Garuda Award Sale
Garuda Indonesia is offering a simply amazing deal. At first it seemed to good to be true, however the airline has confirmed that they are offering 90% off award tickets. Let’s take a look.
The Offer
- Book awards between 12/22 – 12/31/16 for travel between February 1 and May 31, 2017 and receive 90% off.
Need to Know
Update: According to Point me to the Plane you may need to actually go to one of their offices to get the award fully ticketed.
- Several people have confirmed this offer with the airline.
- You can view the offer online, however you may need to translate it.
- Awards must be booked by calling the airline’s Indonesia Call Center at +62 21 2351 9999.
- The phone will disconnect if you are on hold for two minutes or more. As you might expect their call center is busy.
- The airline does not allow award holds.
The Points Guy has more info on calling and booking this offer.
Sample Fares
- London to Jakarta – 9K each way in business or 19K in first class.
- Tokyo to Jakarta – 6,300 each way in business or 9K in first class.
- Amsterdam to Abu Dhabi – 6,300 each way in business or 9K in first class.
ThankYou Points
Citi ThankYou is a transfer partner of Garuda Indonesia. (You need a ThankYou Premier or Prestige card to unlock transfers.) According to reports transfers take 2 or more days, so you are going to have to have some faith that award space will still be there when those miles hit your account.
Conclusion
I am really torn about whether or not to transfer points to Garuda for this promotion, because I feel there is a good chance they could revoke the promo or shut down award space. With that said, 9-19K one-way first class redemptions are a carrot I am having a hard time resisting. Are you going to transfer points? What are your thoughts?
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[…] a company release a promotion that was just too good and then back off of it. Yesterday I covered Garuda Indonesia’s 90% off award sale. As of the time of my post the airline had confirmed the deal was indeed real, so many people […]
How is Abu Dhabi Ams a route? Isn’t that just an Etihad code share?
I’d do it if I was in a city with a ticketing office (there are only four in the US). Absent that this is too much work especially given the timing around the holiday season because it appears you need to go to the ticketing office once (possibly twice) in order to get the ticket cut.
What about fuel surcharge?
I think there’s a strong argument for buying miles here rather than transferring. It’s $30/1000 so $270 or $570 for one way first class international still seems like a pretty great deal and you don’t have the wait.