ratatouille

You can transfer the points yourself from AMEX membership rewards. First link your Delta Skymiles account in AMEX MR. Once it shows that it is linked, then you do the transfer which should nearly instantaneous. Amex is running a 50% & 30% Bonus on transfer to Delta right now, so make sure you register for it on Delta before you do the transfer.

ratatouille

How to Find Award seats to Australia on V Australia using Delta Skymiles

A family member booked a similar award flying in Mar from YVR-LAX-SYD and returning BNE-SYD-LAX-YVR on V Australia/Alaska Air for 150k skymiles + ~$250 taxes/fees

mia

True, but the difficult part is locating and holding the award seats. Don't transfer on speculation. Verify award availability before transferring.

fac51

Hello,

I am mentally fatigued trying to figure our the best/most economical use of the 180k Amex Gold points to fly (non-stop preferably) from LAX to Sydney in Oct/Nov for my wife’s 40th bday. It appears some airlines charge different fees for fuel surcharge, etc. In addition, we each have about 30k in United points.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

The first step is to find out which carriers actually have award seats available when you want to travel, and how many miles they want for those seats. Check award-seat availability on some different carriers' sites, and then get back to us.

If you redeem BA miles for travel on QF, expect to pay a small fortune in fuel surcharges.

fac51

Thanks, however I was hoping someone with knowledge of the various programs could offer some suggestions to streamline the process.

mia

There are only four airlines which operate this route: DL, QF, UA, VA. You can transfer Membership Rewards directly to DL and UA (until 9.30.2011). Check to see if either of these carriers has award availability. If they do not have availability for their own members it is improbable there would be availability for partner awards.

To redeem for travel on QF or VA you would need to find partner availability, but again it wouldn't hurt to start by seeing if they availability for their own program.

fac51

Thanks for your response Mia.

Here are my results so far:

UA seems to be my only viable option, but no non-stops available at this time. Will keep plugging away at their website.

These are out:
Delta requires 165k per ticket for each award seat.
QF requires 95k per ticket + 600 taxes, etc.
VA requires routing via London

Am I missing anything?

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

You're missing a few things:

1. Virgin Atlantic routes via London; Virgin Australia flies nonstop. I'm not sure which, if any, MR partners permits redemptions on Virgin Australia;

2. There is currently a 50% transfer bonus from Amex to DL, so 165,000 DL miles can be had for 110,000 MR points. I'm not saying that even this bonus makes DL the best option for you, but a DL redemption is not as a costly as it might seem at first blush;

3. The mileage and fees that QF requires for an award redemption are only relevant if you will be redeeming QF miles for the seats. If you will be redeeming a partner carrier's miles for the QF award seats, you will pay what the partner carrier requires for the redemption, which may be more, less, or the same as what QF requires.

Although your MR points cannot be converted to AA AAdvantage miles, if you could acquire AA miles through other sources -- say, credit-card sign-up bonuses -- you could get a Coach roundtrip from LAX to Australia on QF for only 75,000 miles (subject to award-seat availability, of course), with no expensive fuel surcharge. And AA would let you "stop over" at LAX on the return, and then continue on to someplace like NYC -- weeks or months later -- for no additional mileage.

If you're interested in pursuing the AA credit-card bonuses, check out the thread in the FT MilesBuzz! forum.

mia

Correct VA = Virgin Australia. Virgin Atlantic's code is VS.

fac51

I think I figured out the best bang for my Amex points is to transfer the amount needed to Mileage Plus via Continental OnePass acct. I need to keep checking UA for non-stops (at least for return) because they only available flight require stopover in SF.

Do you think there is a better way? Also, is there any rhyme or reason how/when economy award seats are released by UA?

Thanks for your collective input.

belfordrocks

Transfer to Delta (67% bonus) and fly VA business class for 90,000MR points. Availability is very decent- better than UA. See my blog post for more details.

fac51

This would be ideal, but I just tried this out on two Delta agents and they couldn't find anything about 67% bonus MR transfer. There is a 40% back on 50k points from Amex but it takes 8 weeks to receive credit. Can you provide more details, please?

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

If you only need 180,000 DL miles, I would not bother with this particular promotion. You would only get back 60,000 miles (3 x 20,000), for a net cost of 120,000 MR points. Effectively, you would be getting a 50% bonus on 120,000 MR points. But there is currently a different promotion that gives you an immediate 50% bonus on MR transfers to DL, and earns you elite status, as well. That's the one I would utilize if you decide to redeem DL miles for VA flights.

The 50% bonus offer requires pre-registration at Delta's website before transferring the MR points. Details can be found by doing a Google search for "50% Medallion Amex". (I'm sure that there's an FT thread on the promotion, but I could not readily find it with my BlackBerry.)

mia

40% back is another way of saying 67% bonus. The arithmetic is explained in the first few posts of this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...dl-1-67-a.html