Originally Posted by jags86

If your plan is to book flights via the Chase Travel Portal or AMEX Travel and redeem points, Chase will always come out ahead — except for the case where you have a Business Centurion Card.

What you have to really compare is how much spend you had to make to get the redemption you want. For example. If you need 10,000 MR to book a flight via AMEX Travel and it takes $2500 in spend to get those 10,000 MR, but you only need 6000 UR to book that same flight with Chase but it took you $3000 to get those 6,000 points, then AMEX comes out ahead.

That said, the best value for MR is almost always via transferring to a partner airline and booking via airline rewards. Of course flexibility great decreases when you go that route.

Originally Posted by 747FC

Boy, did I ever make an error on this one! I went back to book today, and found out that I was comparing apples and oranges (2 person booking vs. 1 person).

The correct pricing was that Amex quoted $288 for two people on my one-way, and Chase quoted $466 for two people. What an incredible difference in dollar price. In terms of points, Amex was 28K points, where Chase wanted 31K points. Booked using MR points and save my huge bounty of UR points for my next big roundtrip.

Thanks again.