Yes, you read it right. I got rewarded for using Spirit Airlines. The same airline that offers a cheap travel experience for cheap fares.
Spirit Airlines
Spirit Airlines, is beloved by some – like me, and hated by others. For someone who travels as frequently as I do, Spirit Airlines will actually help you save a LOT of money, provided you’re ready for some compromises. For those who have never flown with Spirit, these compromises include uncomfortable seats, no free carry-on, you’ve to pay for a cup of water, bad customer services, and lots more. But again, if you want to save about $200 per trip and don’t mind making these compromises, then Spirit is the way to go!
Cheap Fares Everytime
In the past year and a half alone, I’ve flown 8 times with Spirit. These trips have ranged from a 2-hour flight to a 4-hour flight each way, and trust me, I’ve NEVER paid more than $200-$250 on a round-trip even though I was flying on the weekends. The cheapest ticket I scored was $24 one-way ticket to Las Vegas from Houston. Plus, I enrolled into the $9 Fare Club membership which helped me save even more on the fares on select flights, and discounted baggage fees.
The Main Reward
In the beginning of 2020, I was looking to purchase a magazine subscription of Travel+Leisure which costs $12/Yr. and includes 12 issues i.e. 1/month. I almost went ahead with the subscription, but then I backed out at the last minute. Thinking that I would purchase it at a later time.
Yesterday, out of blue, I received a notification from Spirit in my mail which said I had accrued over 5,000 miles which are going to expire at the end of March. Usually I don’t care about notices like these because Spirit Airlines provides one of the worst mileage redemption program – you can only redeem miles on air tickets. Well, that’s what I thought. Apparently, there’s another option that you can choose.
This other option is to redeem my miles for more than one magazines of my choice until the amount of miles that I had allowed me to. The mail notification provided a list of magazine names that I could choose from and the corresponding amount of miles that it would cost me. As I skimmed through the list, I found the magazine that I had wanted for a long time. Yes, it was Travel+Leisure.
The mileage redemption program offered the Travel+Leisure magazine subscription for just 700 miles, for 24 issues. Without thinking twice, I immediately selected the magazine that I had ALWAYS wanted to purchase. At that very moment, I felt thankful that I didn’t go through with the purchase of the same magazine early in the year AND I was also thankful that I didn’t throw away the mail without reading(which I always do).
As for the remaining amount of miles, ~ 4,300, I decided to go with 228 issues of The Wall Street Journal for 4,100 miles, and 6 issues of Midwest Living for 200 miles.
Once I was done selecting the magazines, I received a confirmation email within minutes. Now, I just have to wait for about 3-4 weeks until I get an issue of any of the magazines I chose.
Conclusion
So, other than getting getting rewarded by getting guaranteed cheap fares every single time, I also got to make use of the mileage program in the most desired way possible.
The Introverted Traveler 