This winter was really wearing on me. So my girlfriend and I decided to shake the winter chill and go someplace warm, with a beach, someplace like Cozumel and Cancun! I had extra points on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card that I decided to put to good use. I started looking for flights to Cozumel using the Chase Ultimate rewards portal. Points redeemed here are historically worth 1.25 cents each. The trip was dependent on two things: 1) My girlfriend finding availability at a nice hotel where she could use her IGH member points and 2) Me being able to get us flights there and back. For the hotel we were able to use the IHG points to book three nights at the InterContinental Presidente Resort and Spa Cozumel.
I didn’t have any issues finding flights from our departure city of Hartford, CT. However, I did have limited choices flying back from Cozumel to Hartford. I found that if we wanted shorter flight times and mid-morning departure times we would have to fly back from Cancun. So when I was ready to book our flights, I realized that our flight dates didn’t match with our hotel availability. I waited a couple days to see if any better flights opened up while my girl friend looked for dates on another hotel that coincided with our available travel dates. Needless to say my original flight would have cost me 63k points total but the new flight because things didn’t go our way ended up costing me 63,522 points and $221 total for both our coach tickets. Oh well, we needed to get away fast!
Now you may have noticed, I said I used my points for coach tickets but this article is about First class. Yes, you heard correctly! I had an ace in the hole. My girlfriend has gold status with American Airlines and she put in for the First Class upgrade requests for us for both Charlotte to Cozumel and the Cancun to Philadelphia legs of our trip. No one else at the time of departure had either requested an upgrade, or they had space, so our upgrade request cleared for the flight from Charlotte to Cozumel. We used three 500 mile upgrades each for the flight leg. No coach seats for us today, thank you!
Charlotte to Cozumel: Six AM Flight Departures are Rough!
We were assigned seats 1A and 1B. A bonus from sitting up front in First Class was that we would be the first people off the plane and first in the customs line in Mexico! One negative is that our first class seats didn’t have power or USB outlets which would have been nice. There was plenty of leg room since there was only a partition in front of us that separated the boarding door and our seats. We boarded, stowed our bags in the overhead bins and relaxed in the 20.5 inch width and 39 inch pitch leather seats while boarding finished. Economy seats for this plane are 17.7 inches wide with a 30 inch pitch.
Snacks, Drinks, and Lunch
We had no delays and shortly thereafter we were airborne. I noticed that we weren’t offered a pre-flight drink. I seem to recall that in other First Class flights I’ve always received a pre-flight drink. Could I be wrong? No sooner did we level off, that the flight attendant came by to offer us a hot hand towel to freshen up and an assortment of nuts to munch on. Then we were asked if we would like something to drink. I chose a Chardonnay which was okay. We were brought our drinks and asked what we would like to eat for our meal.
I chose the curry chicken, side salad and dessert. The chicken was super dry and over cooked. I guess I can’t fault anyone because it had to be re-heated and such, but I couldn’t finish it. The salad had a pesto type dressing with oil that I did like.
The desert was a cheesecake with a hard chocolate type mixture on top. Did you notice how I said type? That’s because I don’t really know what it was, perhaps some confection? The rest of the four hour flight was uneventful and I spent my remaining time relaxing and anticipating the warm weather and ocean of Cozumel!
Cancun to Philadelphia: Relaxing in AA First Class
When it came time to fly home, we once again scored First Class upgrades and used 500 mile upgrades for our flight from Cancun to Philadelphia. If you are only gold you might get bumped by a platinum member or there might not be any seats. We were fortunate enough to get bumped up for those two 4 hour flight legs, wooohooo!
If you are resourceful, you might have extra points lying around on one of your cards that you can buy a coach ticket with. Then if have status on an airline you can turn your coach seat into first class seat using upgrade miles too. Or you can try and wait to see what first class seats are left to be filled and the airline may offer to sell them. The cheapest I’ve gotten one for is $50 but that was a long time ago. So keep your eyes and ears open you never know what may open up for you. On a side note, we’ve been passed over for upgrades a number of times so don’t rely on this to get an upgrade. Some info on American Airlines policy for upgrade prioritization. Thanks for reading!
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