CSP over Amex Gold Preferred
 

Im kinda new at this churning thing, for the last few years I've been charging everything on my Gold Preferred Amex and Business Gold and used to pay with points for all my travel (i still cringe at the lost opportunity) but thanks to all of you i have realized the real value in FF miles and have started to rack up points to transfer. I currently have 226k MR points, i transfered 75k points to british airways but had had trouble using the miles for short hauls to MIA, SJU, and CUN as the availability isnt all that great so ive been using my avios for hotel and car rental which surprisingly have some great value. I don't wanna transfer to Delta because its been a while since a decent transfer bonus has been around and the value of Delta is horrible so I'm stuck with 226k points. I know I can tranfer to ANA for star alliance but i havent figured i think they have pretty heavy fuel surcharges so I recently got the CSP coz of the great sign up bonus and since I mainly fly US and UA it only made sense and i later coupled it with the INK Bold for my business. The thing is that since I have started using both Im thinking of cancelling my Amex Gold preferred and Business Gold Preferred as I just dont see the value above the CSP. Does anyone else find themselves ditching Amex for the CSP?

You can also transfer to AC or SQ to redeem for Star Alliance, and having three programs to choose from is useful because the award charts differ. For example, NH (ANA) charges by distance, while the others are zone-based programs.

While AC does assess fuel surcharges on several carriers it does not on flights operated by UA, US and many other carriers. See here:

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

Ever since they lost their Star Alliance partner in Continental, I've really devalued Amex MR points. I transferred most of mine when there was the 50% bonus with BA earlier this year, and I'll use those to go to South America, short domestic flights, or to Ireland from New York or Boston on Aer Lingus, but other than that, its hard to make good use of them.

Chase UR points at this point, in my mind, dominate Amex MR points and are close to, or on par with, SPG points. United is a great transfer partner (no fuel surcharges and good availability) and you also have Hyatt, which has some awesome properties for good prices (points-wise). I use my CSP or Ink Bold for almost all my everyday purchases when I'm not making minimum spend on other cards!

Totally agree with mia that Air Canada often flies under the radar as being a sneaky good transfer partner....as long as you can use their miles to fly on airlines they don't charge fuel surcharges on (which can sometimes be difficult).

If you can do that though, they also allow 3 stopovers on their awards tickets, which is UNHEARD of nowadays, so you can really, really make some awesome value out of AC miles if you pick the right flights. Your flexibility may be limited, but the value is there!

Thanks for the info guys, I didn't know that AC didn't have fuel charges on US