Madoka

I have:

- 140,000 UR points.
- 11,000 miles on Asiana and just signed up for their credit card. Once I charge my annual car insurance ($8000) on there, I should have almost 50,000 Asiana miles.

I want:

- LAX to ICN in business class (March 2019) and the return flight in economy (April 2019)

What would be the most efficient way of utilizing what I have for what I want?

zippy the pinhead

You can do your own research regarding the costs in miles for Chase UR transfer partners to haul you from LAX to ICN, but the only way to get those points to Asiana would be to transfer Chase UR to Marriott, then transfer Marriott to Asiana. Even though you will lose about 50% of the value of your Chase UR points if you do that, since the average valuation of UR points is about $0.02 each vs. $0.01 each, give or take, for Marriott points, it works out in the end, since Asiana charges about $2500 for a one-way in J. (A wise redemption of points means keeping an eye on the value obtained.) A one-way in Asiana Business class off-peak is 62,500 miles from LAX to ICN, so if you transfer 60K UR points to Marriott (obviously you will need a Marriott Rewards account for that), you'll get a 5K bonus when you transfer those points to Asiana (they become 65K Asiana miles). From a valuation perspective, your 60K UR points are worth about $1,200; when you transfer them to Marriott, they will be worth about $600, but when you transfer them to Asiana, get the 5K mile bonus, and redeem them for a one-way J class seat, you're getting a redemption value of $2500/62500 = $0.04/mile, which is not too bad.

You might want to sign up for a Marriott card and get the bonus for that.

Madoka

My understanding is that the Marriott points transfer to Asiana at a 3:1 ratio. Am I wrong?

Is it possible to transfer the UR points to United at a 1:1 ratio and then transfer the.United points over to Asiana at a 1:1 ratio?

gpy

You can not transfer between airline FF programs.

zippy the pinhead

I believe so.

dpy940307

you could check availability of the Asiana flight w/ UA and use UA points.

since you already have points i'd recommend wait till you have enough to get a first class seat on the A380. That's a much better experience w/ marginally more points

Madoka

How does this sound?

I buy economy tickets using my Asiana card, get up 60,000 points on their card, and then use those points to upgrade to business class.

Is it possible to only use 30,000 points to upgrade to business class one-way?

downinit

Just make sure the economy tickets you buy are in a fare class that is eligible for an upgrade.

jon503

And note that those fares are Y, B and sometimes M all of which are quite a bit more expensive than the equivalent discounted fare. I've done this with an M fare single direction before and it cost me about 300 USD over my usual S fare (this was ICN-FRA). Not cheap, but it was well worth it to me at the time.

zippy the pinhead

If the OP has not booked yet, I was just looking at some dates in April 2019 on OZ and KE via ExpertFlyer, and for the dates I was interested in, the J- and F-class award availability was gone.