MilesBuzz! - Where would you put 120,000 FF miles now?

Through a Marriott Rewards package I can get 120,000 FF miles deposited to the airline FF program of my choice.

With all the insecurities about the future of so many airlines where would you put those miles now...UA? AA? AC? I'm based in Toronto.

By all means, leave them with Marriott until you are ready to pick your destination and airline!

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AA 3MM, AA EXP, MR Gold
From: Austin, TEXAS

The only miles I am not using in the next 6-8 months are my Alaska Airlines miles, I am using up all miles with AA, BA and CO because their value continues to drop and the future of the airlines becomes more bleak every day.

I would keep them with Marriott until you know what you want to do with them.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by pwrshift:
[B]Through a Marriott Rewards package I can get 120,000 FF miles deposited to the airline FF program of my choice.</font>

Hopefully you didn't get all those points with a Marriott Visa ...

Nope...I own Marriott timeshares and can turn them in for 110,000 points a year instead of using them.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by singlemalt:
Hopefully you didn't get all those points with a Marriott Visa ...</font>

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by singlemalt:
Hopefully you didn't get all those points with a Marriott Visa ...</font>

Okay...I'll bite. What's going on with the Marriott Visa? I have that card and earn MR points with it. Is something changing? Is a friendlier bank (perhaps the First National Bank of North Korea) taking it over?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mat935:
By all means, leave them with Marriott until you are ready to pick your destination and airline!
</font>

Definitely agree with this: mainly because the certificate you will get for 7 nights at a hotel expires in 1 year. I recently did this: 250,000 MR points for 120K AA + 1 week at Marriott Kauai. The miles were deposited within a week of making the award request, and the paper cert showed up at my home pretty shortly after that.

I would not be worried about Chapter 11 proceeding affecting the AAdvantage program. But still: lock in your hotel stay first because I think you take a big hit in points if you have to redeposit the cert.

Related question: what would I do with 300K CO miles?

I'm not booking award travel anytime soon, rather saving the miles for int'l upgrades.

But I've switched carriers (now NW) and the CO miles are not as useful with them.

What should I do with them? What CAN I do with them?

How about Lufthansa?

Unless there is some burning reason to convert your Mariott points into FF miles (upcoming point devaluation at Marriott similar to HHonors), I'd keep them at Marriott. Why move them if you don't have to?

Alaska Airlines. They aren't going anywhere anytime soon and those miles will get you a C or F ticket to most of the world with one of the partners.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by notsosmart:
Related question: what would I do with 300K CO miles?

I'm not booking award travel anytime soon, rather saving the miles for int'l upgrades.

But I've switched carriers (now NW) and the CO miles are not as useful with them.

What should I do with them? What CAN I do with them?

</font>


Can't one use CO miles to upgrade NW tickets?

I have, but that was in 1999.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by pwrshift:
With all the insecurities about the future of so many airlines where would you put those miles now...UA? AA? AC? I'm based in Toronto.</font>

You might get a different answer on the Aeroplan forum, but how could Collenette, et al, allow Mapleflot to ever fail? Gotta carry the flag, and I don't think WestJet ever would.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by pinniped:
Okay...I'll bite. What's going on with the Marriott Visa? I have that card and earn MR points with it.</font>

Unless you use it only for Marriott charges and their air partners, IMHO it's just not a good card for converting points into FF miles - for example, 70,000 points (at a buck a point) for 25,000 FF miles on many airlines. It's worse for some of the foreign-based airlines.

Let's say your 250,000 MR points came from everyday CC charges (excluding Marriott and air partners spending). If I put 250K on my Citibank AA MC, I could keep 120K for plane tickets and convert the remainder to 260K HH points. That would give me 6 nights at a top-end Hilton (soon to be 175K) and leave me with 85K HH points - almost half way to another 6 night award. It's even better if you can put it on a Starwood Amex.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by singlemalt:
Unless you use it only for Marriott charges and their air partners, IMHO it's just not a good card for converting points into FF miles - for example, 70,000 points (at a buck a point) for 25,000 FF miles on many airlines. It's worse for some of the foreign-based airlines.

Let's say your 250,000 MR points came from everyday CC charges (excluding Marriott and air partners spending). If I put 250K on my Citibank AA MC, I could keep 120K for plane tickets and convert the remainder to 260K HH points. That would give me 6 nights at a top-end Hilton (soon to be 175K) and leave me with 85K HH points - almost half way to another 6 night award. It's even better if you can put it on a Starwood Amex.</font>

Yeah, the MR card isn't the optimal one to hold if you aren't a Marriott regular. I like it because I actually do run about $10k per year through Marriott, generating 30,000 extra MR points for the $19 annual fee. And...for some reason, I've never been demoted from MR Gold, even though I've never actually qualified for it. (Every year, I get a note from the credit card people along with my renewed Gold card. I tend to do about 20 Marriott nights a year, which would otherwise be run-of-the-mill Silver.)

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by pinniped:
(Every year, I get a note from the credit card people along with my renewed Gold card. I tend to do about 20 Marriott nights a year, which would otherwise be run-of-the-mill Silver.)</font>

Would you please elaborate? Are you saying you negotiate keeping gold status with Visa? I had no idea that this was even possible. And I have had this credit card for about 15 years I think.

Thanks!

pwrshift,

Just remember that you do have an alternative to miles. If you send your miles to AA or CO, you can then covert those miles to 240,000 HHonors points!

If you like this idea, I'd suggest send them to AA as this will count towards earning lifetime status with AA.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by paradocs:
Would you please elaborate? Are you saying you negotiate keeping gold status with Visa? I had no idea that this was even possible. And I have had this credit card for about 15 years I think.

Thanks!

</font>

No...it's not that. I signed up for the MR Visa when they had a promotion that I *think* they offered to their Silvers that didn't already have the card. Basically, take the card, and we bump you up a level to Gold.

I thought it would just be for one year, and then I'd go back to Silver (the standard level for MR Visa holders and my 'real' level with 15-20 nights per year at Marriotts). However, the Gold cards keep coming... Not sure if this is a glitch, if I'm getting it because I'm qualifying for Silver and getting a bump, or if I will continue to get it even if I do zero stays for a year or more. In 2003, I'm moving a ton of stays to Priceline, so I won't requalify for any hotel status legitimately. We'll see if the Gold card shows up again next year...

Thanks for explaining, Pinniped! You had some great luck on this one! I hope it holds out for you.

pwrshift,
AA isn't going anywhere. And in my experience they seem to have more tickets in their FF program. I just converted a 250K cert, converted the miles to 4 1st class upgrades, NYC to Maui, which was like a $12K value.
As for the overall programs, Hilton doesn't have the breadth of hotels nor the quality, IMHO.

Thanks again for the July 4th Williamsburg.

Regards.
Joe