Leb0wski1

I'll open credit cards (planning a wedding right now so spending is not an issue... unfortunately...), beg, borrow and steal. Any suggestions? travelling September 2015.

robyng

Are you talking about reward travel - or the best routings? Robyn

glennaa11

"Best way" can mean a lot of things. What class of service are you interested in? Do you care about particular connections?

SQ flies via ICN or HKG to SFO. Aircraft appears to be the 777. The good thing is that KrisFlyer is now part of the Chase UR network as well as the Amex MR network. So you can open cards with both programs and transfer points. So it should be relatively easy to get C or F booked directly with SQ's website which also gives a points discount for awards booked directly there.

Leb0wski1

Thanks for the quick responses! Sorry, I should have been more specific...

I'm looking for the best way to get the tickets free through credit card rewards.

I'm planning and paying for a wedding soon, so spending is about to go up, and am looking for a way to get at least one round trip free if at all possible.

We can fly coach no problem.

Connections aren't a huge concern, but I'd like to keep it under 2 or 3 if possible.

Thanks glennaa11. I'll look into Singapore Airlines. Any recommendations on which cards to open at Chase and America? Again, we are planning a wedding so spending limits shouldn't be too difficult

Also, I've been seeing some fairly cheap flights from United ($1100 Round Trip) if anyone knows of any good points tricks with them.

Thanks Again!
Ryan

glennaa11

Of course with the credit card game the most important things are having good credit (so you can get the cards) and paying them off in full each month.

As long as you can do that, I think the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is recommended by a lot of people, including me. Not sure what the best opening bonus is out there these days on it, but I think it's typically in the 50K range.

For Amex, I just got the Amex Everyday Preferred. Only a 15K sign up bonus but you get a 50% bonus in any month that you make 30 or more purchases with it.

There's also the Amex Platinum cards if you can stomach the $450 annual fee. It comes with some perks like a refund of your Global Entry application fee, and $200 towards airline fees each year (with one airline of your choosing). They occasionally offer 100K bonus points which is when I jumped on the card. So it paid for my SQ suites flight back from Singapore last year. The Amex Premiere Rewards Gold card has lot of fans due to its category bonuses and relatively lower annual fee compared to the platinum cards.

Leb0wski1

Thanks.

I've been researching A LOT more and it looks like the best way would be to get the Citi AAdvantage for the 70k bonus sign up and the Ink Plus for the 70k bonus. Each of them requires you spend $5,000 in 3 months, SO if I set it up successively and spend $10k over 6 months which I absolutely will on the wedding -> Then I should be able to get my fiance's and my flight round trip for free on Singapore Airlines.

Then I can use my delta points to transfer from Singapore to Indo using Garuda once I'm there...

That's my plan for now; only problem I see is that Singapore still charges hundreds of dollars in fees when using an award ticket.

robyng

September 2015 is actually pretty close for you to start playing the "miles game". I looked up SFO to SIN on Singapore - and there are 25+ airlines that have 1 stop flights to Singapore - including Turkish Airlines that hubs through Istanbul. Too much for any 1 person - including me - to absorb!

For someone who is kind of new to this - I would suggest sticking with either United Airlines or Delta (both of them have among the cheapest economy fares too best I can tell - also sign up for "fare sale" reminders - especially business class "sales"). Just to make things easy. A RT economy ticket on Delta - which has 3 reward classes - will cost you 100-170k miles (most probable is 125k - the middle reward class). On UA - which has 2 reward classes - it's 80-170k - with I think a decent shot at 80k (Saver Award).

Check both at the Delta and United forums here to check whether my suspicions are correct. Note that both of these deals wouldn't be considered very good ways to redeem miles (about 1 cent a mile give or take). I redeemed 280k miles to get 2 RT first class tickets to Singapore last year on United - tickets with a face value of $13k+.

You can get miles by getting credit cards. In terms of general credit cards - Chase Sapphire (I have one of those) links with United. AMEX (I have one of those too - not the Platinum) links with Delta. My husband has his own separate Chase Sapphire account (probably should get rid of one of those accounts). And we share the AMEX account.

Can't recall about Chase Sapphire - but AMEX has various business cards as well.

Then there are airline specific cards. The Delta AMEX. And the Chase United Airlines. I play with those over the years - getting them (for me and/or my husband) - doing the spend(s) - getting the miles - then canceling the cards after a while - and then getting the same cards down the road (for bonuses).

