Bookcase14

Hi All,
I'm obviously new to this board but I've been weeding through the message boards all day in awe of people's experience and knowledge.
I will start off by saying I am completely new to frequent flyer miles/award tickets, and I've been trying to research all of my questions before I decided to post, but to be honest I am completely lost so I figured I'd ask. On to the scenario I have questions on...feel free to explain as if I'm 5:

My Future wife and I are currently planning our dream trip to Tokyo roughly a year in advance of when we intend to go (we plan on heading there late Sept, early Oct of 2017). We really would like to travel via Business class, at the minimum, and potentially a non-stop or 1 stop max. We would be flying out of JFK and into NRT.

I am not a member of any Frequent Flyer program, but my generous father has mentioned offering his 170K points on his AA account. I also received an offer for an Amex Platinum card offering 100K sign up bonus. I am in the process of looking for another CC anyway, and figured I'd use this opportunity to maximize points.

So my questions are:
-Would my dad be able to give me his AA points?
-Is the Amex card offer worth it and could I use the points in conjunction with the AA. Or, is there a better card to apply to in order to maximize
-Would the 170k pay for both round-trip tickets in business class? Or would it be beneficial to get the extra 100K?
-What airline would you recommend for the trip? I hear ANA or JAL has the best experience in business/first class, and that JAL can use AA points.

Thanks for any help!

Mwenenzi

Bookcase14 Welcome to FT

Premium cabin long haul award flights are hard to get. Getting 2 awards on the same flights is 3 times as hard.
Awards are/can be available from 355/330 days out. Awards can be (or will not be) released from the 355/300 days out to nil days out. But the chances of getting awards close to the date of the flight are not good. Awards flights are never guaranteed. You take what you can.

This is why people starting to collect ff miles by credit card spend/cc sign up 12 months before the intended flight are starting a year too late. Frequent flyer miles are a long game.

Your father can book award flight for you & future wife. When you get some AA ff miles you can book an award flight for for him. Transferring ff miles is not worth the cost (look at the Aadvantage web site). FF miles may not be sold or bartered. But families do make gifts to each other.

Look here http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html

From AwardAce JFK-NRT return business class with AA miles is 120,000 AA ff miles per person

Awards assistance tools (use at your own risk. May not be up to date. These are not recommendations)
- AwardAce: Compare Award Redemptions Across Airlines In Seconds -->http://www.awardace.com/
- Economical Excursionist's Tools to compare Frequent Flyer Mile Redemptions --> http://www.flyermiler.com/
- http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...ast-miles.html --> http://www.awardhacker.com/

You may be able to transfer Amex points to a freq flyer program. Look on the Amex web site. 100,000 points is good start, but be careful about what this does to your credit rating. FT has a forum for credit cards.

Yoshi212

Remember that NYC has two airports offering direct service to Tokyo with at least business class (thought I'd want the NH/JAL service myself) and that Tokyo had NRT and HND airports. HND being significantly closer to Tokyo proper.

NH (All Nappon Airlines) has a sweet spot in their award program for 85-95k per person business class round trip to Japan/S. Korean and China with low taxes & fees. You can transfer Amex MR points to NH's program 1:1 so if both of you got the 100k offer or one the 100k Platinum offer and the other the 65k current Amex Gold Premier Rewards promotions you'd be sitting pretty fine. Those AA points the family is offering can be good for positioning flights (if NYC has poor availability you may fly out of BOS, IAD, ORD, SFO, IAH, DEN, LAX or for travel from Japan to maybe Shanghai, Hong Kong or maybe even Bangkok/phuket.

If I were doing such a trip I'd do JFK-HKG/PVG/ICN/NRt-BKK/HKT (Phuket) for a few days of leisure, then fly to either Hong Kong or Tokyo for the more active part of your trip then return HND/NRT-JFK.

guv1976

There's also a 100,000 bonus-point offer on the new Chase Sapphire Reserve card. Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred to United and a handful of foreign-carrier FFPs.

There is no reason for anyone to transfer AA miles to the OP. Transferring is an expensive process, and completely unnecessary in this case: the person holding the miles can use them to book award flights for anyone.

Also, several FFPs (including AA and UA) offer one-way awards for half the cost of a roundtrip. So, for example, AA miles might be used to fly to TYO, and UA, NH, or some other program's miles might be used to fly back to NYC.

Bookcase14

Thank you all for chiming in to give me some much needed insight and advice on my travel plans. I have a few more questions if possible:

1.)If I sign up for a CC with AA points, is it still expensive to transfer/gift points within the same program, or is it just easier for me to book one leg of the flight and my family member book the other?

2.)Are the frequent flier point charts accurate for award tickets? It seems too good to be true that a business class round trip to Tokyo would be 85k points per person, when the flight alone booked without points would be $5,000-6,000 per person.

