Miles for Central Asia

Old Jan 6, 2015, 6:57 am
  #1  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Posts: 350
Miles for Central Asia

Looking to generate miles for 5 people to Central Asia from the U.S. Need these miles every 18 months or so.

Credit card applications are not an option. Have a Chase Ink so tried to do the Office store thing but probably won't be enough plus it's a lot of $200 cards to deal with every month.

Would re-selling be a viable option? Is there a forum/wiki for it?

Thanks in advance.
NetBrowser07 is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 9:29 am
  #2  
 
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Originally Posted by NetBrowser07
Looking to generate miles for 5 people to Central Asia from the U.S. Need these miles every 18 months or so.

Credit card applications are not an option. Have a Chase Ink so tried to do the Office store thing but probably won't be enough plus it's a lot of $200 cards to deal with every month.

Would re-selling be a viable option? Is there a forum/wiki for it?

Thanks in advance.
I think office supply + Ink is the best approach. 50K this year, 50K next year, that's 500K miles. 5 round trips to central Asia is 425K United miles. Cost of ~$3500 for the 500K miles assuming free liquidation (Serve/BB).
dukerau is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 10:57 am
  #3  
 
Join Date: Sep 2014
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Im in similar boat, 5 to southeast asia.

How do I get the 500k miles? Transfer to united?

I have an ink and sapphire preferred with about 50k each, do I need to keep the account open to keep the rewards?
lumangoy is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 12:16 pm
  #4  
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
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Oh, god.

What you are asking is simply not realistic. You might as well ask if you can get a free ticket to the moon in first class riding a rainbow-colored unicorn.

Originally Posted by NetBrowser07
Looking to generate miles for 5 people to Central Asia from the U.S. Need these miles every 18 months or so.

Credit card applications are not an option. Have a Chase Ink so tried to do the Office store thing but probably won't be enough plus it's a lot of $200 cards to deal with every month.

Would re-selling be a viable option? Is there a forum/wiki for it?

Thanks in advance.
First, "Central Asia" covers a lot. You need to be more specific - start by defining what cities you want to go to, then figure out what airlines fly there, then which programs are options for your miles.

Second, if "credit cards are not an option" you are not going to have an easy time getting the miles for a flight to Orlando, never mind Uzbekistan. Sure, you can go to Walmart or Target 10,000 times, but no matter how dedicated you are to churning little bits of miles, you are never going to accumulate a large enough stash to reach your goals.

The fact is - despite all the deceptive blogger hype and the enthusiasm (sometimes hysteria) you see on FT, you simply can not churn your way to millions of points & miles by the "MS" methods alone, at least not without dedicating your entire life to doing so. For one or two people, for a modest trip or two, MAYBE. But not for what you are hoping for, because...(my emphasis below)...

Originally Posted by NetBrowser07
Looking to generate miles for 5 people to Central Asia from the U.S. Need these miles every 18 months or so....
It sounds like you were sent here by The Great Bowtie. You need to do a reality check.

Go do a quick estimate of what you are really expecting to accomplish. How many miles do you think you will need to get 5 people to "Central Asia"? Be honest.

Do you think you are going to find 5 award seats to your destination at the "low" (saver/whatever) level? No, you are not. Check availability now and see how easy it is to get 5 seats. If you are willing to split up the party into smaller groups, that would help a little, but my guess is some of your party is probably kids who shouldn't travel to the other side of the world by themselves. Just remember that getting 5 awards seats ANYWHERE is generally not easy. You will be extremely limited in your airline and flight options to "Central Asia" (to Orlando, it would be easier, there are a million flight options). If it's even possible to get 5 award seats (which I doubt), you are probably going to have to pay double or triple for some of those seats - so be sure to factor that into your numbers.

And you want to generate all these points so you can go every 18 months.

All with no new credit card sign-ups. And using a single Ink card? Riiiiiight. Gonna be a lot of trips to Office Max for you (until Chase fires you and claws back all your points).

