Fly to Europe for 88 miles (not a typo)

Good morning from Guilin, China! I know it’s been a stressful weekend for many of you with airport congestion, delays, and cancellations in the U.S.

But fear not – we’re going to help you out with that today. Oh, and we’ll also tell you how to get to Europe for 88 miles. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Let’s go:

• 🤯 Fly to Europe for 88 miles (not a typo)

• ✈️ What to do if your flight gets delayed or canceled

• ⚡️ Feel electric with electrolytes

• 🎥 New Daily Drop Pro features

🤯 Fly to Europe for 88 miles (not a typo)

I won’t beat around the bush. As you see from the headline, you can book flights to Europe for 88 miles + tax. And it’s actually pretty easy to do.

Pay attention: I’m about to show you how ANY single one of you can book these flights, and it’ll only take you about five minutes to do – even if you don’t have any miles yet — and no credit card required.

1. The deal

Every once in a while, Lufthansa offers these deals to fly from select U.S. cities to Europe for under 100 miles.

This is not a fluke or a mistake fare – the only reason we’ve never talked about it is because there hasn’t been a good way to earn Lufthansa miles… until last week. 😏

2. Getting Lufthansa miles (without a credit card)

As I told you last week, Lufthansa Miles & More is now a transfer partner of Rove Miles, allowing you to transfer at a 1:1 ratio.

Even if you don’t have Rove miles, I’ve got good news:

When you use this link to sign up, you’ll get 1,000 Rove miles INSTANTLY. No catch.

Before you get too excited, please know that you need to transfer a minimum of 2,000 miles to any transfer partner – so you’ll need to get 1,000 more miles before you can transfer to Lufthansa and book this 88-mile deal.

Thankfully, there’s a quick and simple way to do that, since Rove awards miles instantly for nonrefundable hotel bookings.

And since they offer up to 65x miles at certain hotels, you’ll be shocked by how simple it is to get those extra 1k miles.

For example, this hostel in Bangkok costs $51 total, including taxes. Since it earns 54x Rove miles for the nonrefundable rate, you’ll instantly get 2,700 miles deposited to your Rove account. 👇

After the 1,000 miles you get for signing up, you’ll have 3,700 Rove miles. Simply transfer 2,000 to Lufthansa and book your flight.

For those of you who already signed up for Rove last week, one booking like this alone is still enough to hop on this deal, no signup bonus required.

Even if you don’t need to stay at the hostel, think of this as effectively buying a really cheap flight to Europe.

3. Finding award space

You can’t search for award flights on Lufthansa’s website unless you already have 1,500 miles in your account.

Thankfully, you can use seats.aero to search availability up to 2 months in advance for free.

And while this sale has been around for days, I just re-ran a search less than one hour before this newsletter is being sent, and there is still a ton of space for 88 miles + taxes from Charlotte, Dallas, and Tampa to Germany and Switzerland.

And this is just showing deals for the next couple of weeks, so I’m guessing the same is true for the coming months. 👇

If you want to search more than two months out, transferring 2,000 miles to Lufthansa and searching manually is a pretty low opportunity cost, considering how easily you’re earning these miles.

4. This is a good idea – even speculatively

Like I said, this is something Lufthansa does semi-regularly.

So even if you don’t see a flight that works for you this time (or availability is gone quickly), it still might be worth getting those 2,000 miles into your Rove account now.

Then, next time Lufthansa has a similar sale, you’ll be ready to transfer points right away.

5. Other good deals

As you saw in the screenshot earlier, premium economy on these same flights costs 12,000 Lufthansa miles.

So even if the economy flights don’t work, premium economy for 12k is actually insane (but beware the higher taxes and fees in premium seats).

Or, if you like flying United, you could take those Rove miles you earned earlier, transfer them to Air India (another cool Rove transfer partner), and book domestic United flights in the U.S. for 3,500 Air India points each:

The bottom line:

This is obviously a ridiculously cool way to book a flight to Europe for under 100 miles.

But even if you can’t snag this deal, there are lots of other reasons to rack up Rove miles.

I am staying at a hotel I booked through Rove literally right now, and it will continue to be my go-to first stop for booking hotels for exactly this reason.

✈️ What to do if your flight gets delayed or canceled

Between short-staffed airports, grounded aircraft, and a government shutdown that’s basically turned air travel into a real-life version of The Hunger Games, delays and cancellations are everywhere right now.

So here are some tips to keep you sane and help navigate this chaos:

1. Know your rights

If your flight is canceled (or even “significantly delayed”), you’re entitled to a full cash refund — not a voucher, not miles, not a mysterious “credit” that vanishes in 12 months. Cold, hard cash.

Airlines will definitely try to offer you a voucher first, but the DOT is clear: if you choose not to take the rebooked flight, you can request a full refund to your original form of payment.

2. Use a card with travel protections when you book

When the travel gods decide to smite your itinerary, this is where cards with solid travel coverage shine.

For example, I recently got $1,300 reimbursed for a canceled flight thanks to the protections on Chase Sapphire Reserve®.

If you’re using a card with delay, trip interruption, or baggage coverage, you might get reimbursed for hotels, meals, and transportation costs when your flight gets delayed or canceled (but always read your cardholder agreement for specific coverage details).

3. Use tools that actually keep you ahead of the chaos

Apps like Flighty use AI to predict when a delay’s brewing.

You can see incoming aircraft, gate changes, and more in real time, which means you’ll have a jump on rebooking or getting in the customer service line before everyone else in the gate area starts panic-tweeting.

4. Don’t sleep on hotel leniency

If these flight disruptions affect a hotel stay, you might have options.

Hilton is already waiving fees for people who can’t make it to their stays because of flight disruptions, and other programs might quietly do the same.

Even if there’s no formal policy, it never hurts to explain your situation — especially if you booked directly through the hotel or have elite status with them.

5. Get to the airport early — like, really early

TSA wait times in some major cities are already clocking in at 2-3 hours, and that’s before holiday travel fully kicks in.

Staffing shortages mean even TSA PreCheck lines are slower than usual, so plan for extra time.

The bottom line

Air travel in the U.S. is stressful right now… but if you arm yourself with these tools, hopefully things will go a little more smoothly for you. 🫶

🎥 New Daily Drop Pro features

In case you don’t know, we have a premium award search tool called Daily Drop Pro. It’s actually awesome, whether you want to find the best award deals, get some cheap cash flights, or even leverage your hotel points.

And over the last year, we’ve added a TON of new, highly requested features.

In this week’s Daily Drop YouTube video, we’ll walk you through the latest developments:

Well, that’s gonna do it for today, my friends.

If you’re traveling this week, make sure to thank your TSA staff at the airport – they’re working without pay right now to keep our skies and airports safe. ❤️

Cheers,

25.2736° N, 110.2900° E

With contributions from McKay Moffitt