How we flew round trip to Alaska.....for almost nothing.

At the beginning of 2014 we began our hunt for flights to Vancouver where our journey would begin.
Thanks to my friend over at Miles for Family (Link on the side) we were able to take advantage of a great deal.
The AAdvantage card (Then called the US airways card I believe. They were merging at the time,which is an awful time to try to book mileage flights.) at the time was offering 50,000 miles as a sign on bonus with no minimum spending amount. The one drawback was the $89 annual fee....which in the end practically paid for itself. My husband and I each applied and got cards,meaning we now had 100,000 miles to use. Seems easy enough right? Lets fast forward to March when our miles finally posted.  The chances of getting super saver seats to use our miles on to fly to Vancouver and back from Alaska on the exact days we needed was not an easy task. It took us many hours online and on the phone until we finally got our tickets in April. A mere month and a half before our trip. Originally we booked tickets using 37,500 each and come home a day later..... but we had to make some adjustments (The time between layovers on the way back wasn't enough for Alaska Airlines policy....5 minutes short of their 60 minute requirement...very strange....good thing I checked our booking status everyday) and it ended up working out in our favor. The new reservations only used 25,000 miles each and leaving at 11pm the day we planned on originally leaving and even ending up on the same first flight as my parents and two friends...what are the odds? 

Thanks to the card we also got free checked bags on the flight out. Sadly the affiliate airlines don't honor the promotion so flying back on Alaska Airlines we had to pay. That being said, I would still fly Alaska Airline again. I now see why they're rated so high in the airline industry. 
If this has sparked your curiosity, they're running a great special!

All sounds peachy right? Lets not forget that in order to use our miles and get from Alaska to Florida it took 4 flights. Fairbanks,Seattle,Chicago,Miami,and then FINALLY we arrived in Orlando.

We said goodbye to Alaska Wednesday night and hello to our house early Friday morning.

So whats the price breakdown?

$89 Annual fee per card. Granted,we only used miles from one card for this trip.

$60 in "over the phone" booking fees. I would have booked online but because of our timing,we just couldn't get the seats ourselves...let alone seats together.

$22.40 in taxes.

$50 unexpected fee for checked bags on our way home.

GRAND TOTAL 

$221.40

Not to shabby for first time millage users huh?

If we had more time to buy tickets we could have knocked $60 off that.

The best part?? We still have over 25,000 waiting to be used!