My Husband Paid $7 Bucks & All I Got Was A $46,000 Plane Ride
So what does it feel like to fly First Class on one of the fanciest airlines in the world?
To experience a level of service no US-based airline even offers?
How about I take you along for the ride my husband and I just took?
Yes, that husband. The Mad Scientist Miles Chaser, the one who collects millions of frequent flyer points for our family without flying.
Husband like a little boy so excited to see the Boeing 787 Dreamliner we will fly on. He’d worked on making this trip happen for the last 10 months. He couldn’t take his eyes off the plane.
He tries to wow me once a year with some over-the-top experience.
Let’s just say sitting on our deck in The Maldives over looking the Indian Ocean as I write this, he done pretty darn good.
For him, it truly is not the destination, it’s the journey. He wants to fly on the fanciest plane of the fanciest airline, all while paying pennies.
For this trip he booked us on Etihad Airways 787 Dreamliner. First Class Suites. We flew from Atlanta to Washington, DC’s Dulles Airport where we boarded the fantasy airliner.
The tickets to get here for the two of us would’ve cost $46,000.
That’s just one way!
Mad Scientist Miles Husband paid $7.
Yep.
Seven bucks.
This is what $46,000 plane tickets look like:
Welcome to our private suite for two. Super wide seats with doors on either side that close off to the aisle.
Why yes, Husband would love a cup of piping hot Arabic coffee as we settle into our seats.
Coffee was just the beginning. Anything you can think of that you would want to drink, they have on board. The man pouring the coffee? He’s the personal chef on-call for the 13 1/2 hour flight who will cook up anything the eight passengers in First Class can think of ordering.
Husband went for fresh fish, served up, of course on freshly-pressed linens and fine china.
Kinda makes MSMH crazy, but with this flight taking off at 10 pm est, I was more excited to catch some sleep. I skipped dinner and made use of the lie-flat bed.
So much easier to sleep, when the butler flight attendant makes up your bed and fluffs your pillow!
All tucked in, wearing designer jammies and fuzzy socks provided by the airline. My own flat screen TV to watch movies or live TV. Honeycomb doors slid shut for privacy.
The flight was so awesome that MSMH was bummed when it landed in Abu Dhabi.
“13 1/2 hours is too short to enjoy everything!” he complained.
“Enough, already, Daryn, stop teasing and show us how MSMH pulled this fantasy trip off!”
Here you go:
We use credit cards for everything we spend, making sure to pay off all balances each month and making our money bring in additional value. For this trip, MSMH says he signed up for three credit cards like the AAdvantage Aviator Master Card.
He redeemed 180,000 AAdvantage Miles. Yes, you can use American miles to redeem on other international airlines with better service.
That’s the earn. Anyone who has tried to redeem frequent flyer points lately knows “the burn” is even harder. MSMH figures he spent 12 hours figuring out how to piece together this trip, knowing which airline websites to search for award space and which airline currency to use.
This man is nothing if not determined.
And I do have to say, hanging with this miles-crazed man is not for the faint of heart. Little domestic trips don’t float his boat at all. We stayed overnight in Abu Dhabi, took another 4-hour flight to Male, the capital of the Maldives. 2-hour layover we took a regional jet to an even smaller island, where we boarded a speed boat for a one hour crazy ride across the Indian Ocean to get to the luxury hotel on a small coral reef atoll. We are frankly, a dot in the ocean in the middle of nowhere.
A dot with wifi, thank goodness, so I can share this journey.
The luxury hotel? Paid for with points, as well. I’ll share pics from here and how MSMH pulled this one off, as well, in a later post.
For now, I hear the coral reef right off this deck and rainbow fishes calling my name.
Blue ocean waters here truly clearer than any swimming pool I’ve ever seen.
So many folks asking for Mad Scientist Miles Husband’s tips. You’ll find more miles content at DarynKagan.com
1:53 pm
Must have loved the days spent in Maldives, it was a informative article
1:53 pm
Epic!
3:38 pm
Wow, this has got to be a case of the best deal EVER. Your husband is quite the magician, and even more important, he’s a real keeper. Enjoy your vacation in the lap of luxury. 🙂
3:03 pm
So sad you don’t have a time to enjoy these wonderful places because you need to spend most of the time in flights
3:09 pm
Really good point! We do & have taken trips where we stay longer. Part of the fun of the trip and journey for my husband is actually being on these fancy planes. So, yeah, this was a lot of flying in 12 days! Such is life with a plane geek. Frankly, it felt like enough time in The Maldives. Would’ve definitely like much more time in Australia, which just means Husband will figure out how to gather more points/miles and we’ll go back. I’d love to do much more of Australia and New Zealand, as well.