Unlikely Award Space from Raleigh-Durham-RDU on Delta and AA
While flipping through the Delta Sky Magazine, I saw an announcement that Delta was increasing their flights from Raleigh-Durham-RDU with the addition of non-stop routes: Nassau-NAS, Salt Lake City-SLC, Philadelphia-PHL and (increased service to) Los Angeles-LAX. This prompted me to dig into all of the Delta cities that are served from RDU:
The grand total equates to 50+ flights per day and 380+ flights per week.
There’s some pretty good award availability out there, too:
Good non-stop flight options for a weekend ski trip to Salt Lake City
Interested in other carriers/destinations, I found that American Airlines has a non-stop from Raleigh-RDU to London-LHR. Even better, the route is 3,872 miles, which falls under the 40k economy roundtrip category for British Airways Avios redemptions!
Time to find award space:
This flight (which I assume only costs 32k Avios because there are very frequent AMEX –> Avios transfer bonuses worth at least 20%) yields a return of 2+ cents/mile on your British Airways Avios or AMEX points — a pretty good return.
