kathylisbeth

So this might be a newbie question, but I'm wondering if it matters that a flight goes on sale if I'm paying by points anyway? Would I pay less points if it's on sale or does the points charge not vary based on any sale the airline has? I know some airlines have a tier chart, so a sale wouldn't matter in that case, but are there other airlines where it would matter? And how would I know?

NRTBound2015

As you noted, it depends on which program you are using. Some airlines (JetBlue and Southwest come to mind) change the number of points they charge as the $ price changes while other airlines use a chart where the cost in miles will generally stay the same.

The easiest way to find out is to research the specific airline you are interested in, either by going to the airlines' website, or going to the airline specific area here on Flyertalk.

Duke787

Delta is also one that routinely puts out sales especially in D1. On the flip side they consistently have stealth devaluations so it can be a wash.

The name of the game these days is earn and burn - would only hold onto miles if you have a specific award you are working towards.

Also why many folks in points and miles world have been moving to CC based currencies (Chase UR, AMEX MR, Citi TYP, SPG) for their primary accumulation / spend since those are more immune to devaluations.

FirstInFlight

I think your question is - if you are using points does it matter that the flight might go on sale? So the inherent question is - when a flight goes on sale does that correspondingly reduce the number of points needed? If you are looking for a general rule I think the answer is no. But keep in mind that some airlines allow you to pay with points and, in that scenario, a price reduction does have a corresponding point reduction.

kathylisbeth

Thanks for the answers. I do have most of my points in Chase Ult Rewards so that's why I haven't specifically been looking at airline programs. Sounds like I need to choose my route then choose my airline then I'll have my answer.

Duke787

Yep that's what I would do - come back with a route and we can offer advice.

With UR you should expect:

1) BA: Off Peak and Peak pricing
2) Southwest: Directly correlated to ticket price (revenue-based redemptions)
3) UA: Saver and Standard Award levels (no peak or off-peak dates)
4) KE: Off Peak and Peak Pricing
5) SQ: Saver and Standard Award levels (no peak or off-peak dates)
6) AF/KLM: Saver and Standard Award levels (no peak or off-peak, however AF/KLM does publish monthly FlyingBlue Promo award levels here: https://www.flyingblue.com/promo-awards.html these are both route specific and date-restricted)

So Southwest is the only one where airfare pricing (and therefore sales) directly impacts award mileage required but as you can see each of the other major UR transfer partners do have multiple levels and some have a date component.

sdsearch

And that's of course also dependent on how use use Chase UR points. If you transfer to an airline program, it's as already described above by others. But if I'm not mistaken, there's also a way to buy an airline ticket with Chase UR points (without transferring them to an airline program) through a special Chase UR booking site, and in that case you're getting a points-to-dollars conversion ratio, and paying for an actual ticket in points proportional to what the cash cost for the ticket would be at that moment.

If so, however, I have no idea how the value of that compares to transferring to Southwest and then using their revenue-based redemptions there.

sdsearch

Not 100% true. It's correlated to ticket price, but in a different way depending on the type of fare (eg, Wanna Get Away vs Business Select). In that the moment all Wanna Get Away fares are sold out, the points price suddenly jumps, because it's now using a different multiplier when the fare is coming out of the Business Select fare category.