3.) JAL or All Nippon? And, if I have the points, should I spring for first class or is international business pretty much the same value-wise (food, beverage, etc.)?

Thanks,

varaujo2000

Just going to give my two cents. My wife and I took our honeymoon last spring and I started the planning process around March of 2014. We also have a trip to Japan coming up in less than 3 weeks in First and Biz. In my experience, booking for two people leaves you with two options.

Option 1: You both pursue the same CC's and points to expedite the process and book your own tickets when you see availability for 2 seats. JAL and ANA are the way to go. You can both get the AA executive card and Starwood card and with transfer bonuses and min spending, you will be at 100k miles. Then you will have to figure a way to make up the difference to get you each to 120.

Option 2: You each pursue different avenues to get you enough miles for 2 one-ways. You can go the Amex route and start with 100k points there and then one of the Sapphire cards and transfer those to Singapore and get you 2 one-ways. She can do the same or go another way to get one of the other partners. There is a lot of wiggle room here you just have to pick a strategy and go with it.

Option 3: Use 120k of your father's miles to book 2 one-ways on JAL and then you handle the return and splurge on first class to come home.

When scouting JAL tickets to Tokyo it was pretty darn consistent that as soon as the schedule became available, ORD had 2 first class and several business available, JFK had 1 sometimes 2 first class available with several biz, and SFO had 2 first class with several business (though the schedule on that flight sucks)

jbeckett

AA charges 1.25 cents per point to transfer a point. Considering that AA is currently charging less than 2 cents to buy a point, the transfer is not a good deal.

Yes, the charts are accurate. The issue is availability. You can buy the ticket for $5000 any time you want. You can buy the ticket for 85K points only when the airline chooses to offer the flight for points, and the airline may choose to only offer one seat per flight even when it does make seats available. Someone else can grab the award seat before you too.

I personally would go for first class for the experience, if you have the points. Up to you.

Bookcase14

Hi Guys (and gals?)

I have an update on my situation and need some further guidance:

Turns out my dad is willing to use his (currently) 186k points to book however many award tickets he can for my future wife and me, next year.

In order to begin to make up the difference I have the following options for a new card that I'm going to sign up for this week.

-I can get the Amex Platinum 100k bonus offer (targeted).
-I can also get a Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite 60K sign up (also targeted)
-Citi Prestige Public offer.
-I should add Chase Sapphire Reserve as an option, even though I already have a Chase card (not sure if UR is good for this specific trip)

1.)I know this isn't the specific CC forum...but any advice on which one to choose given my scenario? I heard Prestige is not what it once was (lost perks), but the AAdvantage seems somewhat worthless unless you strictly fly AA and care about Admirals Club. Would Prestige (TYP) be just as valuable, or do they work differently from AAdvantage points?

2.) I currently have 32k UR points, but I know those are worthless for AA. Should I use them to book a certain leg?

3.) How often are you able to get 2 award tickets on the same flight? I am not separating flights/classes with the wife. Is it best to call up AA and have them check availability (without a fee since I would be booking JAL?).

4.) I'm potentially looking at now doing First class from ORD (we'll take a cheap flight to ORD potentially and go from there). If I do not have enough points to pay for the whole round trip, is it a good idea to purchase additional miles for the flights?

5.) Finally...This trip is tentatively planned for next October. Flight reservations obviously aren't that far out yet. What date should I be carefully looking at so I don't miss seats?

Thanks for any answers you can give, guys. I think these are the last of the questions I'd need answered to go ahead and book the trip of a lifetime.

roberto99

I love the Amex Plat 100K bonus. After the min spend, you get >104K MR points. This is more than enough for a RT in Business on ANA (one of my favs).

IMPORTANT NOTES: ANA ONLY issues RT awards, not one ways. Also, ANA awards must be for existing family members only.

If you get Chase UR points, these transfer to UA and UA will issue ANA awards as one ways. BUT, UA charges roughly double the miles!

If I were you, I'd be looking for JL awards in Business class with AA miles. You may need to buy a few AA miles. They go on sale about 8 times per year.


NH and JL are both great carriers and both have great Business class products. First is even better but not a necessity.

I use ba.com to search for award inventory on JL and CX and then have AA ticket it.

evor1

can ana do stopover in japan on award tickets?

varaujo2000

I feel like I answered a lot of those questions for you man.

Simplest answer, you get the AA executive card for 60k and you and your fiancee BOTH get the starwood Amex. With the 5k transfer bonus you will have 30k each to transfer to AA. You can transfer points from one starwood account to another if they have the same address on file.. Then you will have 120k to book one round trip business on JAL. Then use 120 from your dad to book the other