5 min read4 hours ago

June 18, 2024

What’s the cheapest airline in the U.S.?

🙌 Your favorite travel newsletter (ahem, us) will be taking off tomorrow, June 19th, in lieu of Juneteenth. We’ll be back in your inboxes bright and early on Thursday, June 20th!

Good morning, and welcome to Daily Drop, the Jack-in-the-box of newsletters. We pop up with surprising travel tricks in just 5 minutes — you never know what’s coming next!

Speaking of what’s coming next…

🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday
🏨 Earn 5,000 points for signing up for this hotel program
🏝️ The winner of our Costa Rica giveaway

🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

Can you guess the cheapest airline in the United States?

Only Email Recipients can participate in polls.

The correct answer is… Frontier Airlines!

Despite its reputation for upselling people on things like bags and seat selection, Frontier Airlines is the most affordable carrier in the U.S., according to a study by AirAdvisor.

This ranking is based on total passenger revenue per seat mile for the top 10 airlines in the U.S. Frontier Airlines was more than $0.01 per mile cheaper than the next cheapest airline, Spirit Airlines.

The ranking comes as both Frontier and Spirit have recently eliminated most change and cancellation fees (yay!), and Spirit has made it easier to use travel vouchers for longer periods (yay, again!).

Here are some other top contenders:

Spirit Airlines
Hawaiian Airlines
Allegiant Air
JetBlue

On the other end of the spectrum, Delta was the most expensive airline per mile (but is also one of the most reliable).

Southwest Airlines followed and landed the second most expensive spot due to its optional upgraded fare categories with perks like seat selection.

Read more about America’s cheapest (and priciest) airlines this year at this link.

🏨 Earn 5,000 points for signing up for this hotel program

Listen up, because I’m about to give you an easy way to rack up some hotel points to put toward your next trip.

Right now, IHG is offering 5,000 points to new members who sign up for the program and complete a pretty simple requirement.

This is a great deal. Unlike the other big-boy programs like Marriott and Hilton, offering points to new members is rare for IHG.

Here is how it works:

Sign up for IHG One Rewards using this link
Complete a stay within 21 days of signing up to receive 5,000 bonus points
It must be a cash stay costing at least $30/night before taxes

Of course, 5,000 points may not feel like a lot… because it’s not… but there are plenty of hotels around the world where 5,000 points and get you pretty far.

In fact, I’m writing this right now from a Holiday Inn Express that only costs 3,750 points per night.

Meeting the requirements to earn the bonus points is also easy since it only requires a single stay, even if that stay is just one night.

You’ll also earn more points from that stay, especially if you have this co-branded credit card.

For example…

Let’s say you book a one-night stay at this hotel in Nuremberg, Germany, for $78 for a one-night stay.

Here is how many points you’d earn if you create a new account with this promo and then get this card (which you should):

780 points for being an IHG member
780 points for spending on the card
468 points for being a Platinum member (a perk of the card)
5,000 bonus points from the promo

You’d earn a total of 7,028 points from that one-night stay, which is a great return.

But here are a couple of important things to keep in mind:

Don’t go out of your way to do this… it only makes sense if you already need a hotel somewhere, and IHG is a good option.
Make sure you don’t register until within 21 days of when you’re planning your stay.

Otherwise, thousands of bonus points for little to no effort is always a good thing. 🤗

🏝️ The winner of our Costa Rica giveaway

Did you forget we were giving away a trip to the oh-so-lush Costa Rica??

Well, let’s get right to the point. The winner is…

……drum roll……

Destiny A.!!! CONGRATS!!! 🎉

If you’re the winning Destiny A., you should have already received an email from us with further deets 🙂

I’m super jelly, but I hope you enjoy your trip!

Want to help Daily Drop take over the world? Share our newsletter with your friends/family/pets/colleagues/enemies and win some rewards in the process!

…or you can just buy these prizes from our website if you want to keep us all to yourself. 😉