How I Scored Two Free International Flights continued...

In my last blog, you learned three simple steps to scoring free international flights.  

In part 2 here, I will provide you an example with what I did as a step-by-step process for booking my free flights, as well as specific tips and tricks.

When I landed an internship in Asia for summer 2017, I knew that flight costs would make up most of my travel expenses. Given this, I hoped to find a way to travel to Asia and back for free. I was able to book FREE flights from San Francisco to Hong Kong, and from Tokyo to Toronto, with 75,000 Aeroplan miles. After countless hours of research, I am sharing how I did it so that you can do it too.

How did I get 75,000 Aeroplan miles? The way to hack it is through the welcome bonuses of credit cards. My two credit cards of choice:

• TD® Aeroplan®Visa* Business Card (May 2016 Welcome bonus: 35,000 Aeroplan miles)

• TD® Aeroplan®Visa Infinite* Credit Card (April 2017 Welcome bonus: 25,000 Aeroplan miles)

Related: Earn Your Way to Free International Flights in 3 Easy Steps

Getting my first free flight:

I got my first Aeroplan card in May 2016 because I started a small business at the time and I needed a business card to separate my business expenses for accounting purposes. The main reasons I chose the TD® Aeroplan®Visa* Business Card was because they offered double the Aeroplan miles at the time and a free new 40-inch TV. I figured I could sell the TV to cover the cost of the anual credit card fee. I met the eligibility criteria because I had my incorporation documents for my business (which only costed $60) even though I had no revenue at the time. I got the first 25,000 miles upon my first purchase, and I got the other 10,000 miles after I met the criteria of spending $1,000 in the first 90 days of using the card. This spending amount was very feasible to achieve as a start-up trying to establish itself. By August 2016, I had 35,000 miles in my account, plus any additional miles I earned from spending.

In early 2017, I got accepted into the Cansbridge Fellowship, where I would spend one week in San Francisco in May 2017 and then intern at a Malaysian tech start-up on a scholarship immediately afterwards.

From the Aeroplan rewards chart mentioned in the previous blog, I discovered that I only needed 45,000 Aeroplan miles to fly from San Francisco to Malaysia. It was April 2017 and I had around 40,000 Aeroplan miles at the time, so I decided to get another credit card welcome bonus to obtain the remaining miles.

I chose the TD® Aeroplan®Visa Infinite* Credit Card. At the time, they had a special offer where they gave 15,000 miles upon first purchase, an additional 5,000 miles for spending $1,000 in the first 90 days, and an additional 5,000 miles for adding a second card holder.

As a student, there was no way I could meet the $60,000 annual personal income requirement. Therefore, I chose to meet the alternative eligibility requirement of annual household income by combining the income from my two parents. After researching different options for redeeming the flights points, I learned that I could optimize my routes to redeem two free flights with my cards.

Getting my second free flight:

To fly from San Francisco to Hong Kong, I only needed 37,500 Aeroplan miles, which I had at the time. It was pretty cheap to fly the rest of the way from Hong Kong to Malaysia, so I booked my first free flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong for May 2017.

With planned spending, there was a way to win another free flight from Asia back home to Toronto. I wanted to travel for 2 weeks after my internship, so I assumed that I would finish up in Tokyo before flying back to Toronto. The miles from Tokyo to Toronto were only 37,500.

I decided to use the TD Aeroplan VISA Infinite card because, with the welcome bonus, I would only need 30,000 more miles to achieve free flight status. I chose to add my dad as the additional card holder and asked him to spend all of the family’s weekly expenses on my card. I also used this card for some spending in Asia.

By July 2017, I managed to reach 37,500 miles and booked my second free flight from Tokyo to Toronto for August 2017. In the end, I got a total of $2000 in flights for almost nothing!

Some additional tips:

• Get these credit cards early. Typically the rewards can take 8 weeks to kick in, so if you have a flight coming up in 5 months, you want to get the credit card and meet the eligibility requirement 2-3 months ahead of time.

• If you are starting a side hustle, it’s worth the effort to spend $60 to incorporate your business so that you can take advantage of the business travel card bonuses. That being said, you don't need a business to get these benefits. There's a ton of welcome benefits with these personal credit cards that you can get on your own. If you do have a business though, it helps that you are eligible for two bonuses from the same bank for both your personal card and your business card.

• Keep in mind that if you already have a personal credit card with a bank provider, it is likely that you would not be eligible for the welcome bonus for a personal travel credit card with the same provider. For example, I had a personal credit card with CIBC, so I could not get the CIBC Welcome Bonus on my travel credit card.

• Take advantage of special offers. From time to time, these credit cards will have special offers like rebates, in-kind prizes, and more! Click here to see what the TD Business Travel VISA card is currently offering where they are offering a welcome bonus of up to 80,000 TD travel points plus 50% rebate on the annual fee, and this offer ends Dec 3rd.

Like what you see? Check out our other blog posts on more travel and exchange hacks. Feel free to share these tips with your friends and help more people to get free flights!

By Newton