thehaviet

Hi everyone,

First, just like to say 'Hi' as I am new to this forum. Hope you go easy on this newbie

Next, is my question. I am trying to find an airline program to sign up so that I can start earning points to help with flight costs to Hawaii for our family.

So, what's the best frequent flyer or airline program to join?

I am hoping to find something along these lines:

- Excellent bonus points for signing up (credit card, promotions, etc)
- Allows us to quickly earn points (online shopping, etc)
- Allows us to earn lots of points (we have a family so we'll probably need lots of points to redeem for flights)
- Doesn't have a lot of restrictions or black out dates when trying to redeem for flights

Thanks very much for any suggestions or recommendations you can offer.

JDiver

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

A good place to start, perhaps, is the "sticky" thread toward the top of this forum and linked to here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html

It would also be helpful to us to know where you're based, or which airports you expect to fly out of, as well as destinations, patterns (international, domestic, one time or frequent), etc.

One other thing: these programs do get changed occasionally. What it is now could be different a few years down the line.

That being said, I've harvested about 6 million miles on AA alone, and perhaps 5 million Hilton HHonors points over the years; they've been put to excellent use, IMO.

thehaviet

Thanks for the reply.

I am in the Northeast and would be flying out of Hartford, CT.

I do understand that programs changes over time, and there's nothing we can do about that or there's no way to anticipate such changes.

Also, if there's any HOT promotions going on right now from the airlines, I would love to take advantage of that.

What's the best ways to earn miles with AA and HH in your experiences?

Was it easy to redeem for flights with AA?

guv1976

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Go to aa.com, delta.com, and united.com now to get an idea of how much it is likely to cost you to get multiple award seats on the same flights to Hawaii. Getting several low-tier award seats to Hawaii might prove quite challenging. How many are in your party? Must you all travel together, or can you split up? Will you only be traveling during school vacations (when every other family with kids will be competing for award seats)?

Note that AA, DL, and UA all offer one-way awards, so you might end up using, say, UA miles for the outbound, and AA miles for the return.

Check the FT credit card forums for information about current sign-up bonuses.

thehaviet

thanks guv1976,

looking at delta.com, i would need about 250k points for roundtrip tickets to hawaii. we'll probably be traveling during school vacation (summer).

and you're right, it will probably be difficult to get all 5 seats with all points. but if we can get 2-3 seats with points, and pay for the other seats with $. that would still be a big help. or pay for all 5 seats with a combinations of points and $.

do you think 200k- to 250k points can be obtained in 1 - 1.5 year with delta? what the best ways to accumulate points quickly with delta?

thanks

guv1976

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Did you search for five award seats at delta.com, or just for one? Did you check AA and UA also?

If you can find lowest-tier award seats on DL (not sure if 50K roundtrip to Hawaii is DL's lowest tier or not), you should be able to get those same seats for just 25K Korean miles roundtrip. Chase Ultimate Rewards points can transfer to Korean, so look at the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, as well as some of Chase's business cards, if you or your spouse own your own business. And, of course, both you and your spouse can each sign up for a particular credit card, and each can earn the bonus (assuming that both of you are credit-worthy).

One of the unusual aspects of the frequent-flyer game is that the very same award seats on the very same flights can cost vastly different amounts of miles, depending upon which FFP's miles one is using.

You asked about Hilton HHonors points. Both Amex and Citi offer HHonors cards. I believe that the Citi cards may be churnable. Check the Citi forum for more details.

Which island(s) are you planning to visit? Will you need more than one room to accommodate the five of you?

Mwenenzi

Freq flyer miles are not equal. Just as currencies are not 1 to 1.
You do not earn at the same rate or burn(use) at the same rate.
If the ffp objectives is awards flight earn to burn is what is important

thehaviet

Thanks.

Did you mean Korean Airlines? They fly to Hawaii from the US?

And we plan to rent a house for our vacation, like we always do with previous vacations.

Not sure which Island we're visiting yet, but just want to start earning points so we can get some free flights when the time comes to plan our vacation.

So, how do you know which FFP gives you the best bang/value for your points?

thehaviet

Yes, I agreed and understand that.

My objective is to earn free award flights. Can you suggest an FFP that best meets this goal?

Thanks

beckoa

Welcome to Flyertalk thehaviet.

As you're looking at using miles to fly to Hawaii, we're relocating your post to the Hawaii [Destination] forum.

~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk

LondonElite

I think you need to be realistic about this. If you don't travel a lot (and it sounds like you're not in the category of people who are on four flights a week) it's going to be difficult for you to accumulate 150,000+ miles by next year. I don't know your credit or financial situation, but that is another way to accumulate miles; there are plenty of credit cards that will throw you 50,000 miles as a sign up bonus, but you need to be in a financial position to do this. And since popular destinations like Hawaii get booked out fairly early, you'll probably want to book your flights 6+ months in advance. In other words, you're looking at a non-guaranteed prospect that is a while out, starting from scratch.

It's one thing to say 'I have tons of miles and want to go to Hawaii anytime in 2016' and another to say 'I have no miles, don't really expect to earn many by flying, but would like to be in Hawaii during school holidays in 2016'.

dukerau

No, Korean doesn't fly US-Hawaii, but Korean miles can be redeemed for flights on Delta if there is low-level availability on Delta (often difficult to find).

