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What airline do you prefer?
After doing a little travel hacking and traveling a few times you will develop a preferred airline for your flight tickets. Most of this is depending on where you live. Each of the major airlines have local hubs and most people prefer having those nonstop flights. A couple things to remember in the Ultimate Rewards “points game” is the small local airports will cost a lot more in points to pay for those small jumps to the bigger cities.
My wife, daughter and I live in the center of Wisconsin. This does put a lot of those small airports as an option, but it is an expensive option. The ongoing joke among friends is “When I fly to Vegas I prefer to gamble there and not on my connecting flight arriving on time.” With this location we have a few different airports with major airline hubs within a couple hours of each other.
Our Airline Options for flight tickets
We do have Chicago with Midway and O’Hare but that is a four hour drive and we will only travel there for specific options. We currently use Midway for our nonstop Cancun flights mostly for the redemption options through Southwest. We then use Chicago O’Hare for flight tickets on United flights such as the one going to Hawaii in August if the Volcanoes calm down.
My preferred option though is Milwaukee. The parking is cheaper so it will not cost you an arm and a leg like at O’Hare. Airtran used to have large regional hubs in Milwaukee, Baltimore and Atlanta. When they were purchased by Southwest, they kept a large amount of these non-stop flights available. Milwaukee is great for flights on Southwest to Orlando and Las Vegas.
My secondary option is Minneapolis. Minneapolis is a large Delta hub. They have many other carriers such as Southwest, Sun Country and others that offer direct flights. Because of all these options they like to be competitive with each other and can get some lower redemption costs. I use Delta for nonstop to Las Vegas. Joni is using this for her trip also nonstop for Phoenix, but keep in mind that parking is more expensive out of Minneapolis.
There are deals out there, sometimes you have to drive to the deals. But when the redemption costs are three times less than your small regional airport. The extra drive is worth it if you want to be able to travel more frequently for less.
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