Miami 2021 – Flights

Normally I book the flights first and the hotel second. While I checked flight times and prices before booking the flights, I didn’t actually book the flights until later than usual as there was still some uncertainty in what we would actually do.

Flights to Miami

We found that the flight times into Miami itself didn’t work We had thought about flying Tuesday night after the boys classes finished since they were remote Wednesday->Friday, but there weren’t any good options. We didn’t want to arrive too late at night because they would have school the next morning. In the end, we decided to fly early Wednesday evening since the boys have a shorter day that day. The best option was JetBlue leaving at 5pm arriving at 8:30 into Fort Lauderdale. I ended up booking the flight using points which I had recently earned from my new JetBlue Plus card.

Since we lived in Boston, JetBlue was a major carrier there. My wife already had the JetBlue Plus card, but the sign up bonus was solid and the benefits were good enough to make the card a keeper for both of us.

Flights Back to Boston

Flights were a bit more expensive coming back from both Miami and Fort Lauderdale, but the lowest category Basic Blue rate was significantly cheaper. Normally I avoid these types of basic economy rates because of the restrictions. You can’t make changes, no free seat assignments, and board last among other restrictions that vary between airlines, but due to COVID allowances we could still cancel them for a travel credit if we needed to. That made the restrictions a lot more palatable.

I booked an early afternoon flight with travel credit left over in my wife’s account. It was an early afternoon flight that would give us the morning in Miami before we had to pack up and head home and it was surprisingly cheap. This would give us 10 days in Miami.

Oops! Check the Direction

Skipping ahead a little, the day before our flight to Miami (Fort Lauderdale) I was checking in for our first flight when I realized I had two tickets with a destination of Fort Lauderdale. Checking the dates, I realized that the Saturday return flight I had booked was in the wrong direction from Boston to Fort Lauderdale not the opposite! That’s a big oops on my part and explains why the tickets were so much cheaper than I had expected!!

I quickly canceled that flight and went looking for another flight back. While it was still 10 days away, the prices ranged from high to ridiculous. I had really messed up and was going to have to pay a premium to get home. I looked at different airports (Miami, Fort Myers, and Orlando) to see if those were any cheaper, thinking we could rent car and/or stay and extra day if that would help. I even looked at leaving a day early, but none of those were much cheaper and some were a lot more expensive. Other airlines were about the same prices, too. It looked like the only somewhat reasonably prices option was a 6am flight out of Fort Lauderdale. We wouldn’t have any time on our last day to enjoy the hotel but that was really our best option remaining. I ended up paying for the flight using points instead of cash to make it feel less painful, even though it wasn’t a particularly good redemption value. I had the points so I might as well use them.

In the end it wasn’t that much of a crisis but I should pay better attention next time!