Originally Posted by
Bob Herrington
Many thanks for all the advice from the folks on FlyerTalk! You provide an invaluable service! With all the credit card offers, I'm trying to decide which would be the most useful for our flying needs. Typically, we take one long (international) flight a year (or every other year) and a couple of domestic ones. We live in Seattle and have had great luck using our Alaska ff miles to fly to Hawaii or Mexico. However, trying to use their partner airlines to get us to Europe every other summer is almost impossible. (My wife is a teacher so we have to go in the summer.)
I've checked into using Starwood amex since its available on multiple airlines but the number of points (miles) required for a summer flight to Europe is ridiculous (175,000 points from Seattle to Rome!)
Can anyone recommend which airlines ff program might best serve our needs?
Like others have said, transferring SPG points to miles in bulk once you've found availability and put a ticket on hold is probably your best bet (if you have a stockpile of SPG points).
Are you willing to apply for some credit cards? There's reasonableish bonuses out there (between the actual airline cards and the credit card points [Membership Rewards, Chase Sapphire]) that both of you could independently apply for to bulk up on how many miles you have.