For the first post in our ongoing Get There series we’re going to look at how to get to the Andaman Islands, a stunning and little-known archipelago in the Bay of Bengal between Myanmar, India and Sri Lanka, with miles and points!
The quickest way to find out if a destination is easily reached with miles is by checking the route maps for the three major airline alliances, Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam. As mentioned in other posts, United miles can be used on Star Alliance partners, American miles on Oneworld, and Delta miles on SkyTeam.
After a quick search it’s clear that only Star Alliance flies to Port Blair, the capital city of the Andaman Islands, via Air India. This is great as Air India currently flies to four destinations in the US: San Francisco (SFO), New York (JFK), Newark (EWR), and Chicago (ORD).
Next, after doing a quick Google search it appears that the best time to visit the Andaman Islands (for weather and diving) is between November and May as the days are warm, clear, and the water is relatively calm.
Choosing two dates in January (20th and 28th), plenty of Saver economy availability shows up for 42,500 miles each way. San Francisco (SFO) to Delhi (DEL) to Chennai (MAA) to Port Blair (IXZ). It’s certainly not a short itinerary at 32 hours+ but that’s expected when you have three flights and are flying to the other side of the world.
It’s always good to do a quick check to see if you’re getting a good value for your redemption, however as I’ve mentioned before, value is purely subjective. If you’d never make the trip because you couldn’t/wouldn’t pay cash, then the mere ability to use miles will be valuable and welcomed. However if you’re not as cost sensitive and really want to maximize the $/mile or $/point for your itinerary then it’s important to do that analysis.
According to Google Flights, a roundtrip itinerary from SFO to IXZ on Air India (with basically the same routing) on the same dates comes out to $1,174. Surprisingly inexpensive for a ticket to India! Therefore the cost per mile is as follows:
$1,174 = $0.0138/mile
85,000 miles
Whether that’s a good value is up to you. Many bloggers ascribe a value of $0.015 to $0.020/mile to United miles, but again, it’s subjective.
As you can see, miles and points can take you to some pretty far out destinations! Look for my next Get There post in a few days – we’re off to Juba, South Sudan!
