I have a quarter of a million CO miles in my account.

I have since moved to Australia and no longer fly all the time due to change of job and babies being born etc.....

Is there any way to make use of these points without being too abused in the process.

I know that a couple of QF awards sound nice but in reality it is not very practical as I would have to nest them with another ticket. 2 trips to NA in a year is not practical right now. Also... try to actually get a QF F award. Not easy.

Is there a way to launder the points through other programs that may be more useful to me in SYD? Any travel these days is to either Europe or Asia.

Appreciate any suggestions.

MCM

Donate them to charity

Are there SkyTeam awards available from Oz to Europe? I think so. You might check into that. Also, your miles won't expire as they would on some airlines.

You can transfer 25,000 miles a year into 50,000 HHilton points. You first transfer into amtrak point (1:1) and then transfer from amtrak into hilton (1:2). If you call quickly you may be able to transfer 25,000 miles this year and then another 25,000 in 2007 which would get you 100,000 hhilton points.

You can give them to me...

Well, if all the complaints about getting reward travel are true, 250k miles will soon only be useful for booking a one-way, standby flight on a regional jet.




(kidding)

I think that theoretically at least, KE can get me from SYD to Europe with a SkyTeam award.

But... can it be done in F ?

Anyone had any terrific experiences on KE lately?

Any other SkyTeam metal seen in SYD? (CNS is not a convenient option... trust me)

(the HHonors transfer is cunning... )

MCM.

The HHonors transfer requires you go Onepass->Amtrak->HHonors. The second transfer (out of Amtrak) is limited to 25k points outbound per calendar year. By this time of the year it's too late to get miles into Amtrak to get them out in 2006. While you could use some of the miles this way it would take a really long time to do so. This Amtrak reward may be of interest though:

7 or 8 day Carnival cruise - 175000 points

I searched on the CON website and found the transfer information, but no limits on yearly balance transfers. I called OnePass to be sure and was told the yearly limit is non existent and transfers have to be in 5000 miles. I am looking at the Hertz rewards as good use of miles. Good luck

How about an RTW trip? If nothing else, do it with minimal stopovers just to say that you did it....in BF/FC, of course!

Continental has no transfer limit. Amtrak does. You can transfer all 250000 points from Continental to Amtrak. Once in an Amtrak account, you can spend them all, but as part of that spending you can not transfer more than 25000 Amtrak points out to another program in a single calendar year.

Being in Oz, you can redeem your CO miles for SkyTeam awards.

SkyTeam includes Korean, which of course gets you to SEL but you can redeem SYD to pretty much anywhere in Asia.

It includes Alitalia, Air France, KLM, Czech and even Aeroflot so you can fly to pretty much anywhere in Europe.

And as I recall, KL and AF flights ex-SYD stop in BKK or SIN or KUL, and I think Fifth Freedom rights allow them to carry you SYD-BKK-SYD, etc.

And Continental flies from Cairns to GUM, which in itself is not exciting, but you can fly GUM-DPS (if you can't tear yourself away from Ozzies), or HKG, or many Japanese locations, or Hawaii, or do the island-hopper through Micronesia (I personally like Yap, where they still have the huge stone money).

Of course for NA, you have not only CO but DL, Northworst and Aeromexico.

Finally, not sure about QF awards, but maybe you can fly QF to someplace other than North America?

KL codeshares on MH and AF with QF ex SYD..... so no Skyteam metal on the ground here except KE... I think.

CNS to GUM.... I'm too old for that one.....

Problem with QF/OnePass awards is that they must originate from a NA gateway... not the other way round. So some kind of nesting would be required.

Looks as though KE is the only way outa here. (insert Jimi Hendrix rift here) Hope they are ok.

MCM

Save some vacation. Find 30k more miles and buy two RTW tickets for you and the Mrs, or significant other, or girlfriend, or boyfriend, or whatever. BF rewards are nice; but not worth it. Life in an aluminum tube, however pretentious, doesn't compare to what you could show him/her/it on a well-planned itin.

I have flown KE in F and it is a true F product, very nice. F awards however are no longer available but I hear C is nice as well. It's not SQ but its nicer then BF in my view.