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How a delayed flight ended up getting me 3x EQM
I recently was booked on a flight to London from Los Angeles on BA in Club World. The day of my flight I received a text message saying that my flight had been delayed until the next day! WHAT?! I was on the 9:35pm flight on the A380 and they delayed me until 6pm the following day! HOLY FLARPING SCHNIKES! That’s almost 24 hours! We here at MonkeyMiles are optimists and WE BELIEVE that sometimes the most beautiful beginnings happen from the most painful endings. This…is how a delayed flight ended up getting me 3x EQM.
My original flight:
I had booked a roundtrip flight from DUB – LAX- DUB back in June for the weekend wedding trip to London and this was the return leg. I was looking forward to this because it put me in BA Club World on the A380. I’d never flown BA Club World nor had I flown on an A380 and was stoked to experience and review both products.
I was using the return leg to get to London for the Colts game so I was going to transit through London to Dublin and then turn around a few hours later and fly right back down to London using 4000 Avios + $15 ( this needed to be canceled 24 hours in advance). It was going to work out perfectly and I had a couple quick things to do in Dublin while I laid over, but this delay wrecked those plans, and NOW I just needed to get to London.
Here was my original trip back to Dublin:
This was all booked in discount business ( I, D) and would earn 2x EQM:
And I would have earned 11,912 EQM
HOWEVER…A DELAY CAN NET BIG BENEFITS TO THOSE DELAYED
I got on expertflyer and AA to see what flight alternatives were out there before calling into AA to see what could be done. I was on the very last direct flight of the day and therefore would have to leave the next day. I saw that AA wasn’t selling seats on the 3:30 flight, but there was space available when looking at the seat map on expertflyer. Thisssssssss had some great potential. I called into AA.
I explained what had happened. I also explained to them that because of the delay I no longer needed to go to Dublin and needed to end up in London. I asked for them to move me to the 3:30 pm flight – after switching me back and forth between AA and BA a couple times I finally got an agent that could get it done. After a 5 minutes hold he told me that they could secure me a seat on the 3:30pm flight and I’d arrive in London around 10am on October 1st.
This really worked out pretty well. I wouldn’t have gotten into London until midnight anyways and this was going to save me my Avios flight from Dublin and a night in a hotel ( which I hadn’t yet booked – that was lucky), not to mention all the travel back and forth.
Then I got this! My new fare bucket was J…that earns 3x EQM
I thought this could be the case when AA wouldn’t sell a flight, but I saw open seats – at the time I thought, “maybe these were full fare seats that BA was holding back for some reason?” I’ve never had it happened to me before, but I’d heard where Airlines will rebook delayed passngers into Full Fare from Discount…and it just happened.
I was also able to get on the phone and resolve the rebooking quick enough to cancel my DUB-LHR Avios flight prior to the 24 hour cancellation window. DOUBLE BONUS!
I thought it was too good to be true actually
I’m looking at the the rest of my year and I was going to be about 3-5k EQM short of Executive Platinum. If this just happened, I wouldn’t have to mileage run. BYAHHHHHH!
I was also thinking that maybe it wasn’t going to give me 3x EQM and was only saying “J” because it had been rebooked – maybe there was some sort of generic business booking code for rebooked flights that just said “J” to signify business, but in fact, would still be credited based on my original fare bucket.
IT CREDITED AS J! 16,328 EQM
Getting on the phone as quickly as possible, armed with information from AA and Expertflyer really aided my quest to get rebooked. Not only did I earn 3x EQM but I ended up getting to London directly and saved myself the time, energy, points, and money a transit through Dublin would have cost me.
Sometimes a bitter pill can result in a sweet sweet payoff. In this case, a delayed flight ended up getting me 3x EQM.
I’m also filing a claim with flight-delayed.com
Flight-delayed, if you don’t know it, can sometimes net you compensation when your flight is delayed. It costs you nothing, but if you win your case, the site will take a 25% cut of any compensation you receive. Doesn’t hurt to try!
Because of this very fortuitous rebooking…I ended up netting almost 28k EQM on this one ticket!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
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