FF miles are not flexible. While blackout dates are uncommon nowadays due to their bad PR, capacity controls are the norm and functionally provide the same inflexibility as blackout dates. There's a reason other posters are hesitant to make any recommendations - traveling families during school breaks aren't great candidates for mileage use. Even with your suggestion to use miles to pay for some tickets and buy the rest, consider this not farfetched situation:

United BDL-ORD-HNL round trip $500
United BDL-EWR-LAX-HNL round trip $700, 2 award seats available,
AA BDL-ORD-HNL round trip $450
Delta BDL-ATL-HNL round trip $600

So your options are:
1. Forget miles, pay for 5 seats on AA for $2,250
2. Use miles for 2 seats on United with 2 stops each way, pay for 3 people on the same flights for a total cost of $2,100. Is it worth an extra stop to save $30 per person?
3. Send one parent and one child on the 2 award seats with United, pay for 3 tickets for other parent and 2 children on AA for $1,350. This is the smart financial play, but now you're traveling separately, which you may not want to do.

I'm not saying miles are a waste of effort. Certainly sign up bonuses are close to "free miles," so why not take them and wait until you find a good use for them? But families traveling in economy are almost always better off with cashback cards and choosing whichever flights they want by paying cash.

If you want to pursue miles for Hawaii, I would avoid Delta miles. They're just hard to redeem, and I'd be shocked to see 5 low-level award seats on the same flight available in high season to Hawaii. United and AA have a better chance. Chase UR would be a safe bet. They transfer to Singapore, which you can use to fly on United for 17.5k each way to/from Hawaii (United charges 22.5k for the same). They also transfer to Korean, so if you find the unicorn Delta round trip flights with 5 economy award seats available in high season, you can use 25k per person for round trip to Hawaii, an admittedly incredible deal. Korean makes up for the savings by making you go through an excruciating, archaic booking process. Finally, if American or Alaska have availability to Hawaii, Chase UR transfer to BA. The price isn't as cheap as the others, but it's there if needed.

guv1976

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"My objective is to earn free award flights. Can you suggest an FFP that best meets this goal?"

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. It varies considerably by desired route, class of service, time of year, etc. Different programs have different participating carriers. If award seats are not available on participating carriers for the dates you want to travel, then those miles will be worthless to you. That's why I suggested looking at current award availability for the time of year when you want to travel. If you are hoping to travel in July, 2017, take a look at current award availability for July, 2016. This method won't be completely accurate at predicting 2017 award availability, but it's probably better than nothing.

For Coach travel to Hawaii you and your spouse might consider getting a card that lets you redeem points for cash tickets. Barclays Arrival+ card is one to consider; I think Capital One might also offer something similar.

For accumulating frequent-flyer miles, the sign-up offers described in the FT credit-card forums should be consulted. And Fidelity Investments periodically offers 50,000 miles in your choice of FFPs for moving $100,000 into a Fidelity account.

thehaviet

Thanks, this was really helpful.

I don't travel a lot so I won't be able to accumulate FF points much. And I definitely do not want to break a family into multiple traveling parties that travel separately, especially with small children.

So, to summarize.

1 - Awards flights are limited, and even if available you're competing with other FF members for those seats. And it would be extremely difficult, or impossible to find 4-5 available seats for a traveling family?

2 - Award seats are not guaranteed. So even if you reserved a seat 6 month out, by the time you're ready to travel those seats might not be available?

It seems like a cash back card like Chase Ink would be a much better fit. You earn points, get cash back or transfer those points to most major hotels or airlines if you ever need to use them.

Is there any other cashback cards that I should look into besides the Chase Ink?

guv1976

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"1 - Awards flights are limited, and even if available you're competing with other FF members for those seats. And it would be extremely difficult, or impossible to find 4-5 available seats for a traveling family?"

That's an over-generalization. It depends on when and where you want to go. I have friends who, for two years in a row, have been able to secure four award seats from JFK to Antigua on AA's nonstop for 20,000 Avios per person, roundtrip, during March-April school breaks. Finding four award seats to Hawaii in the Summer is likely to be more difficult.

"2 - Award seats are not guaranteed. So even if you reserved a seat 6 month out, by the time you're ready to travel those seats might not be available?"

No, that's not correct. You cannot "reserve" available award seats without ticketing them promptly. Many FFPs require immediate ticketing; AA allows a free, five-day hold before the award reservation must be ticketed. Once your award is ticketed, you have protection against being involuntarily denied boarding. (If you were asking whether you can reserve award seats and then wait several months before you have to redeem your miles and actually have tickets issued, the answer to that question is, "No.")

A straight cash-back card will not do you much good unless you charge an awful lot, because most of those cards do not offer big sign-up bonuses. But some cards, like Amex PRG and Chase Sapphire Preferred, let you use "points" to purchase -- or defray the cost of -- cash airline tickets. And the previously-mentioned Barclays Arrival+ lets you redeem your accrued points for roughly a 2% credit on travel purchases (airline tickets, hotel stays, rental cars) costing $100 or more. These cards all offer decent sign-up bonuses, but the card has to be open in order to use the points, so unless you are willing to pay a card's annual fee after the first year, make sure that you can redeem or transfer the associated points within one year of opening the card.