Originally Posted by
bcc5124
Yeah. If I can get effectively something like $0.04 per AMEX point when ordering though a conversion to miles, that would be great.
So I don't care much about a ticket costing more miles than the discounted number of miles for that same ticket. As long as it's cheaper to get it instead of using AMEX points directly on AMEX Travel.
FWIW, JetBlue points are worth about 1.3-1.5 cents each (though sometimes as low as 1c on some peak Mint fares it seems), although you lose 20% of your points in the conversion from MR to TrueBlue. So 1.4c/TB point is equivalent to 1.12c/MR point -- still better than booking directly through Amex. Obviously won't get you to Moscow, but I'm just showing that for illustrative purposes.
But that is only if I can get seats availability similar to cash booking. If not, then it's not going to work for me.
And right now, it looks like the availability is a problem.
If a ticket costs $5k (when not buying in advance), that same ticket can be bought for 500k AMEX points. If I can get the same ticket for something like 150 SkyMiles, that would mean I'm getting it for 150k AMEX points, instead of 500k AMEX points.
And I don't care that the same ticket could be booked for 80k SkyMiles with a bunch of conditions attached. 150k would still be a great deal for me.
But as things are looking right now, I don't think paying more miles for availability is actually an option. Or at least I can't find it.
So the availability workaround is these "Anytime" award levels, which as I mentioned are only valid if you're redeeming on the same carrier. Since you can't transfer MR points to AA or UA, this really just leaves DL. And you can almost always book an award ticket on DL, if you're flying a DL aircraft. They don't fly to MOW unfortunately (I think they used to), so that's going to be your problem. But if you want to try and get close (e.g., FRA, or maybe ARN which I think DL flies seasonally), there will be options. Mid-June shows flights starting at ~200-400k on MIA-FRA, although the 1-stops are mostly in the 330k-450k range. If the published fares are more than $3300-4500k r/t each, then you'll be better off transferring via DL. I suspect there will be times where this will come out "cheaper" and other times where paying outright or booking directly with MR points will be cheaper. I would also consider that buying the tickets outright with an Amex Platinum nets you 5x miles, so a $3k ticket gets you 15k MR points, worth at least $150, plus about another 15k Delta Skymiles (probably less if you fly a Delta partner).
I don't know if any of the foreign programs (particularly the MR transfer partners) have a similar "anytime" award scheme, but that could be an option too.