How to earn an easy 20,000 miles today

August 16, 2022

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 27 seconds

Greetings from Panama City (the Panama one, not the Florida one). It's a rainy, windy day here so I've been staying inside and scouring the internet for all the best travel deals to share with you. And I found some pretty good ones 😁

Here's what I got for ya:

• 💸 How to get cheaper Spirit Airlines flights
• 🛫 Earn 20,000 bonus Etihad miles
• 🐰 Cute photo

💸 Spirit Airlines tickets get cheaper... somehow

If you've flown Spirit before, you'll know that it's like the Ryanair of the U.S. - They charge next to nothing for flights, but also charge you for just about everything else - from check-in fees to carry-on and baggage fees, and everything else you can imagine. They even proposed charging passengers to use the bathrooms on planes just to make a few extra bucks (oh wait, that's just Ryanair, never mind 😤).

If you know how to get around these fees or are okay with them, Spirit can be an excellent choice for jetting around the country at extremely low costs. However, there's a way you might be able to shave even MORE dollars off your next Spirit Airlines flight.

It turns out that the breakdown of Spirit Airlines tickets online includes something called a "Passenger Usage Fee" which is only charged when booking online. If you were to go straight to a Spirit Airlines counter at the airport, this fee would not be charged. Here is an example of an online booking from Newark to Miami:

As you can see, the flight is already pretty cheap… BUT if you remove the Passenger Usage Fee, you'd be left with a ticket from EWR to MIA for only $20.60 total, assuming you don't purchase any of their other add-ons.

Now, this might be wondering - is going all the way to the airport worth saving $10 on a flight? And my response would be - no, of course not. But also maybe. But probably not. But sometimes yes.

Let's say a ticket costs $100, and the Passenger Usage Fee accounted for $30. Let's also say you need to buy that ticket for a family of four, so the fees would be about $120 total. Then let's say you go to the Spirit counter after landing in an airport from a different flight. Now you're looking at saving over a hundred dollars just for stopping by the check-in counter on your way out of an airport that you are already in. $120 for a few minutes of your time? In the words of Larry David…

🛫 LAST CHANCE: Earn 20,000 bonus Etihad miles

Etihad is having a short, 3-day promo that awards you 20,000 miles for booking a car rental with Avis. If you're thinking that this doesn't apply to you because you never fly and have never flown Etihad in your life, think again.

Let's start with the promotion details, then we'll move on to how you can maximize the deal:

• Car rental must be for a minimum of 3 day
• Must be booked directly with Avis by August 17th, 2022
• You must enter your Etihad Guest number when making the booking
• Rental period must be between September 1st and November 30th, 2022

I'll start off by saying that most of the time, it won't make sense to make a car rental booking just to take advantage of this deal. However, if you need to rent a car or even have a potential trip down the road that you think you'll need a car for, this could be a great way to rack up hundreds of dollars worth of flights for no extra cost.

How I'm taking advantage of this offer

I'm going to be in Serbia next month and have been thinking about renting a car for my time there. This deal actually gives me the perfect opportunity to get some extra value from a car rental.

After a quick search, I found that I can rent a car in Belgrade for $20 per day for a total of $61 for a 3-day rental.

Since Etihad already offers 3x miles on Avis bookings, that means I'll end up with 20,183 Etihad miles for the $61 purchase. Even if I picked up the rental car without planning to use it, this would be a good deal given the many ways one can use Etihad miles 👇

How you can use Etihad miles to travel around the U.S. and Europe

Here's why you should care about this offer - You don't need to use Etihad Guest Miles to fly on Etihad. You can use them on all kinds of other airlines, including flying domestically on American Airlines. Etihad has an award chart that lets you use miles to book flights within the U.S. and Canada for only 12,500 miles each way.

🐰 Cute travel photo

Coco the bunny flying in first class © Takako Ogawa and Lonely Planet

Coco the bunny got to live out all of our dreams by flying in first class to Japan on United Airlines. Her owner had paid to bring her on the plane in a crate, but the flight crew let her sit in the empty first-class seat next to her owner. Coco is eight years old, and this isn't her first time crossing the pacific. I mean... how adorable is that? 😍

Thanks for tuning in today! What do you think about that Etihad deal? Would you bring your pet on an 11-hour flight with you? Let me know by responding to this email or reaching out on social media.

Hasta luego,

Mike Dodge

​Head Writer, The Daily Drop

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