[Edited: 12/8/11 at 6:00pm PST: This fare is no longer available]
Ready to start mileage running in 2012? There appears to be a bit of a Columbus fare war out there tonight originating in Los Angeles (sorry San Francisco and Seattle, no love for you here).
Alaska, American, Continental, Delta and United have the same base fare of $184 round-trip, but United has incredibly generous routing rules. It’s not great, but it’s under 4cpm. The other carriers require more direct routings.
Routing: Los Angeles to San Francisco to Washington-Dulles to Columbus roundtrip
Travel period: Now through end-of-schedule
Dates I found available: 1/9, 1/17, 1/23, 1/24; 2/6, 2/13, 2/27
Number of nights stay: 0
Day of week restrictions: None
Fare basis: GA14MN, 14-day advance purchase
Fare: $256.20 all-in
Elite Qualifying Miles earned: 6,838 (assumes 500-mile minimums)
Cost-per-mile (CPM): 3.75
Example itinerary: Click for full view
Visit my Mileage Running 101 Part 1 and Part 2 posts to get step-by-step instructions on how I found this fare and created the routing.
Just heading out for my third, and final, run of the year: SEA-IAD-MCO-IAD-SEA @ 3.93 cpm (102,444 EQM for 2011). The easiest to find out of SEA seem to be FLL, MCO, and TPA – they have restrictive routing rules, but you can usually find a G fare out there…
I love those Dulles connections to Florida!
Yeah…but you have to fly to Columbus. That’s like a $200 penalty itself.
Ha! To the pure mileage runner, the destination is irrelevant. 😉