Finalizing Spring Break Flights with Inflexible Travel Dates/Times

The other day, I started dreaming about Spring Break 2026 destinations. But our 2025 spring break is just a few weeks away! My family is going on Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas cruise ship out of Miami.

The problem is that we only have one week off school, and my kids are older so I can’t pull them out of school as much as I used to. My oldest son has a college class the morning before the cruise. So not only are we not flexible with flight dates, we’re not flexible with flight times.

Last fall, I wrote a blog post about how crazy expensive flights were to Miami for our travel dates (see this post). I ended up booking cheap award flights from Houston to Miami for 6000 AA miles each. We’d have to either drive to Houston (5 hours) or buy separate flights to Houston. But, I kept checking to see if we could do better.

Did I find better options over the last few months?

Well, sort of. I kept monitoring award flight prices as well as cash prices. In December, I found a one-way nonstop flight on American Airlines from DFW to Miami for ~$200. I decided that a nonstop flight the night before our cruise was safer than a connecting flight, since we don’t have much wiggle room in our agenda. So, I booked the nonstop flight with cash and canceled our award flights from Houston. Total cost: $1000 for 5 people.

For our return flights, I booked three of us on award flights on American Airlines using 15,000 Alaska Airlines miles per person. The flight has a stopover in New Orleans, which isn’t ideal. However, I’m more comfortable with a connecting flight on the way home. If something goes awry, it’s not like we’d miss the cruise. Worst case, the kids would miss a day of school. And, the layover city is in the south, so there’s not a huge danger of snow disrupting our trip. Total cost: 45,000 miles + $54.30 in taxes for 3 people.

My husband and oldest son are staying in Miami an extra day to watch the Miami Open tennis tournament. Unfortunately, the only affordable award flights leave late at night, with a connection and next day arrival. That won’t work for my son, who needs to fly home in the morning and make the 3-hour drive back to college later that day. So, we had to use cash for their morning flights home. We decided to splurge on the Big Front Seat on Spirit Airlines, since the cost was the same as flying in economy on American Airlines, but the flight departure time was a bit better. Total cost: $600 for two people. Note: We could have saved money if we purchased “regular” Spirit seats, but I didn’t want to hear my husband and son grumble about that. Spirit legroom is very cramped.

Final Thoughts

Flights for our spring break cruise weren’t cheap. In total, we spent $1654.30 in cash plus 45,000 miles to get all 5 of us to Miami and back. If our schedules were even just a little more flexible, we could have saved money. But for a peak travel week, it could be worse.

Next year for spring break. we will have more flexibility for flight days and times within our week. Hopefully, we will be able to use less cash for those flights. Big Takeaway: Miles and points are easier to use when your travel dates and flight times are flexible.