How I booked a $12,000 biz-class ticket for $75

Note from Paula: Today’s post was written by Mike, the blogger at Renting out Rooms, who scored a $12,000 business-class airline ticket to Easter Island (a Polynesian territory of Chile) for $75. Find out how! He includes screen shots of his ticket for added inspiration.

How I Booked a $12,000 Business-Class Ticket for $75

We all have hobbies in life that we spend money on – some people collect antiques, some people go fishing. We spend money on our hobbies to the extent that our income allows us to do so.

But there’s always something we want to do that might not be within reach on our current income and we say “someday, I’ll do whatever is that I want to do.”

If you think creatively, you can achieve your “someday” goal. I love to travel abroad to foreign countries, for instance, and it’s safe to say that I spend a fair amount of money on it. I don’t know why I love to travel, but perhaps it’s the experience of seeing the culture of a foreign land in person.

Whatever the reason maybe, I have a whole bunch of places on my bucket list. One of the places I would love to visit is Easter Island, but due the isolated location and the fact one airline company flies there, the round trip flights are downright expensive. An economy class ticket from North America costs around $3,000. The same ticket in business class – forget about it. At $12,000 it’s wayyyy more than I’m willing to pay.

So instead of looking at these prices and say “Someday I’ll go to Easter Island” and looking at cheaper travel destinations, how about looking into alternatives to getting there or paying for it? (Legal ways, of course!)

I looked into alternate ways of getting there: boats just take too long. So I chose to look for creative ways to pay for it. I wound up paying a little bit over $75 for the same $12,000 business class ticket! Huh? How is that possible?

How I booked a $12,000 Flight for $75

While surfing the internet, I came across this:

The banner is advertising 100,000 British Airways miles as a sign up bonus if you get approved for their credit card, which is a load of miles for doing relatively little work.

Geographically speaking, Great Britain and Easter Island are very far apart, so what do they have in common? Even though British Airways doesn’t fly there, their partner airline does. By getting 100,000 British Airways miles and using the miles to book on their partner airline, I was able to book a business class ticket to Easter Island for nothing more than taxes and fees: $75.

“Someday, I’ll ….”

Now I’m not saying everyone should sign up for credit cards to get free flights; it’s just an option to access some far and hard-to-reach places. In short, the “someday, I’ll (fill in the blank)…” is a lot more reachable than most people think.

I’m going to be able to cross off Easter Island from my bucket list later this year because I found an alternative way of getting the same thing I otherwise couldn’t afford.

If you think you can’t do something or get something, be creative and think outside the box. I would love to hear about what you’ve been able to do by thinking outside the box.

More about me: My name is Mike, I blog at rentingoutrooms.com which is my creative story of renting out my two spare bedrooms to accelerate my mortgage payments. I also blog at thefitworldtravler.com, a travel blog that highlights two things: a way to keep track of my work outs and a travel blog show casing the different Crossfit affiliates I visit while traveling.

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