Rocketman
Jan 25, 02, 7:08 pm
Hi! I'm new to flyer talk, and this is my first post. I've been lurking for about a month.
Has anyone redeemed their Hilton points for the airline ticket rewards? How was your experience doing this? Specifically:
(1) Are these rewards capacity controlled like if I were redeeming airline miles?
(2) Do I get to pick the specific flights and airlines booked, or do I just say, IAD to LAX, and two dates, and get whatever they choose, which may include multiple connections, red eyes, etc.
(3) Do I earn airline miles on the flight? A search of previous posts implied that I would, but I would appreciate confirmation.
(4) Does my status in HHonors affect any of the above answers?
I realize I could get answers to these questions by calling HHonors, but I thought I would ask here because I hope to get "real world" examples.
My thinking in asking these questions is that I am a leisure traveller, so I tend to not get a whole lot of points through actual travel (I use the HHonors Amex, MyPoints, iDine, GoldPoints, etc) to get the majority of my points/miles, and have found FlyerTalk to be very useful in finding new ways to earn these points/miles.
In looking at the Hilton rewards, the 6 nights in Hawaii with airfare for 2 people for 280,000 points award catches my eye. The airfare part is 180,000 points, and to get that as a reward from an airline, I would need 70,000 miles, which would would be rather difficult for me to earn in one account. If I used HHonors to combine my airline accounts (for example if I had 20,000 miles at UA, 25,000 miles at CO, and 30,000 miles at DL) it would transfer to 140,000 Hilton points. Thus it would cost me an extra 40,000 points to use the Hilton award over using airlines miles. But since I live on the East coast, if Hilton award tickets earn miles, I'd get about 10,000 miles and my wife would get about 10,000 which we could then convert back to Hilton points getting 40,000 points, wiping out the deficit.
Any thoughts?
[Editted to change third example airline from US to DL]
[This message has been edited by Rocketman (edited 01-25-2002).]
Has anyone redeemed their Hilton points for the airline ticket rewards? How was your experience doing this? Specifically:
(1) Are these rewards capacity controlled like if I were redeeming airline miles?
(2) Do I get to pick the specific flights and airlines booked, or do I just say, IAD to LAX, and two dates, and get whatever they choose, which may include multiple connections, red eyes, etc.
(3) Do I earn airline miles on the flight? A search of previous posts implied that I would, but I would appreciate confirmation.
(4) Does my status in HHonors affect any of the above answers?
I realize I could get answers to these questions by calling HHonors, but I thought I would ask here because I hope to get "real world" examples.
My thinking in asking these questions is that I am a leisure traveller, so I tend to not get a whole lot of points through actual travel (I use the HHonors Amex, MyPoints, iDine, GoldPoints, etc) to get the majority of my points/miles, and have found FlyerTalk to be very useful in finding new ways to earn these points/miles.
In looking at the Hilton rewards, the 6 nights in Hawaii with airfare for 2 people for 280,000 points award catches my eye. The airfare part is 180,000 points, and to get that as a reward from an airline, I would need 70,000 miles, which would would be rather difficult for me to earn in one account. If I used HHonors to combine my airline accounts (for example if I had 20,000 miles at UA, 25,000 miles at CO, and 30,000 miles at DL) it would transfer to 140,000 Hilton points. Thus it would cost me an extra 40,000 points to use the Hilton award over using airlines miles. But since I live on the East coast, if Hilton award tickets earn miles, I'd get about 10,000 miles and my wife would get about 10,000 which we could then convert back to Hilton points getting 40,000 points, wiping out the deficit.
Any thoughts?
[Editted to change third example airline from US to DL]
[This message has been edited by Rocketman (edited 01-25-2002).]