sumara

Ok. So, I joined Flyer talk just now. I have been reading the forum for quite some time though.

History:
I started on miles and points when I got my Chase Sapphire and the bonus. right when I was about to cancel my Sapphire subscription, the Sapphire reserve came through. And I spent hotel stays and other expenses on it. Fast forward, I have 200,000 UR points in my account now.

I thought the idea was just to use the points in UR portal to book the ticket. However, after reading the forums, I am too confused. There is airline partners, transfer to one airlines and book on another partner airlines, dump prices etc. Too confused.

Help wanted:
I have a planned travel coming up and I would not be renewing my Reserve card. So, I need to use up my points for sure. The planned trip is from Sea to Cok RT (preferably in Emirates) from July to Aug 2017 for 2 adults and 2 kids.

In the above situation, what are my best options. My preference is the least out of pocket expense rather than premium cabins.

Note: I posted in this forum, since I couldn't find anywhere in the forum where similar question was asked. May be because these sort of questions are not expected to be asked. But, since I couldn't find anything which said this is not allowed, I thought why not. Please get me at least some direct pointers which I can look into if you cannot help with the exact question.

Thanks.

Duke787

Welcome to FT!

Unfortunately, Emirates is off the table with the CSR as they aren't a transfer parnter.

However, I did a quick award search on united.com for SEA - COK using random July dates and found that availability on a mix of Air India and Lufthansa for 4 people. It comes out to 340k total RT in economy. That's as low as you are going to get for 4 people transferring points to an airline.

That is also going to be your best deal. The 200k points is worth $3000 if redeemed on the Chase Airline portal (1.5 x 200k) but the lowest ticket I can find is $1.5k so that doesn't work either.

Is there any way your SO can get a CSR and meet the spend to get another 100k? That would put you at ~300k and you'd need to come up with 40k UA to get the rest of the way (perhaps you could pick up the Chase United MPE for 50k at the same time)?

Mwenenzi

sumara Welcome to FT

Depending on you airline experience you have a steep learning curve.
Frequent flyer programs & value from credit card points is not simple.
Awards flights are never guaranteed. The first rule when using miles/avios/points in any program is "book what you can find" i.e. you can't expect there to be availability on every flight. If you need to get from A to B on a certain time, using points is not always a viable option.

- What research have you done yourself on airline ffp's that could get the trip you want?
- What ffp's are you a member of now? How many ff miles/points?
- What airlines are transfer partners of your credit card? (It does vary by the country of credit card issue)
- You seem to be a frequent spender and not a frequent flyer
- FF miles are not equal to earn or burn. They are not 1 to 1.
- Many(most?) ffp's now do not allow stopovers on awards. So you will/may need 2 or more awards.
- Some ffp's allow one way awards. So you could uses 2 or more ffp's
- Awards for 4 people on the same flight is hard (tending to very hard --> impossible).
- Does passport/visa effect choice?

Some links
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chase...mes-rules.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html

sumara

Thank you for the response, Duke 787. Yes, the major issue is that CSR isn't a transfer partner to Emirates. The issue is with Lufthansa and Air India is that emirates gets me there in 20 hours as opposed to 37 to 40 hrs in the other airlines. It is especially tough with little kids on long layovers (5 hrs to 10 hrs).

This also involves domestic travel in India which has restrictions on the luggage size even if you are an international traveler. So it makes it more tough.

Also, my SO does not have any credit history as of yet. So, applying for CSR will not work here either.

In any case, it does give me some option to consider if I have to look into it. The price is definitely pretty low. Thanks again.

Thanks for the response Mwenenzi. Based on your response, I feel like I should not be considering flying using miles for any of my family trips of 4. I did not know that. That is a bummer though. So, the best option probably is to book through UR portal for the best option I can get.

1. I am currently not a member of any FFPs as of yet. As I mentioned, I am just starting into the miles thing. That said, my points would mostly come from credit card sign up bonuses rather than from booking flights, I think.

2. The research I have done so far seems to indicate that Alaska airlines miles is a good way to book tickets on emirates due to low surcharge. However, Chase does not have Alaska as a transfer partner.
The chase travel partners are:

• British Airways
• Korean Air
• Singapore Airlines
• Southwest Airlines
• United
• Virgin Atlantic

3. I am on greencard. So, I do not foresee any issues due to visa issues.

4. Do you mean that connection stopovers requires you to book another ticket since stopovers are not allowed on the same award?

5. "FF miles are not equal to earn or burn. They are not 1 to 1." Sorry, I did not quite get that. Can you please elaborate?

sumara

Anybody has any further ideas or pointers?

artemis

Korean Air is a partner of Emirates, so you could transfer your Chase points to Korean Air to book frequent flyer tickets with Emirates. But there's a catch; there's no guarantee you'll find 4 Economy class tickets on the days you actually want to fly. Frequent flyer ticket availability is always hit-or-miss, and the more tickets you're trying to book, the lower your chances of success.

What I would do is sign up for the Korean Air frequent flyer program, then see if there's any frequent flyer ticket availability on Emirates for your next trip. If there are, compare the total points you'd need to book those tickets to the points you'd need to buy the flights through the Chase Ultimate Rewards travel portal, and see what works out to be the cheapest.

Connections (as long as they follow the airline's routing rules for their frequent flyer program) don't require a second ticket. But in most frequent flyer programs, actual stopovers (where you stay at a city for 24 hours or longer) do require a second ticket. Most frequent flyer programs have eliminated or sharply curtailed stopovers.

Suppose a frequent flyer program charges 25,000 miles for a round-trip economy class ticket, but 50,000 miles for a round trip first class ticket. If the first class ticket costs 3x what the economy class ticket costs, because you're spending only twice the miles for a ticket that costs 3 times more, the price-per-mile is LESS for the first class ticket (even though you're spending more miles overall).

Most people like to think in terns of cents-per-mile when evaluating redemptions; since you can get 2 cents per dollar spent using a simple cash-back credit card, ideally you want to get at least 2-cents-per-frequent-flyer mile value when you redeem your miles. But if you redeem for last-minute economy tickets, or economy tickets on expensive routes (often to small airports that don't get a lot of traffic), or for international premium cabin tickets, you can often do much, MUCH better than 2-cents-per mile of value. I've gotten as many as 8-cents-per-mile on some of my past redemptions. That's why so many of us strongly prefer frequent flyer miles over cash back.

Mwenenzi

A very good post above

When credit card points are transferred to an airline frequent flyer program (ffp) it is usually 1 credit card point to 1 freq flyer mile/point/avios.
When earning ff miles by flying it is not so simple. For any particular flight you may earn 100% or 50% or even 0% ff miles depending on the fare class and ffp. And then there can be bonus for ff status.
For using (burning) on an award flight ffp’s’ do not charge the same amount of ff miles/points/avios for any particular trip. And some ffp’ may have a cash surcharge in addition the ff miles.
Look here for a simple JFK-LHR trip