Help combining miles
 

I have the following points:
60000 miles in Alaska
48000 miles in Emirates (16K expires end of April)
60000 points in Hilton
8000 points in Marriott
40000 miles in Delta.
110000 points in Amex platinum.

I am looking to book a ticket to MAA from SEA anytime in Jun through August for 7 nights (business class ideally). I have been playing around with miles and have been tying myself up in knots on the cheapest or best way to utilize the points/miles. Can someone provide suggestions/advice on how I combine the above and what airline would be best to book?

Thanks!

With ffp's you generally cannot combine ff miles/points. An exception is those airline ffp's that use avios (BA IB IE QR). Those are all linked by IAG
Some hotels programs allow you the transfer out, but at very poor value.

A guide, but does show availability, or all ffp's--> https://www.awardhacker.com/#f=MAA&t...=0&c=y&s=2&p=1
Do not like your chances of getting an award flight MAA-XXX-YYY-SEA. May have to be 2 or more separate awards.


Credit card transfer links

• Credit, Debit and Prepaid Card Programs forum
  
• Amex MR Transfer Membership Rewards points to which airline or hotel program?

Once you use those up, I suggest you try to avoid parking miles in hard expiry programs (ie, programs don't let you extend expiration). You can see a list of most hotel and airline programs, with hard expiry programs highlighted in red, in the Wikipost that's at the top of this thread:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mile...-t-expire.html

Losing miles to expiration may negate any benefit to collecting miles in a program that may have slightly better value.

You should only transfer into hard expiry programs when you're about to redeem, and only the amount you expect to redeem. And if that redemption doesn't work out, you should try to use up those miles first, long before they expire, even if it's not at the best value, since a poor value is way better than zero value.

THanks folks. I bought some alaska miles and was able to get the trip from SEA to MAA for 70k + $600 (plus another 200 I had to spend to transfer points) in business. This is in BA

Now, what remains is the return segment. Thinking of doing an amex to avios to qmiles to book the way back - would that be the best option? Since amex doesn't directly transfer to Alaska (other wise there's a 130K singapore business that would have worked :()

Thanks much for the awardhacker link!

And I did the amex 110K to 150K avios to qmiles and booked a business class for 156K miles plus some $700.....probably not the cheapest award, but I guess will do and hopefully wasn't a total waste of miles transfer.

THanks again for the help. On the EMirates miles, problem is that I don't fly it very often (may be once every few years to India) so not sure how to use it best and don't have enough to redeem either :(

EK ff miles have a hard expiry: use them or lose them.
EK flights can be credited to some other ffp's (that do not have hard expiry). But check the fare booking class.
Jetblue ff miles do not expire and are an AA & EK ff partner.(but that may change in the future)
-->https://www.wheretocredit.com/emirates
-->https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mile...-t-expire.html