by While booking your flights before the holiday rush is always best, you can still book a last-minute trip to Hawaii for miles. Delta Air Lines and United Airlines are both offering deals right now for last minute travel.
With these offers, you can spend up to 32,800 miles, or $397, on round-trip flights to Hawaii; this is a steal as flights to Hawaii can cost thousands of dollars during the holiday season.
Remember that to access the best mileage offers with United, you need Premier elite status or a co-branded credit card. Delta does not require status to access its mileage redemption discounts.
Business basics
Airline companies: Delta and United.
Itineraries: Denver, Los Angeles, Newark, San Francisco and other Delta and United hubs have award-discounted routes if you’re a United Premier member or have a United co-branded card. You do not need to have any award status to access the Delta Agreement.
How to book: Directly on Delta.com or United.com websites.
Travel dates: The week of December 26th.
Book by: AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
Examples of flights
To maximize rewards, you will need to play dates and times for United and Delta. We found that the days after Christmas had some of the best deals for miles; Delta has one-way flights starting at 13,000 miles and United has one-way flights starting at 20,400 miles.
One of the flights we found with the lowest mileage was a Delta round-trip from Los Angeles to Kahului, Hawaii. He clocked up 35,000 miles for a trip from December 27th to January 5th. A December 27 flight from Los Angeles to Kahului, Hawaii was 13,000 Delta SkyMiles and a January 5 return flight from Kahului, Hawaii was 22,000 miles.
You can book each flight individually as a one way or round trip as miles add up to 35,000, whether you book it as a round trip or as two one way trips. A flight at 35,000 miles is a relative bargain as cash prices for Delta flights to Kahului, Hawaii start at $654 on the same dates.
The best United mileage offers only apply if you have Premier status or a co-branded credit card. If you’re booking with United, we recommend researching one-way flights to get a better idea of your options.
For travel from San Francisco to Honolulu, United is offering flights starting at 18,500 miles on December 30 and December 31. If you’re looking to spend as few miles as possible, the best date for a return flight to San Francisco would be January 11, when flights are only 14,300 miles.
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This round trip totals 32,800 miles. If you were to book with cash, you’d be spending at least $406 for a round-trip fare.
United also has other one-way options to maximize your miles. For example, you can get one-way flights to Honolulu from Newark and Seattle for as little as 24,200 miles.
Maximize your purchase
Make sure you use cards that earn bonus points on airline ticket purchases like The American Express Platinum Card® (5 points per dollar on airfare booked directly with the airline or through American Express Travel), up to $500,000 on these purchases per calendar year, Citi Prestige® Card (5 points per dollar on airfare), Citi Premier® cardChase Sapphire Reserve (3 points per dollar on airfare), American Express® Gold Card (3 points per dollar on airfare when booked directly with the airline or through Amex Travel) or the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card (2 points per travel dollar). Check out this post for more information on maximizing your airline ticket purchases.
Information for the Citi Prestige Card was independently collected by The Points Guy. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.
Bottom line
If you’re looking to fit in on a last-minute vacation, this deal is for you, especially if you have the United Status or Delta SkyMiles you’ve been hoping to use. If you book your travel with miles, you’ll get a slight discount on your airfare compared to when you book with cash.
Delta offers a much more substantial discount with its miles than United does, but both are still worth booking, especially since flights to Hawaii are expensive this time of year.
