Originally Posted by
steveholt
I'd recommend flying separately from PIT to NYC and then leaving from NYC. You're always going to have better prices there because of the sheer amount of competition + volume of NYC flights. The other alternative would be to get to LAX and leave from there for the same reasons.
I'd book one round-trip ticket to and from that US location. That's going to be the cheapest option. You can try open-jaws (eg flying from JFK to BKK and then from MNL to JFK on the flight home), but usually, flights to the same destination are cheaper. Once you have those flights booked, there's lots of low-cost airlines within Asia that can get you to and from where you need to go. You can also use some of your Chase points to transfer to Aeroplan to book cheap flights within Asia for 8,000 miles one-way. You can also include a stopover for 5,000 miles, so you might be able to fly something like HAN->BKK->PNH with a few days in BKK and a few days in PNH for a total of 13,000 miles.
I've been messing around with this but I think since absolute value (as I said am silly enough to be looking at business class right now) isn't my top priority. For what its worth the "nice" flights like singapore from EWR or JFK (areoplan wanted to do some nightmarish stuff to get me to bangkok and I've had only bad experiences with air canada) seem to be outside of my range for a straight up voucher (at least to business class) and in general the price points everywhere I look seem about the same kinda no matter where I look. Basically I can take the less ideal flight from PIT-ORD-NRT in business for like 10k and the flight from JFK/EWR to bangkok round trip is 14k in business class + whatever cheap flight I buy from pit to nyc - (in fact the prices seem the same ish when I go multi destination and try to fly home from manilla in both cases)... I don't know if I'm missing something... I definitely would like to fly singapore and it's cool I can transfer chase points...but it doesn't seem like there's anyway to get more than basically 3-4k off for my points anyway a slice it? I see all kinds of things about how to maximize your miles/points but it always seems like an incredibly specific situation that I'm not qualified for...
Originally Posted by
returnoftheyeti
Transfer you Chase points to UA.
Fly PIT-SIN via SFO or LAX, using Chase point. Spend a couple days in SIN. Buy a cash ticket on a low cost carrier to BKK. Buy all the other flights you want in the region in cash, and wait until you are much closer to the travel dates. Fly home from Manila on a UA award ticket.
UA award tickets have no change fees, so you can buy economy now to lock in your trip, and change it later if you need, or upgrade to Business.
PIT-SIN is 55k miles, 1 stop Nov 29.
MNL-PIT is 55k miles, 1 stop Dec 29.
Jetstar nonstop SIN - BKK is $69 2.5 hours non stop
BKK-SGN is $77
SGN-MNL is $130
You get the idea.
Okay I'll have to look into this!
UPDATE: I can't find prices quite as good (that one date is is 55 - but that's not a date I could do and the cheapest I see in dec is 66k and most are 100k) and of course that's per person. So it would probably be all my miles to book these flights in coach - and I have no idea what upgrading them would cost if that would even be possible...