Originally Posted by
pinniped
re: Asiana. In addition to that being a solid card, I actually like their award chart. Doing the mileage math, a typical MCI-Europe routing would be 80k in J and 110k in F before discounts. Plus, I'm assuming I wouldn't get Starnet blocked, so that'd be LH across the pond, not UA. ^
Yep, 70K in J class award to Europe is unheard of these days. Plus, don't forget SQ across the pond as well, it's much better than LH IMO. Here is another tip for you. AF's FB often runs regular promotional discounts on their transatlantic redemption in J and Y. You can usually fly KLM from U.S. to anywhere in Europe return for only 50K miles. If so, the opportunity cost is only 40K SPG points or if you are willing to trade, you can get it down to about 32~33K SPG points on coupon connection. If so, you can do slightly better than the opportunity cost of $35K of Asiana 70K award to Europe (after 10K mileage discount). That's another option if you are currently awash in SPG points but do not have many Asiana miles. Be warned though, fuel surcharges are still very high with AF/KL.
Even though I still consider 1 SPG point worth more than 2 air miles, there comes a point at which I'm too awash in hotel points and can always use more miles. I'm half thinking about adding this card to pick up an easy *A J award before and/or after I make my HH Diamond run with the Surpass card.
Can't help you here, this is obviously a personal decision.
Does the signup bonus ever get juicier than 5k?
Never heard of anything better than 5K sign up bonus and frankly, it is not a consideration IMO.
Nice tip on the BD/HH bit earlier, BTW. I used to have a consistent series of one-night stays at various lower-cost HHonors properties. Wish I had 'em now...I'd love to be loading up on BD miles.
The beautiful thing about the HH/BD arrangement is that you don't need those one-night stays, which can be quite a bit of a hassle. You earn 1,000 miles
per night, not per stay, so long as the duration is no more than 3 nights. That translated into 9,000 miles per stay + all the HH points & bonus in the most recent Q2 promo - worked like a charm for me.