Flying for Fitness

SFO-AKL Air New Zealand Business Premier Queenstown Airport workout Milford Sound Review: Westland Recreation Center in Greymouth Abel Tasman National Park Hobbiton Te Puia geothermal geysers AirBNB gym Air New Zealand compensation Like most of the nonstop routes to Oceania, New Zealand is one of the most difficult destinations to find premium award availability for.  Air New Zealand is notoriously protective of its biz award space, dubbed as Business Premier.  When I discovered that a slew of biz awards suddenly opened up in July, I immediately jumped on the opportunity.  Surprisingly, the best mileage redemption option for Air New Zealand biz is Virgin Atlantic, which charges 125k roundtrip compared to United at 180k. Virgin Atlantic is a transfer partner for all 3 of the Big 3 (Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou Points), and both Amex and Citi happened to be running 30% transfer bonuses at the time to Virgin Atlantic....

The 12.5k/25k (12.5k one-way economy and 25k one-way first) saver award level has applied to all continental U.S. saver award flights for the 3 major carriers since nearly their program inceptions.  But there are other ways to redeem on U.S. carriers for domestic flights for a fraction of the cost. An often overlooked mileage program is Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles , which is a Star Alliance member.   Using Turkish Miles & Smiles miles, you can book a domestic Star Alliance award within the US for either 7,500 miles one-way in economy, or 12,500 miles one-way in first class.   But it gets better: Turkish Airlines includes Hawaii and Alaska into that category, which means that a one-way flight between SFO-HNL can be redeemed for 7.5k in economy and 12.5k in first.  United charges 22.5k and 40k for the same flights, respectively. Finding your flights Turkish Miles&Smiles unfortunately does not allow for online bookings for partner award fli...

Allow me begin with a quote from my bodybuilding idol Ronnie Coleman: "Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights." The same is true for flying: everybody wants to travel, but nobody wants to fly in the back of the plane in economy class. So it's agreed then: the only thing harder than flying in an economy class middle seat to Japan for 10 hours is doing heavy-ass squats and deadlifts for 1 hour.  This blog is dedicated to helping you avoid the former, while also "enjoying" the latter.  One of the challenges when traveling abroad is maintaining that fitness and dieting regime that you bet your life on.  Let's face it, half the people in your local gym know how much you can bench and that you skip leg day every other week, and you spend more time in your kitchen and eating than you do with your spouse.  So since you invest half your money in the gym, supplements, and food, how in the world are you going to avoid s...