My family is going on a cruise out of Miami for Spring Break, and I still need to get our flights. I haven’t purchased them yet because the price in cash and miles is crazy expensive.
Cash prices for non-stop round-trip flights from DFW to Miami for our dates are running almost $700 or more per person. That’s nuts!
Of course, most school districts have the same spring break week, so flights are priced accordingly.
If we’re willing to risk a stopover (which is risky considering we have to board a cruise the next day and don’t have much room for error), we can get connecting flights for around $500 each. That’s still quite high.
Unfortunately, award flights aren’t looking much better. Nonstop flights on AA just one way are 65.5k!
My options are:
- Wait to see if prices go down closer to the date (fingers crossed)
- Drive to Miami (no way!)
- Change our travel dates (we can’t, the cruise dates are locked)
- Fly in or out of alternative cities
Using PointsYeah to Find Creative Alternatives
Over the past few months, I’ve become a fan of using PointsYeah.com to search for award availability. I’m not paying for a premium membership and I’m not affiliated with that site in any way. But I like it because it allows me to search a lot of award routing quickly.
The most obvious alternative to flying into Miami is to fly into Fort Lauderdale. Sure, we’d have to pay for an Uber ride to Miami. But unfortunately, the prices to Fort Lauderdale aren’t much cheaper. But now that the Brightline train connects Miami to Orlando, we can consider flying into Orlando and taking the train. So far, I haven’t found great alternative award pricing to these other Florida cities, but I’ll keep looking.
We also have the option of flying out of other cities in Texas. Look at the bargain I found from Houston to Miami on our date! Just 6000 AA miles one way on the afternoon flight!
We would have to get ourselves to Houston, and that’s a hassle. But, we have many cheap options to get from Dallas to Houston.
The Plan for Now
I’m not ready to fork out $700 X 5 people for flights to Miami. I do believe that prices will go down, at least somewhat. I set price alerts on Kayak.com for cash prices, and I’ll keep watching award prices on PointsYeah.com. For now, I did grab those 6k award seats from Houston to Miami. It’s hard to beat that price, and it’s refundable if we find something better.
Do you have flights booked for spring break yet?
Author: Nancy
Nancy lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband and three kids. Her favorite vacations include the beach, cruising and everything Disney.
Good call looking into Houston. Don’t like driving further than necessary, but there is no way I would pay $700 per person.
@Leana I truly don’t understand why Houston prices (both cash and miles) are so much better. But it is what it is.
Spring break is tough. $700 is pretty high, and yes, there is a chance they could drop. But five months out, that’s would be the exception, not the norm. Especially post-covid. What did pricing (cash and points) look like when the schedule first opened up?
Are there a lot of open seats? That might give some sort of indicator. But even then… I’ve monitored fares over peak travel dates many times, and many times I see a lot of open seats and think “oh, that price has got to drop.” But then it doesn’t, and the plane fills up. And I sit staring at the screen, scratching my head in disbelief.
My gut says you’ll be flying out of Houston, but I hope I’m wrong. Keep us posted!
@projectx Unfortunately, the prices have looked like this since day 1! The AA flights have a ton of vacant seats, so I’m hopeful. Yes, Houston might be the way we go.