Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
Don't think there are tax deductions available when you donate points (but I am not a tax advisor).
There are nowadays some more modern (i.e., user friendly) options available that let you either search live or set up alerts for when seats become available. I have recently been having decent success with points yeah and points.aero. There are others. This blog post (I am not affiliated with the blog or the author) might give you some options to try:
https://frequentmiler.com/which-awar...-tool-is-best/
Thanks I'll check out the blog
Originally Posted by
IADCAflyer
Have you thought about positioning flights? Fly to HKG or NRT/HND first? Typically there is more availability where AA actually flies as opposed to an airport that is 100% dependent on code share. BKK is a leisure market - I'm sure you can find BKK-TYO for not a lot of cash.
In my past searches there were plenty of BKK to TYO flights, but I did have to change from HND to NAR. Now, there are flights from HND to the US, but it's like 300k miles OR 175k miles with 24 hours of travel time, (in addition to my CNX to BKK and BKK to HND). We're talking like 48 hours of travel. Perhaps there is a better city to fly into (in the US) from Tokyo. I think AA includes a flight to the final destination city with the award ticket, but I really. need to get to CLT (and that never shows the final connecting flight) or at least PHL which does show a very rare few. That's why I was thinking that maybe I should call in, and say, "2 weeks in the US, any dates, just get me there in business class and without a myriad of connections or overnight airport hotel stays".
Originally Posted by
JJeffrey
400k is a good chunk of miles, and it is easy to keep them from expiring. Just because you can't find anything from SE Asia lately doesn't mean I'd just go light them on fire. No reason to do that.
I assumed they'd just devalue over time. I guess I feel stupid having accumulated all these points and being unable to use them (I do have 400k with chase and 400k with Citi as well, but I'd rather use the harder to spend AA miles and get rid of them). Now that I look at full priced fares, it's $4k for business class on Qatar from BKK to PHL, 24 hours travel time. Perhaps I should just buy the darn thing and wait for another opportunity to use the miles. Or, maybe I pay for one way and find a points route for the direction that's more difficult.