Coolers

Your math is wrong - even if you had 120k SPG, you still wouldn't be getting 90k UA.

Raffles

Why not transfer your MR points into another Star Alliance airline with a 1:1 transfer ratio and use that airline to book your United flight?

Kat007

The issue I am having with that is high tax/fuel charges. I fly internationally (Europe, Asia), so it adds up to about $1K. No way I am going to pay that much (or even less). Unless I am missing something with Airplane.

mia

Kat007's question has been appended to the established thread on this recurring topic.

There are no fuel surcharges when redeeming through AC Aeroplan for flights operated by most carriers, including UA. The list of carriers for which AC collect fuel surcharges is in this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...rd-travel.html

saacman5033

Dansdeals is reporting no fuel surcharge on UA or US flights when using ANA miles.

http://www.dansdeals.com/archives/28060

taliesin

You probably want to transfer to Air Canada, which has the same Star Alliance partners as United. Aeroplan's award chart is similar to United's, with a couple of caveats: they charge more than half the cost of a RT for one-way awards, and they levy fairly heavy fuel surcharges for award tickets on many partners.

Depending on the specific itinerary you're interested in, you should also look at the other MR Star partners, ANA and Singapore. If your goal is to fly on SQ in a premium cabin, then that should definitely be your choice, as they give much better availability to Krisflyer members than to their partners. NH has a distance-based award chart that could be a good deal on certain routes, but they also charge pretty hefty fuel surcharges on most awards.

CynthiaSteffe

Some additional datapoints:

(1) Just booked two business tickets on LX thru Aeroplan, going to the Middle East. Total fees were around $200, so really not bad.

(2) Krisflyer indeed has great availability for its own, and if you book the ticket online and only on SQ-metal, the redemption takes 15% fewer miles. One caveat is that the fees are steeper. I was pricing a ticket from JFK to Singapore, and the total fees for 2 business tickets were $1,000. Not too bad, but not a crazy good deal.


In the future, if I wish to travel to Europe I'll either pay for a business ticket (generally in the $2.5k range if I book at the right time) or try to get award ticket on LX/LH/SQ. BA is now too expensive, and the SkyTeam carriers are not really worth it.

If I want to go to Asia, I'll probably do one of CX/ANA/SQ.

Kat007

My main "need" is for LH from MCO. I checked with Aeroplan, they charge over $600 in fees (I pay aprox $125 for the same route using my United miles)

taliesin

Well, if you absolutely must fly TATL on Lufthansa, then AFAIK there is no way to redeem MR points without large fuel surcharges. If you're willing to connect and fly the TATL on UA, US, TK or LX, you can probably find something with minimal YQ.

leland

This is somewhat less efficient, but why not just buy the flight you want via Amex using MR?

There's less loss than any of the other funky workarounds and you get mileage accrual. For me I'm looking at that as a 1K with not enough travel planned to maintain status. I might have to burn a SWU to go in style, though.

Basically I can use my MR to do a MR

Kat007

I can fly out of DAB as well (which has only two major airlines -DL and US), but my connecting point must be FRA.

120K points+ should be equal to J or 1st in other rewards. Let`s say, my J ticket is $5K, I absolutely loose all my value in spending minimum req and such when buying my $5K flight with a hard earned points, which will hardly cover 1/5 of the should be full ticket.

LDNConsultant

Currently sitting on about 250k of MR and want to top up my Mileage Plus account. Other than transferring to either SPG back to MP is there another way of transferring MR to UA Mileage Plus without losing value?

TommyC80

No

mia

I assume you have UK Membership Rewards points. Verify my arithmetic.

40,000 Membership Rewards
20,000 Starpoints
12,500 MileagePlus

40,000 Membership Rewards
120,000 Club Carlson
12,000 MileagePlus

40,000 Membership Rewards
80,000 Hilton HHonors
8,000 MileagePlus

MDTyKe

Not ideal, but could you txfer them to a MR partner *A airline?