even though I went alone, it exceeded my expectations. I saw the semi-finals between Ben Shelton and Novak Djokovic and even though it was somewhat lopsided, I’d say it was well worth it for the experience. The atmosphere was unlike anything I had ever been a part of at a live sporting event, albeit I have never been to a semi-final for sport before.
In fact, I loved it so much, I already convinced my dad and one of my brothers to come with me to Palm Desert in March 2024 for the Indian Wells tennis tournament (keep an eye out for my newsletter going over a totally different way I used points to book this trip).
Kayla and I also saw Book of Mormon on Broadway, my first Broadway show, ate half a million bagels (which still somehow didn’t seem like enough?), saw tons of friends/family members (plus their dogs), and had some of the best vegan dim sum of my life.
Conclusion
Once again, we both got to enjoy an incredible and comfortable trip to two very expensive cities without blowing through an entire yearly travel budget. I’m not sure what the price would have been if we paid cash for the same flights and hotels, but I’m guessing it would have been around $2,500 minimum.
Instead, we paid 80,000 United points, 38,000 Delta points, and 133,000 Hyatt points. This allowed us to travel more comfortably while using cash to splurge on food, drinks, shows, and seeing one of the greatest tennis plays of all time at a Grand Slam tournament.
Bonus: Flying Blue (KLM and Air France) Update Award Flights
If you have been reading my newsletters with any regularity, you’ll know I talk about Flying Blue a lot. They routinely have some of the lowest prices to book flights between the US and Europe on points along with a lot of availability, especially in economy.
Recently, they decided to update and standardize the pricing structure of their award flights so now the bare minimum cost (often referred to as “saver awards”) is the same throughout the entire US. This change heavily favors booking in premium cabins, like premium economy or business class, however, especially from the West Coast.
In the past, they had a varying pricing structure based on where you were flying from. Typically, it would cost much less if you were traveling to/from an East Coast city and a lot more from the West Coast.
For example, an economy flight from JFK to AMS at the saver rate would be only 15,000 points where the same seat from SFO to AMS would run you 20,000 points. In business class the difference was even greater, costing 55,000 and up to 80,000 points, respectively.
Now, the new saver level pricing everywhere is as follows:
Saver economy tickets are 20,000 points
Saver premium economy tickets are 35,000 points
Saver business class tickets are 50,000 points
This is actually and increase of 5,000 points in economy and premium economy for saver tickets out of East Coast cities, but a decrease in 5,000 points in business class.
The real winners here are those of us on the West Coast, where economy ticket prices have stayed the same, but premium economy has decreased by 5,000 points, and business class has decreased by as much as 20,000 points!
This makes aspirational travel in business class far more attainable for people on the West Coast. Just know that Flying Blue uses dynamic pricing for their award tickets, meaning prices can reach up to several hundreds of thousands of points, depending on when you book. If you have flexibility with dates though, these changes should be beneficial, something that is increasingly rare these days in the travel points game.