matic

i am finally getting into the mileage/points game after accumulating UR. i'm looking to book for my first time using UR from NYC to Honolulu. Would transferring points to United be the best bet?

bgriff

Do some searches on United.com before you transfer and see how many miles they're charging.

Keep in mind that if you have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card you can also use UR points as 1.5 cents each against a cash ticket, which may in many cases be a better value for Hawaii flights. For example if you can find a $900 roundtrip ticket to Hawaii (which you likely can, if booking in advance outside of peak travel times) that would cost 60,000 UR points booking through Chase, so you'd only want to transfer to United if they had an equally good option for fewer points than that.

There are also options through a few of the other UR transfer partners, but those are mostly more work.

senzer

Looking to use Chase Points to book Atl-Hawaii in late-April or early-May. Want to stay for 5-7 nights and would love to fly business class. I've looked around on Flying Blue and Korean Air websites, but can't see to find anything. Am I doing it wrong? Are things just sold out? Thanks!

philemer

Have you looked via the Chase UR website? There are tons of flts from atl>hawaii. You'll need abt 71K+ + UR pts each way for Biz. How many UR do you have? You can also use a combo of pts & cash. Forget looking at the individual airline sites for now.

More help can be found here: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chas...ts-2017-a.html

senzer

Was trying to use as few points as possible - I had heard United and Delta could be had using KE or Singapore? Am I wrong?thanks for the reply!

mia

Yes, but United is a direct transfer partner of Ultimate Rewards. If there are Saver award seats available on united.com you could claim the same seats through a partner, but if united.com shows no award seats, Singapore Airlines will also show zero.

GNN

Hello,

I'm trying to redeem Krisflyer miles for a trip to LIH from PHL for 2 people. Checked on United and saw saver award space available for a RT in April this year (22.5k one way per person; PHL-SFO with a 7hrs-ish layover, SFO-LIH; return is PHL-SFO overnight, SFO-IAH, IAH-PHL). Called Krisflyer, fed the agent the information, was informed that there are award seats available, but when the system doesn't count them as connecting flights, so instead of 35k, they are now 50k per person.

When the agent checked PHL-LIH for a RT with the dates, he told me that the route they have is PHL-Denver, Denver-LIH and return is PHL-SFO and SFO-PHL. This route would be 35k per person. The departure/arrival time and the route are much better. But the agent told me that United hasn't released the award space to them yet, and it won't be available till Feb or early March. The route didn't even show up as a possible award flight when I searched United (didn't log in). Searching google flight shows that the route would cost >$1000.

Anyone has gone through similar situation or has any advice? My options at this point are :
1. Call back to talk to krisflyer in early Feb or March and see if the award flights are released. The agent told me that the award flight will definitely be released and i shouldn't have any problem because it isn't the holiday time. I really want to believe that, but that route is so expensive now. So I don't know if it's expensive because they already set aside award seats....
2. Book a suckier route and pay more points with United (45k).

Called Korean Air but they either don't have availability with Hawaiian Air/Alaska Air from PHL or the route with Delta is terrible from PHL. Checked EWR but also no availability.

bgriff

It's hard to know for sure whether any one agent is competent, but it is certain that what you see on United.com does not necessarily bear any relation to what Singapore can see, because United may make more seats available to its own frequent flyers than to members of partner programs like KrisFlyer.

One option would be to sign up for an Air Canada Aeroplan account and see what they show as available on United. In theory if Air Canada has access, then Singapore should too. That doesn't mean every agent will know what they're doing, but at least you would have some idea that if an agent says they can't, it could be worth hanging up and calling again to see if another agent is better.

Also, I believe Singapore now allows Star Alliance bookings on their website, or possibly just on their mobile app, not sure. But have you tried either of those channels? I haven't tried it myself so I don't know how well it works, but it's certainly worth a try.

GNN

I did try to use Air Canada Aeroplan and the info I fed the agent was one of the flights available on there. I thought they would have similar award flight but doesn't seem like they do. Air Singapore kept telling me that there was the one award route that doesn't seem to be available elsewhere.
Also I called back 2 other times but somehow I kept getting the same agent...I'll try calling back at a different time or something.
I checked Singapore website and the route PHL-LIH isn't searchable on there. Seems like they have direct flights only.

jc840

I am trying to plan a 7 day trip from NYC to Hawaii and would like to use my Chase rewards for as much of the expense as possible. I had read that you can transfer points to Korean Air and fly with Delta or Hawaiian Airlines direct for great rates (points), but it seems that Korean Air is not able to get an "allotment" of seats for the December trip I'm planning. Essentially it's possible these dates are blacked out. If that's the case I'm looking for another way to get to Hawaii with first or business class airfare that won't break the bank. I have about 250K in chase reward points. Any suggestions?

mia

I have moved your post into the established thread on this topic. Reading previous posts should give you some alternative ideas.

garykung

Change your plan or pay cash.

December is one of the most difficult month for award redemption, because airlines, hotels, etc. know people are willing to pay.

jc840

Makes sense, I thought I would find a guru on here with some tips on making it work anyway.

garykung

I would not say I am a guru on the topic.

However - when you decide to travel in a peak travel season, airlines/hotel/etc. know how to make money. In that case, unless you are willing to pay up (cash/miles/points), the chance of getting a decent travel will be difficult.

This is a fact.

mia

Begin by determining which airlines operate the route you want to fly. Then, look at each airline's own website to see if they have award seats available. If they do not have award seats for their own program, there will not be any for partners.

Most airlines have at least two classes of award seats. AA calls theirs MileSAAver and AAnytime. To redeem through a partner you must find MileSAAver seats. Delta is more difficult to search because they no longer publish award charts, which makes it harder to identify the "saver" level, but try searching for Delta award flights on the FlyingBlue site. If they have seats available, Korean Air should also be able to get them.