Play along to earn bonus miles

Welcome back — all 1.5 MILLION of you — to your weekend dose of Daily Drop.

We celebrated that super fun (and big) milestone earlier this week, but we also covered some other great travel stuff. Let’s check it out 👇

✅ Frontier’s Earth Week sale is still going on through April 22.

✅ Here’s why you should always bid on business class.

✅ Check out this week’s YouTube video about ANA’s famous “Round the World” ticket — but hurry — this option ends in June!

✅ We’ve officially relaunched our beginner’s video course, Miles and Points 101!

🏆 Favorite pick: Check for your personal United MilePlay offer

Every so often, United plays a little travel game called United MilePlay. These fun offers typically involve completing various travel requirements to unlock bonus United miles.

But beware — even though the majority of people I talk to receive an offer, these are technically targeted.

They also vary by person, so you never know what you’re going to get.

I personally received this offer to complete two trips by June 18 (and spend at least $225 on each trip) to earn 11,000 bonus miles… Not bad 😏

Each “trip” can be either a round-trip or a one-way flight, so let’s look at some examples of how I could make this work for my upcoming travels.

I could book the standard economy option on a flight from Vancouver (YVR) to Newark (EWR) that I’ve been eyeing 👀

I would almost perfectly hit the minimum $225 spend with that one. Or maybe I’ll head down to Miami (MIA) for a Lady Gaga concert I’ve also been eyeing…

There are endless ways to take advantage of this offer and earn some bonus miles in the process, depending on what unique MilePlay offer you personally got.

Oh, and if I wanted to earn even more points, I’d put those purchases on this card to earn 5x MR points per dollar… That’s an extra 2,265 MR points on top of the 11,000 bonus United miles. 💪

So if you haven’t already, go check your United account!

🏃🏻‍♀️ Runner-Ups

🥇You can now fly nonstop between Nashville (BNA) and Dublin (DUB)

Dublin is one of my favorite cities! It’s the place where you’ll not only be dublin’ (doubling… I’m so sorry 🫠) your luck, but also the amount of beer you’ll drink…

The fact that residents of Tennessee and other nearby areas, such as Kentucky or Mississippi, now have direct access to a major European city is exciting.

Because let’s be honest — routes to Europe from that part of the country have been pretty scarce.

And what’s even more exciting is that our very own Mike got to jump aboard the inaugural flight from Dublin to Nashville!

He documented the entire experience, which covers:

• How to book this route for nearly free (consider using points from a card like this)

• What the in-flight experience is like for both economy and business class (lucky duck 🦆)

• What fun things you can do if you have 36 hours in Ireland

For all the deets on Aer Lingus and this new route, check out his newsletter review. Or if you’d like a little travel inspo, check out his article on how to spend three days in Ireland.

🥈 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic

Let’s make this short and sweet — there’s currently a 30% transfer bonus from ThankYou points to Virgin Atlantic until May 17, 2025.

Okay, honestly… ThankYou points aren’t the sexiest points out there, which is why this transfer bonus is great! 😛

There aren’t a ton of exciting ways to use these points, so if you can get a nice little boost to fly on one of the world’s best airlines, I’d go for it.

For example, Virgin now offers various flights from the U.S. to London (LHR) for as few as 6,000 miles and just $75 in taxes and fees. 

That’s only 4,600 ThankYou points needed to fly across a freaking ocean.

There are a few other sweet spots that you could book on Virgin by transferring some ThankYou points over, so if you’d like more examples, check out this full-length newsletter.

📣 Quick Callouts

• 🤓 Travel trivia: Which airport just won “World’s Best Airport” for the 13th time?

• 🏃‍♂️ Mike on the move: See what he’s up to as he makes his way to Libya

And there you have it — the juiciest travel highlights from this week. Have a lovely rest of your weekend, and I’ll see you next time 🙋🏻‍♀️

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