Miami 2022: Flight Planning

In the previous post I mentioned how I had found the relatively cheap nonstop flights from our local airport to Miami using Google Flights. These flights were on JetBlue and were actually into Fort Lauderdale, but that was not an issue for us.

Booking Outbound Flights

Before we moved, JetBlue was a very convenient carrier for us as they are one of the biggest carriers out of Logan International Airport in Boston. We’re still figuring out the best airline(s) for us since moving to the NYC area, but JetBlue does fly out of our most local airport, Westchester County Airport.

After finding the cheap flights on Google Flights and confirming they really existed on the JetBlue site, I was search for cash fares. I remembered that my wife had some credit in her TravelBank from flights we had booked and canceled during the pandemic. With JetBlue, the credit has an expiration date and cannot be extended. Her credit was scheduled to expire in March of 2022 so we had to use it.

Once we logged into our JetBlue accounts, I found that my wife had only about $30 in credit left. It wouldn’t cover much of the fare, but it would cover all of the taxes and fees if we used points. We had more than enough points in her account for the outgoing flights so we bought them in her account and used the credit for the taxes and fees.

Booking Return Flights

She didn’t have enough points in her account to buy the return tickets. While JetBlue has family points pooling, the way the pooling works is that everyones points are available to a designated person’s account. Everyone can use their own points, but only the designated person has access to their points AND the points of others in the pool. I’m the designated person in our pool.

As a result, I ended up booking the return tickets on points from my account. In the end it doesn’t really matter because both my wife and I have the JetBlue Plus card which gives each person in our party a free checked bag.

The return flight cost slightly more points, though the cash price was the same, so we got slightly lower value for the points. In the end it was nice not having to pay cash and the value was still well above the cost of the points.

It was a relatively cheap 8 day Saturday->Sunday itinerary. We didn’t even have to get a 6am return flight, though our outbound flight was an evening flight. We wouldn’t get much of the first day in Miami, but it would allow us to attend all the kids activities before we had to leave for the airport.

With flights booked it was time to nail down the hotels we had been eyeing.