Jscottt

New to booking flights with miles, but not flying in general as my wife and I travel a decent amount. Long story short I have the Capital One Venture Card and they recently started Airline partners where you could transfer miles. We are going to Japan in May 2020 and have herd great things about Eva Air Business class. I transferred over 220,000 venture points worth $2,200 to my Eva Air account totaling 160,000 points. I go and book my ticket and comes back with a confirmation number but says we are on a waitlist. I have never flown with Eva Air and there are currently no seats booked in Business class. I called their Hotline and they state they can’t tell me when I will or if I will be cleared to fly. Did I just waste $2,200+ worth of points? Kinda freaking out as I transferred all my points and we have tons of other flights already book on Asia and we can’t move dates for any flight.

Thanks in advance.

BuBu4

heh, just waitlist and wait. I had a friend who had similar thoughts as you when she transfers her typ points to CX, only to find it also waitlisted. She waited about 2 weeks before her flight departs to get the seat. she also said the same thing as that she felt like she just made a costly mistake too of transferring her points and finding out she cant use it.
id say, wait the waitlist out, meanwhile, i would start searching for backup flights in case if this one doesnt work out. The last time i waitlisted for J class, I got my approval 10 days before my flight.

im sure other ppl in here would offer better advise than mine though...

hardworking21

OP, you sort of screwed up. Like BuBu4 mentions, there is a chance you clear the waitlist. But, as many seasoned points folk will tell you, always check to make sure there is award space before transferring points. ALWAYS. Only then should you transfer points, as you want to book immediately into your business (or on other airlines, first) class seats! You never want to be in this limbo that you're in now.

Fingers crossed for you and the missus!!

garykung

OP - You did not screw up. You simply don't know how things work.

In this case, the easiest way to avoid further troubles is if BR has Y inventory to confirm you for the same trip. If so, ask BR to confirm and issue the ticket in Y and waitlist for J. It may require you to cancel the existing reservation first. Also, it may mean you have to pay an award change fee once the waitlist can be cleared.

Flying Y is not optimal. But at least - it is better than what you have now - nothing.

Jscottt

Thanks for the replies. After many calls and hours on the phone, thankfully I was able to change the airport to ORD. They had 2 reward tickets in business and I snagged them up. I have learned my lesson and will never transfer points of again without checking if its open first. Thanks again everyone.

hardworking21

Congrats to you - glad to hear you were able to change airports, and more importantly, snag those business class seats!

LondonElite

This is a real problem with credit card partners that transfer to airlines. A transfer can take minutes, hours, or days. There is no guarantee that the seats that were there will still be there when your miles arrive!

Welcome to FT, by the way!

claimui

This is not really a valid criticism. Consider the alternative. If you accumulate miles directly with EVA, they are immediately "available" for use, but they will expire in 3 years if you don't use them up before then. If we had the option to defer those miles until we actually wanted to use them, and not have to worry about expiration, then of course we would rather do that -- but we can't.

Or look at it the other way: If you really wanted to be able to use your miles immediately without waiting for a transfer, you could exchange your credit card points for EVA miles as soon as you got them, just like how it works with EVA flights. But of course you wouldn't do that. So the credit card transfer time is not a "problem", it's just a side effect of having much better options of when and how to use your miles.

LondonElite

They are both sub-optimal conditions.

garykung

I beg to differ. As a fact, it is actually a valid criticism.

In fact, the recent credit card competition has created tons of amateurs. Many may know how to maximize the earning. But most of them don't how to work with their points.

Bear4Asian