Miles for Adventures

Introduction - Jetblue 25 for 25

Posts from this Trip Report:

In high school, I took a personality test that's meant to pair you with your ideal career. The top result for me was Air Traffic Controller, which seemed rather random at the time - why on earth would I want to stand in a tower all day and have such a high stress job?! But I slowly realized one of my greatest interests is figuring out complex puzzles, taking disparate pieces of data and fitting it into a way that works best. ATC is like one massive puzzle, challenging the user to untangle a bunch of planes both in the air and on the ground.

So when an airline launches a logistical challenge, you know I love to focus countless hours into research and figuring out a way to untangle everything!

The age of airline challenges

In recent years, we've seen some very interesting airline challenges around the world.

SAS launched a EuroBonus challenge to celebrate joining the OneWorld Alliance. This was challenging, as it required flying 17 out of 19 airlines in the OneWorld alliance. A few Youtubers and bloggers embarked on this journey and a shocking number of people actually completed the challenge.

Then, Turkish launched a challenge for flying specific destinations. This was a little less enticing, as it required flying to specific destinations (involving tons of backtracking to Istanbul). It didn't even guarantee a prize, as it only awarded points to the people who were among the first to finish.

But JetBlue's challenge is a lot more interesting. First off, it's based in the US, which is a lot easier for us Americans to complete. It's also quite affordable, as JetBlue is typically considered a low-cost carrier with low fares.

The challenge

JetBlue's challenge involves celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the airline. Any user who flies to a certain number of JetBlue destinations by the end of the year gets prizes in return. The prize structure is as follows:

More details can be found in this press release.

Importantly, note that "destinations" is defined specifically as unique airports. So JFK, LGA, EWR, ISP, HPN are all considered unique destinations, even though they all serve the tri-state area.

But...why?

To most, this challenge seems out of the equation. Why would it ever make sense to spend a ton of money just to spend time on an airplane? And yes, for those not based in the Northeast, it didn't really make much sense. But to be fair, a lot of us in the miles hobby love finding games like these. All I know is, I had an absolute blast using crazy Excel sheets figuring out my plan of attack.

So, after hours and hours of planning and getting the SUB for the Jetblue Plus card, it was all coming together! I got pretty lucky and was able to book the majority of my flights when Jetblue had their annual big sale. Flights were going for 25-35% off!

The plan

Most participants kept things pretty simple - do as many flights as possible in as little time as possible. Take 4 flights a day, make multiple roundtrips and backtrack wherever necessary. This method was efficient, but there's one major flaw. If a flight gets delayed or cancelled, the domino effect starts breaking apart the entire plan.

I took a very different approach - pad my schedule, minimize duplication, use points wherever possible, and minimize disruptions to my work hours. So I strung together itineraries that left in the evening hours and allowed me to stay multiple days in between destinations to truly make a vacation out of it all.

My overall plan was divided into 4 distinct segments. And I'll be writing posts for each segment:

  1. Aug 23 - Sep 6 (7 destinations)
  2. Sep 21 - Oct 11 (8 destinations)
  3. Oct 19 - Nov 18 (10 destinations)

Final costs

After everything, I spent $3216.12 and 193,605 points to complete the challenge. This includes things like hotels, car rentals, public transit, and repositioning flights. Below is a breakdown:

So did I make a profit? No. And that's the biggest reason why I didn't want to complete the challenge "just to do it". I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to visit places I wouldn't have this year. I wanted to take this time to be away from the craziness of life and truly relax a little. I wanted a story to tell that was more than "I did it in 10 days".

#tripreport