I have absolutely zero idea what miles bonuses apply to which cards these days. You'll have to check.

Also - you can get miles for doing other things. Like some dealings with brokerage firms - sometimes taking out a mortgage - whatever.

The best place here to explore these questions in general is the MilesBuzz forum. And then - like I said - there are forums for just about every airline and its FF program.

If I were you - I wouldn't kill myself to save the $1k or so on a RT economy ticket. But I might get a single airline credit card (for whichever airline you wind up flying) to save some $$$ on things like baggage charges (which are extremely annoying IMO) and get as many bonus miles as possible.

Also - at least when it comes to United - you get 2 free club access cards on every year with its credit card. A decent perk.

And then - when you get back from your honeymoon - come up with a game plan for future travels. Good luck and much happiness with your marriage (I've been married for almost 43 years ). Robyn

robyng

Don't know about Singapore Airlines - but we paid a total of $165 in fees with our UA tickets (in 2013). Robyn

roastpuff

The fuel surcharge is there on SQ, yes, but it's absolutely worth it - especially if you can redeem for business class/first class. Most airlines will charge some sort of fees - SQ's is nowhere near the top in terms of how expensive they are on award tickets. Aeroplan charges ~$500-600 per one-way on Air Canada, Asiana and Lufthansa, for example. British Airways Avios is even worse!

My other suggestions would be to look at AA and the AAdvantage program, flying Cathay Pacific to Singapore via HK. They only charge 135K RT for FIRST class to Southeast Asia, though they do not allow for a stopover. Economy is 70K RT and Business 110RT. These are at the Saver levels, and are one of the lowest mileage prices available. With your 70K Citi AAdvantage card, you are already halfway there on for 2 Economy tickets. I'd advise getting Business or First class if you can, in order to make the experience feel all that more special.

Since you're in America, you can use the Citi AA cards to your advantage - if your fiancee and you get one each, that either covers the whole trip if doing it in economy, or one way in first class on Cathay Pacific - which is considered one of the world's best airlines. You could then use the Chase cards + Amex MR (Membership Rewards) cards to get enough points to come back using Singapore Airlines in business (or first class!) once you get enough points.

invisible

Forget about UA. First, they devalued MP and 80K RT in Y is long history. Now, they charge even more miles if you are using partner flights.

robyng

80K RT for economy is still there - and doesn't seem to be that hard to get on United Airlines flights (e.g., there's a lot of availability in September). Robyn

robyng

That's the fly in the ointment. I've read other posters here who say that SQ economy really isn't anything special (although I can't speak from personal experience). Robyn

glennaa11

Now I am a little confused. Do you want to go to Singapore or do you want to go to Indonesia? If you are doing both, note that flights from Singapore to Bali (for example) can be cheap. I booked business class on KLM's flight (one way) for US$3xx. Coach is probably like $150.

Getting the AAdvantage card isn't going to get you on SQ. But AA does have 1 way awards, so you could use those points to book CX F from SFO to SIN via HKG. The nice thing about AA is that they don't charge a lot of taxes or fees.

While UA did devalue their chart, it looks like it's not terrible when I just did a quick search of their awards (40K one way in Y, 80K one way in F).

Keep in mind that using 1 way awards can be quite useful if are doing an open jaw (arriving in SIN, staying there a few days, and then returning from Indonesia).

Leb0wski1

Thanks again everyone!

The idea is to get to Indonesia. It doesn't really matter which regional hub we transfer through, but I've heard Singapore is usually the best...

Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions. At this point, I guess I'll just have to weigh out the pros and cons of:

Opening two credit cards to spend $6k to get two free round trip flights to one of the hubs in SEA, and then either paying or redeeming skyteam miles for the flight from that hub to Indo. That would make the whole travel for the trip free.
vs.
Just eating the $1000 to $1400 bucks a ticket to accrue a lot of miles for a future vacation... possibly first class to Europe

Full disclosure: I'm starting grad school soon, so the free option seems pretty appealing

glennaa11

you should be able to go from SFO to Indonesia on one award ticket. No need to stop in the hub city if you don't want to. So you could easily go SFO --> ICN --> DPS (if Bali is where you're headed) on one award. Or something like SFO --> NRT --> DPS or SFO --> HKG --> DPS, etc. No need to use Skymiles to get from the hub to your destination.