Originally Posted by
kapooncha
Is there anyone here who would fly coach from USA to Asia? I know I wouldn't. I've been fortunate enough to travel out there quite a bit, mainly through being able to cash in miles for J and/or F awards. There is no way I'm going to fly coach all the way out there. Plenty of really nice trips I can take here in the USA.
I have done TPAC in Y. ORD-PVG. It was a situation where no F/J awards were available, regular (lowest mileage) Y awards were available, and we were flying an odd sequence of segments that meant buying cheap Y (or discounted J) tickets couldn't happen. And we were booking far enough in advance that I could get two infinite-legroom exit row seats. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either. It was a necessary evil to get to China without significantly changing dates or searching for some sort of very odd routing.
Originally Posted by
Boraxo
I can’t speak for anyone else, but if TATL/TPAC J//F awards are taken off the board then I will simply revert to a 2% cash back card and maybe occasional hotel card. Ditto for the bank cards - I don’t need Chase or Amex points if they don’t transfer to a partner that offers what I need.
With price of J falling this may even be a better option now - 70k UR transfer for hard-to-find TATL one-way in J vs $1400 cash back on a 2% card - and we are seeing quite a few tix at that price or lower.
I think this response is telling about the current state of the entire FF game: I was just talking about using miles, and pretty much the whole thread assumes I'm talking about earning them from
credit cards. You are absolutely right - take away the F/J seats, and 2% cashback wins every time.
And if you happen to earn a trickle of miles by actually flying, use those on domestic segments that manage to fall into a sweet spot in value where you get a couple cents per mile. If you can...