How on earth are people flying across the globe and getting to other countries for free?
Besides credit card points and dropping off at stop overs, there are ways around spending all your points and harping on how you can country hop without cutting off an arm and a leg to do so. As well, you'll also avoid the worry of being charged or blacklisted by airlines for skipping the second leg of your flight. On the downside of this method, you'll end up doing multiple searches and calculating costs multiple times to ensure you're getting the best deal.
Worry not my friends--- the time spent will be worth the efforts! Recently I found myself booking a 24 hour trip to Hawaii for practically FREE. How I found this felt like miracle, but turned out to be the best choice I could have ever imagined. Here's how it happened:
While perusing flights home from Australia, I prompted a search to and from Hawaii for shits and giggles. Turns out I was able to find a ridiculous flight from Melbourne to Kauai for around $500 USD (one-way). At the same time, I found a flight from Kauai to Houston for just over $300 USD (one-way). Extraordinary!
Check out these flight comparisons:
A typical economy flight from Melbourne to Houston (one-way) would cost roughly $1500 USD or more. The flight could also range from 17-23 hours depending if there were stops. Unfortunately none of the flights I found had stops in Hawaii (on any island). At this point booking one-way tickets to Kauai would save me over $700 USD and leave me enough money to book a hotel and a few excursions.
Looking for the catch-22? Of course, there are always snags in the plan. This snag has a layover in Sydney (1.5 hours) and in Honolulu (2 hours); however my flight from Sydney to Honolulu will only be 10 hours versus a 17+ hour flight in economy. The trade off (personally) is worth the technically free trip to Hawaii for 24 hours.
The best part about this entire booking is that I will also be able to use points for the $300 flight back to Houston on United by covering my costs with points on Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) as they have a 1:1 ratio for flight bookings. So in essence, I have now saved over $1000 USD.
Viator Heli flight excursion
With this savings I can put that towards a much pricer excursion that has been on my bucket list for a while: Heli-flight over the Napali coastline. Again, this is basically FREE because I would essentially be spending this money to fly home but now I'll be cruising over the Hawaiian Islands before heading back home.
Maximize your travels by taking the extra time to seek out new adventures. You'll be surprised at what you can find an how you can increase your vacation time to see and do more.