Points to Business Class Question
 

I want to travel from MCO to SGN anytime Mid-January and returning anytime Mid/Late February (Flexible on Dates). Airline doesn’t matter too much but I’d like to experience business class flying using my Amex/Chase/Citi points.

Researching I’m seeing business tickets around 600k points which is wayyy higher than what I have. As I’m a newbie how can I be able to make my dream happen? Any Tools that can help on this?

A few suggestions:

1. Search for one-ways, rather than roundtrips.

2. Try breaking up your one-way searches into two or more components. For example, MCO-TYO, and TYO-SGN.

3. If you are credit-worthy, try diversifying your stash of miles by getting the Barclays and/or Citi AA cards. You could amass enough miles in time to at least get a one-way back from SGN in late February. AA partner JL frequently releases premium-cabin award seats one or two weeks before departure. And AAdvantage flight awards and MileagePlus flight awards are now fully refundable, so you can cancel and rebook on a better/cheaper award itinerary if one should become available.

Note that many Asian carriers only do round trip redemptions.

I have a J trip to DAD at around that time on KE (ticketed through AS) but they only do RTs. It was 120k miles. Unfortunately you can't transfer to AS.

I would check the Asian carriers for sure. ANA has a very good chart and they are an amex partner. RT only. I'm not sure if KE is partners with any of those. You can book KE through DL; I'm not sure how many skypesos that would cost though.

If there's JL availability you may be able to transfer to BA and book it that way. They do one ways.

And EK is an Amex partner. Not the most efficient routing but it's a good product. I have flown them back from Asia before (when they were an AS partner)

Be willing to reposition within the US, possibly on your own dime.

ETA: And of course SQ is good but their premium partner award availability is not good. Can you transfer to them?

Yes I can transfer to SQ. But it's a 1:1 so doesn't help much. Business class is over 600k points on Amex.

If you can find "partner" Business Class award availability on each individual segment -- and that's a big if -- you should be able to get the roundtrip for just 240,000 BA Avios by redeeming for a "multi-carrier" award. You would have to include at least two of BA's oneworld partners -- with or without BA -- on the itinerary. Watch out, though, for very high carrier surcharges on the long-haul segments.

https://www.britishairways.com/trave...e/public/en_us

120k points was for business class seat?
I looked at ANA but business class seats are 500k above.

The BA multi-carrier redemption chart shows the redemption rate for roundtrip travel in Economy Class. The multipliers for premium cabins can be found at the bottom of the chart. (The multiplier for Business Class is 2X.)

Check the FlyerTalk British Airways forum for more information about BA's multi-carrier redemption awards.

When available, a partner award from North America to Vietnam (AA's "Asia 2" region), would cost exactly 70,000 AAdvantage miles. AA's partner awards are all fixed-price. Such an award could involve travel on AA, CX, and/or JL.

https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-p...t.jsp#uscanada

Are you looking at tickets for purchase on the American Express website or for award tickets on airline websites? Many of the people here are referring to award availability on different airline websites, but it sounds like you're looking for tickets on the Amex site.

Once you find availability on an airline's website, you can transfer points from AME to that partner and then book at that price. That will be cheaper than buying a cash ticket, but availability is much more difficult to come by on flights to Asia. You may want to try and find availability from JFK, EWR, and PHL to anywhere in Asia and then pay for a cash ticket from that Asian airport to SGN.

If you're referring to my post, that was KE flights booked through AS. They charge 120k RT to SE Asia in J on KE. It's kind of a sweet spot in the program (I even get to stop over in Korea for free, so I'm doing a week in Seoul and a week in Da Nang). But you can't transfer any of your CC points to AS so that doesn't really help you directly; it was just an example. KE is a skyteam airline; I'm not sure what other skyteam airlines would charge for a similar award. DL is the US-based skyteam carrier; they are a transfer partner for Amex.

I would check all of the following:

See if you can book on SQ. You can transfer from Chase and/or Amex. They are Star Alliance but they make very few premium awards available to partners; you have a much better chance booking with them directly.

See if you can find JL partner-bookable space. If you can, you transfer to BA and book it that way. You can search on AA or AS to try to find this space (they allow searching without having an account; to search on BA you need to open an account). Theoretically CX space might pop up in this search too, but right now that's basically impossible.

See if you can book a KE award through DL.

I'm not sure if EK flies there, but if they do search their site for space. You can transfer from Amex.

Search ANA. I see that you've already done that.

I'm not sure if I'm missing anything (I'm sure I am). Use flightconnections.com to see which airlines fly there. Remember that most programs allow multi-partner awards, so you can book connecting flights across different airlines in the same alliance. Another way to get there using oneworld carriers, for example, would be to take JL or AA to Tokyo, and then MH to Vietnam via KUL (MH does not fly to North America any more but they are good for getting to Southeast Asia from East Asia; though you will need to add another connection in KUL). If you can book something on AA that includes a different carrier, you can probably also book it on BA. So for example if you see a JFK-TYO-KUL-SGN award on AA you should be able to book it with Avios as well.

About ANA, if you transfer points from Amex to ANA after you find ANA availability(you are super lucky if you find one business seat available), the award business seat will most likely be gone by the time your transfer is complete. It takes about 3 days for them to process. You can read through the ANA forum for more information.

Okay. So what's the alternative for this?

Pick a transfer traget that either posts points quickly or will hold a reservation for you until the points hit.