Originally Posted by
ghia74
I am helping a friend from work to best utilize his 1 million MR points for a a family Hawaii trip. 2 adults would fly First/Bus with kids in coach. Spending about 10 days in HNL/OGG. In reading through everything I am thinking he should convert to Delta and stay in Hiltons. Could he better take advantage of the BA deal to fly AA? Any other things I am missing?Thanks
A few other thoughts --
1. If you are coming from the East Coast, keep in mind that there is a very wide range of levels of quality of product flying to Hawaii. If you transfer to Delta, you may end up having to pay one of the higher mileage prices (the lowest possible mileage price to Hawaii is often unavailable), and if you do, might as well make sure you are booking a decent product. On Delta that means trying to get onto the nonstop flight from Atlanta, which has international lie-flat seats in business class. Most of the flights from the West Coast, by contrast, are going to be on standard domestic first class seats with limited recline (there is one LAX flight on an international aircraft but it doesn't offer many connecting opportunities).
With American, you will be very limited since BA can't book you into any seats unless they're available at the lowest award level, but if you do find something, keep in mind the DFW flight is on an international aircraft while the others mostly are not.
With United, you would similarly be limited but if you can find an option (via miles transfer to Air Canada or ANA), their EWR and IAD flights, and sometimes the IAH flight, have international business class seats.
2. As
taliesin said, MR points to hotel programs is generally a bad idea. If you really want this to be a "free" trip, you may be better off searching Amex Travel for hotel options and then using "pay with points," which gives you 1 cent per MR point off your booking. (For that matter, it is worth looking at Pay with Points options for your airfare too -- if you book in advance business class to Hawaii can be pretty cheap, whereas redeeming miles through Delta can be quite expensive, so you might find better options that way. You would also be able to easily fly AA or UA if you prefer them, and you would earn status and redeemable miles for the flights purchased using pay with points.)
3. Search for options for 1 person as well as looking at options for 2 people. If, for example, Delta has 1 business seat available at a lower mileage price and you search for 2 people, they will quote you the higher mileage price for both. But if you book both separately, you can get the first one at the lower price and the second at the higher price. The only downside here is that if there are flight cancellations or disruptions, they might not get rebooked onto the same alternative flights, but since the kids in coach are likely going to have to be on a separate booking anyway, it wouldn't be too much worse.