If you are lucky, it will take you years to generate and save up enough points to do what you want to do. By then, there will be a half dozen devaluations of the FF programs and you will then need 10 times more points. You will not be able to keep up with the number of miles needed. The airlines you hope to fly on will go bankrupt or merge or stop flying to Bishkek or will end their FF program.

I think you need to live in the real world, not the blogger/FT fantasy that makes people think they can jet off to the Maldives with their family all the time for pocket change. I am sorry to sound harsh, but you have been sold a handful of magic beans. You can thank the bloggers for that.

Time for Plan B. Good luck.
nwflyboy is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 12:24 pm
  #5  
 
Join Date: Aug 2013
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I loled at the asking of if theres a wiki for reselling If there was a wiki for reselling, then the resellers wouldnt make any money and the wiki for reselling would become useless....
hamokmonky is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 12:35 pm
  #6  
 
Join Date: Oct 2011
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My impression is that racking up tons of miles via reselling is possible, but you might as well play the stock market. They both require similar amounts of research, foresight, insider information, risk exposure, and luck to really make it big.
aarif1 is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 1:00 pm
  #7  
 
Join Date: Sep 2014
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Originally Posted by lumangoy
Im in si
forgot to add, I can do credit card apps....

so is getting 100k in chase UR the best bet?

this would reduce my cash rewards from using other CCs.

how long has the mileage transfer to UAL been 5x?
lumangoy is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 1:24 pm
  #8  
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: SAN
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I typically use the Barclays arrival for my plane tickets. I try to MS around 20k per month so at the end of the year I'll have earned around 480k miles which is equivalent to $4,800 to use on whatever plane flights. My wife and I usually try to make 2 international trips per year. We don't care about first or business class.

I think 5 tickets would be extremely difficult because of the miles needed and because rewards miles can be very difficult to redeem. I still have a bunch of British airways avios that are hard to use
Chris92128 is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 1:27 pm
  #9  
umc
 
Join Date: Nov 2012
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Originally Posted by NetBrowser07
Looking to generate miles for 5 people to Central Asia from the U.S. Need these miles every 18 months or so.

Credit card applications are not an option. Have a Chase Ink so tried to do the Office store thing but probably won't be enough plus it's a lot of $200 cards to deal with every month.

Would re-selling be a viable option? Is there a forum/wiki for it?

Thanks in advance.
With only a Chase Ink card, I doubt you would be able to accumulate enough miles for your goal.

If you and another family member can apply for credit cards, then your goal would be attainable. I know this from my experience.

My family was on a trip to Viet Nam in June, and I was able to get 10 round-trip award tickets. It took a lot of reading, planning and lots of credit card applications. We generated the miles from credit card sign-up bonuses from 4 persons in the family.. We split up into 4 groups because of our work schedules (I think I could have booked 10 tickets with splitting of 2 groups if I wanted). We used a mixed of American and United miles. Out of the 10 tickets, 9 of them are in business class. We booked before the United devaluation, so it only costed 60k United miles one-way in business (we flew on Eva Air, Asiana, China Air, and ANA). We also used American miles to fly on Cathay and Japan Airline (55k one-way in business). For this trip, we redeemed more than a million miles, and it's totally worth it.

I think you should diversify your miles so that you'll have more options when it comes to redeem award tickets. All three alliances have flights to our destination, so we collected miles from all three. We have miles in United, American, Delta, British Airways, US Airways, and Singapore, but we do focus on collecting United miles because from experience they offer much more award ticket availability than what we can get with American miles. More Star Alliance airlines fly to our destination.

Do a lot of reading is the first step to generate miles/points.
umc is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 5:56 pm
  #10  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Posts: 350
Originally Posted by nwflyboy
Oh, god.

What you are asking is simply not realistic. You might as well ask if you can get a free ticket to the moon in first class riding a rainbow-colored unicorn.



First, "Central Asia" covers a lot. You need to be more specific - start by defining what cities you want to go to, then figure out what airlines fly there, then which programs are options for your miles.

