Back in June, JetBlue announced one of the most amazing promotions ever – if you had points in your Virgin America account, they’d match the points (plus more) as long as you completed a roundtrip flight on JetBlue. With this offer, I was able to register every person in my family and we were all eligible to earn 75,000 JetBlue points. While my husband was able to take advantage of this offer during a business trip, I decided to take the rest of the deals family on a mileage run. This included my daughter who is 3, my son who is 2 months, my mom, and my dad. You can read more about this promotion here.
Since I just had a baby at the beginning of summer, I wasn’t really looking to take a vacation anywhere to complete a roundtrip flight. Instead, I found the cheapest same day roundtrip flight possible that would work with our schedule. This included a flight departing Boston at 11:25am, arriving in Newark for a 38 minute layover, and then getting back on the plane to return back to Boston around 2:30pm. This flight cost $90 per person roundtrip. While some other flights were slightly cheaper, I wasn’t willing to do an early morning flight, a late night return, or a long layover.
So What Did This Mileage Run Get Us?
With this promotion, we each earned 75,000 JetBlue points. Since JetBlue has a semi-fixed redemption, this is worth approximately $1,100-$1,200 on future JetBlue points. For a $90 flight, this is a great return! Not only did I earn the 75,000 points for this flight, so did my two kids. I actually paid for my 2 month old to have his own flight on this ridiculously short flight! Ultimately, this earned us 225,000 JetBlue points. And my parents earned another 150,000 points!
The Best Activity for a 3 Year Old
Friends thought I was absolutely nuts to fly to Newark, NJ for 38 minutes and then simply turn around. But I have to say, my daughter had an awesome day. I mean, what is better then flying on a a real airplane (instead of the plastic ones at the playground), getting to watch as much TV as you want, and to be given cookies. It was one of her favorite activities of the summer! And the best part about it was that I got to watch whatever I wanted on my own TV.
The JetBlue terminal in Boston also has an awesome kids playground. Not only did we go there while we were waiting for our flight to board, we also went there after we returned from Newark!
Overall, our first family mileage run was a huge success! I absolutely wouldn’t hesitate to do it again!
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Glad your flight went off without any problems. Last night hubby and I did the BOS-JFK run. First flight got delayed so we had to move our return to the last flight of the night which was delayed waiting for a pilot to arrive. It made for a long night, but looking forward to putting those points to use 🙂
How long did it take for the jetblue points match to post in your account after the actual flight ?
@Bhanik – approx 4 days.
FYI -My points from flight on August 29th posted today 🙂
How could you manage to accomplish such a short layover at Newark?
@Fran – It was only 38 minutes from when the plane arrived until the next plane took off. They will allow that short of a layover. I searched for the shortest layover possible.