Maz67

If I were to burn some of my MR on a US Air flight does everything work as usual in regards to my gold status upgrade and earning the miles for the flight etc? Will I still get the normal upgrade email etc? Thanks.

jr57

Yes, your elite benefits will be honored. The only real exception would be that any changes you need to make to your ticket will need to be done through Amex, not US. However, that's not an elite benefit, just something you should be aware of. It's really no different than buying a paid ticket through an OTA like expedia or orbitz.

I know many on the forum would probably suggest not using your MR points for a paid US flight, but if it works for you, I say go for it. You shouldn't have any problems with your elite benefits.

PHL

I find the best use of AMEX MR is usually gift cards for the various stores that are in the program. You typically get $100 for 10,000 points(1 cent per point). Using MR for other items usually has a lower value - especially for redeeming merchandise and air travel....

PainCorp

Not if you transfer them to your FF account. Unfortunately US isn't one of their partners.

Biggie Fries

Not sure I follow ... Other than the little annoyance that US tickets booked through AmEx (whether paid for by MR points or otherwise) cost $7 more, aren't you getting one cent of airfare for each MR point spent?

CPRich

MR points can be used to pay for travel at $0.01 per point, unless that's recently changed. And until not too long ago, some cardholders received a 20% rebate, meaning each was worth $.0125. That was always better than any gift card I could find. AmEx gift cards are still 3K for $25, 12K for $100, etc. For traveling on US, I still think paying with points is still the best deal.

(the only better value I see, and I think point redemptions have recently changed, is Home Depot at 1.25 cents)


As to the original question - I had no problems with AmEx Trave points-purchased tickets and elite benefits. To US, it's just like buying through my corporate agency, Orbitz, Travelocity, etc., etc.

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"Unfortunately US isn't one of their partners."

That's true, but Aeroplan and ANA are MR partners, and their miles can be redeemed for travel on US (at least until US departs Star Alliance).

PHL

Yes, but rather than spend 25000 MR points for effectively $250 towards a ticket, why not find a 25000 point roundtrip domestic ticket and transfer those points to the airline program that has availability?

Or, even more value is to transfer 100,000+ points towards a premium international business class ticket that's worth several thousand dollars.

But if it's elite miles/points you need, then I guess you're only option is to treat the MR points as cash and buy the ticket outright.

Biggie Fries

Got you. And, yes, I agree, if you have some big trip in sight, and there is award availability, sometimes the transfer of these things into airline miles makes them far more valuable than their use as cash for buying US tickets. I may be in that camp soon enough.

For the moment, however, I'm one of these folks fairly squeezed for time but getting a fair amount out of US status. In this case, the calculus may be a shade different. First, as you get close to a status boundary, 5000-7500 PQMs can be worth a lot. I don't want to exaggerate, but what if we said $300? I value US miles at 1.5cpm, and let's say, with the miles flown and double-credited as a CP, I am getting 12,500 off the 100,000 MR points spend on a US ticket or tickets. That's another $185. Not sure what the value is of a likely F upgrade on a domestic Y purchase, but it's worth something. Anyhow, before you know it, the expenditure of those 100,000 MRs on US Y tickets has a value to me of not 1.0cpp(oint), but something like 1.5 or 1.6cpp. So even if I could wave a magic wand and turn the 100,000 MR points into 100,000 US DMs (or, via, Avios, 84,000 US DMs), I don't see myself as any better off value-wise. I'd have to have something right in the line of sight (low fare 95,000 DM Envoy RT to Europe) to feel different.

Unless I am not doing the math right, which is always a possiblity.

Maz67

Thanks all. Had 50k MR and card expires in December (not renewing card). Needed 2 round trip on US for a total of $600 so I decided to apply the 50k which left me with a balance of $100. I figured it was worth it to get rid of the MR and to get the US PQM toward keeping gold status. Plus, I am pretty sure we will get upgraded to F (3.5 hour flight) on this flight. All in all not the best possible use of the MR but not that bad either.

jr57

I'm a firm believer that the best use of your miles/points is whatever you determine to be the best value FOR YOU. If you're planning a trip to Asia and have the points to do an SQ F redemption, sure there's a lot of value there. But to be fair, I don't think most people who book intl F redemptions would actually pay the cash price out of pocket for those same tickets if they didn't have the points. And I think it's foolish to use your miles for the "best value" redemptions if they are beyond the scope of the travel you actually want to do. Sure, the cpm value might not be the best to redeem MR points on a paid US ticket, but if saving cash and requalifying for status are important to you, why not go for that? If you're happy with how you used your points, that's great. Others may disagree, but not everyone has the same travel patterns/goals/aspirations, and only you can decide what is a good way to redeem your miles.

Maz67

This one trip might be the difference for me hitting Gold again for next year so if this trip using the MR saved me $500 and also gets me Gold for another year I feel I got the value out of them. Also, I almost exclusively fly US so transferring them to another program was less appealing.