Second, if "credit cards are not an option" you are not going to have an easy time getting the miles for a flight to Orlando, never mind Uzbekistan. Sure, you can go to Walmart or Target 10,000 times, but no matter how dedicated you are to churning little bits of miles, you are never going to accumulate a large enough stash to reach your goals.

The fact is - despite all the deceptive blogger hype and the enthusiasm (sometimes hysteria) you see on FT, you simply can not churn your way to millions of points & miles by the "MS" methods alone, at least not without dedicating your entire life to doing so. For one or two people, for a modest trip or two, MAYBE. But not for what you are hoping for, because...(my emphasis below)...



It sounds like you were sent here by The Great Bowtie. You need to do a reality check.

Go do a quick estimate of what you are really expecting to accomplish. How many miles do you think you will need to get 5 people to "Central Asia"? Be honest.

Do you think you are going to find 5 award seats to your destination at the "low" (saver/whatever) level? No, you are not. Check availability now and see how easy it is to get 5 seats. If you are willing to split up the party into smaller groups, that would help a little, but my guess is some of your party is probably kids who shouldn't travel to the other side of the world by themselves. Just remember that getting 5 awards seats ANYWHERE is generally not easy. You will be extremely limited in your airline and flight options to "Central Asia" (to Orlando, it would be easier, there are a million flight options). If it's even possible to get 5 award seats (which I doubt), you are probably going to have to pay double or triple for some of those seats - so be sure to factor that into your numbers.

And you want to generate all these points so you can go every 18 months.

All with no new credit card sign-ups. And using a single Ink card? Riiiiiight. Gonna be a lot of trips to Office Max for you (until Chase fires you and claws back all your points).

If you are lucky, it will take you years to generate and save up enough points to do what you want to do. By then, there will be a half dozen devaluations of the FF programs and you will then need 10 times more points. You will not be able to keep up with the number of miles needed. The airlines you hope to fly on will go bankrupt or merge or stop flying to Bishkek or will end their FF program.

I think you need to live in the real world, not the blogger/FT fantasy that makes people think they can jet off to the Maldives with their family all the time for pocket change. I am sorry to sound harsh, but you have been sold a handful of magic beans. You can thank the bloggers for that.

Time for Plan B. Good luck.
Thanks for the detailed reply and the reality check.
NetBrowser07 is offline  
Old Jan 6, 2015, 6:11 pm
  #11  
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Posts: 85
With only Chase Ink, I don't think it's possible. If each ticket were to cost 100 k (just throwing that number out there as a data point), you'll need to generate 28 k miles each month. Ink has a cap of 50 k spend for 5x on office items. There are one or two mile-earning debit cards, but that's not going to even come close to what you need.
brito11 is offline  
Old Jan 7, 2015, 7:08 am
  #12  
 
Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 1,837
Originally Posted by dukerau
50K this year, 50K next year, that's 500K miles.
how did you get 500k miles?
lumangoy is offline  
Old Jan 7, 2015, 8:48 am
  #13  
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
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Originally Posted by lumangoy
how did you get 500k miles?
50k spending at office supplies x 5 = 250k x 2 (years)
johnnie198x is offline  
Old Jan 7, 2015, 6:08 pm
  #14  
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Originally Posted by NetBrowser07
Looking to generate miles for 5 people to Central Asia from the U.S. Need these miles every 18 months or so.

Credit card applications are not an option. Have a Chase Ink so tried to do the Office store thing but probably won't be enough plus it's a lot of $200 cards to deal with every month.

Would re-selling be a viable option? Is there a forum/wiki for it?

Thanks in advance.
where in central asia you are looking to go? most of the times I see cash tickets are cheaper than cost to manufactured miles required for redemption unless you are flying business/first...
techoin is offline  
Old Jan 7, 2015, 6:18 pm
  #15  
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possible but very difficult w/o credit card apps. I am generating enough miles for 5 ppl to SE asia every year with all the possible methods (WM, Target, office supply stores e.t.c) plus ton of credit card apps for 3 persons. So far I have enough stash for this and next year.

ETA: I am heavily involved in both One world and star alliance so don't restrict yourself to just one carrier.
nadir576 is offline  

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