A fully-booked Intrepid tour that will just so happen to pass through Luxor on August 2nd had someone drop out. I got my dream eclipse tour of Egypt for $1200. To cap it off, I found business class seats from the West Coast for 3 grand round-trip.
If you're struggling to make your trip happen: don't give up, miracles sometimes happen, and consider Condor.
Flights for my dates next year are starting to be released. For what's available so far, Condor's got the best prices both in premium and business.
I flew a 12hr economy on Turkish to Istanbul once - it was a sleepless hell. I'd love to get the flat seat in business, but it's outside my budget by a few hundred bucks. Premium's $1500 less, but I've heard it's basically "economy extra legroom" elsewhere.
In your opinion, is premium good enough? Is business worth splurging for? At a time when the eclipse's gonna make demandgo nuts, will Seatboost still be a viable option?
I'm going to Egypt in late July/early August next year for the eclipse. The first relevant flights should be available in a few weeks, and demand is gonna be astronomical.
My best options right now would be Iberia out of LAX or Qatar out of SEA. I've set up accounts with them and British Airways to transfer Chase points to Avios. I just opened the Chase card, so it's gonna be a bit before I earn my welcome bonus.
My options are:
Earn bonus and buy Qatar/Iberia business round-trip with Avios.
Buy Qatar economy/Iberia premium round-trip with cash at release, earn bonus quickly, then try to upgrade to business with Avios.
Buy cheap Iberia business one-way CAI-LAX with cash, earn bonus quickly, then buy SEA/LAX-CAI business one-way with Avios.
I'd really like to fly business for this, and it'd be more economical to buy a business flight with Avios than to buy a lower fare with cash and upgrade. That being said, I don't know how long business seats will be available, and I don't want to miss this event over cabins.
I opened a Venture X card online a few hours ago - haven't charged it or anything yet. The portal has significantly higher prices for the flight combo I was looking at. Had I known ahead of time, I would've gone for Venture Rewards instead.
Customer Service said that they could close the account with no annual fee but said I'd have to do a separate app if I still wanted Venture Rewards. They couldn't say if I'd still be eligible for the 75k points bonus if I did so.
If I'm still eligible for the Venture Rewards bonus after closing Venture X, I'd close and reapply. If I'm not, the bonus on Venture X would be worth more than the $300 difference in fees. Not to mention avoiding another hard pull.
What should I do?