Does my plan sound good for an international student beginner?
 

Hello everyone:

I am a graduate student living in U.S. for two years. I have explored this amazing FlyerTalk forum for several weeks. Some threads really help me a lot.
I have a plan for myself and would like to hear your suggestions.

My background:
1. Age:25, Credit Score: 727, the credit history: 10 months.
2. The credit card I have: Starwood_AMEX, Delta Gold_AMEX,Premier Rewards Gold Card_amex.
3. Living in Kalamazoo, MI (Only has AA, Delta), but I could fly from Chicago.
4. Fly less than 5 times in a year within US, to some travel attractions.
5. Monthly cost is $1000

My current objectives: Get an free round trip business class ticket from Chicago to China (Beijing) every 1.5 or 2 years.

My plan:
1. Stick on American Airline (AA has a new line from ORD-Beijing).
2. Apply for a Citi AA card (For sign-up bonus, but can't churn any more).
3. Use SPG Card for every spend, then transfer to AA.
4. Be realistic, don't think of elite status and Lounge access.

Extra questions:
1. I have 14K UA Miles, 2K delta miles, how do I deal with that?
2. If my parents visit me from China, can I count their miles into my account?

Is my plan best choice for me? Or are there any other better choice?
Thank you so much for reviewing my post. Any suggestions are welcome!:p

Flyingbear

I like extra points for extra questions, so here I start: :D

1). If you can't or don't plan to build up your Delta miles to 25K, you may consider donation your Skymiles to charity. Skymiles are difficult to redeem anyway.

Same with UA. However, you are in time for the new one-way domestic award (12500 miles). If you can find availability and get yourself another one-way ticket back, you are all set. Give the remaining to charity.

Plenty of charities take miles donation. Just ask Mr. Google and pick the one your heart desires.

2). No, you can't deposit others' flown miles into your own FFP account, even when they are your parents. However, if you charge their tickets on your Amex SPG, you get to keep the purchase SPG points.

Welcome to FT!

It will be hard to meet your objectives, but you're providing all the data, and that helps. AA is really your only choice because DL has very poor international award availability. The UA and DL miles will realistically not be very usable.

You can sign up for a number of promotional offers from time to time to help get miles. AA has a diners AAdvantage that gives points for restaurants. There are banks that give points for signup and balances. The best way to find out about all those is to go online to AA.com and look up all the ways to earn miles. That will help a lot. Then you need to examine your strategy.

AA does not permit family members miles to join in one account. Another One Wrold carrier British Airways, does. You can have your parents join and those miles will be far more than you otherwise might get. That, however, has fewer ancillary earning choices, but all your AA miles can apply. Check that one at BA website.

Good luck!

Thank you for your prompt reply. Do you mean AA is my only choice even if I fly from Chicago?

Thank you.

Thank you so much for reminding me the one-way award!:D

You've gotten some excellent advice from those who have already replied. I'll share some additional thoughts.

AA may not be your only choice, but in my opinion, it's your best choice. Not only will you have access to direct flights to China on American, but might be able to snag award travel on OneWorld partner Japan Airlines. Before AA had direct flights from Chicago to Beijing, we got business seats on JAL via Tokyo (a small inconvenience), returning from Shanghai on AA's direct flight to Chicago.

I also agree with the earlier suggestions of finding other ways to rack up miles, like AA dining rewards and doing your online purchases through AA eShopping. If you want some additional advice, please feel free to consult my free tipsheet published at

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17745143/F...Flier-Tipsheet

I'm not sure how practical it will be to hope for tickets even in the second year, since the best time to book award travel is 330 days in advance of the desired flight date, and you will not likely have enough miles to do that in the first year.

For what it's worth, I think your proposed plan to use SPG Amex whenever you can and AAdvantage MasterCard otherwise is excellent. My recommendation, however, would be to retain your SPG points in your SPG account and not transfer them to AA as you go. That way, if this plan doesn't work and you relocate and find some other airline better suited to your needs, you can transfer your SPG points at that time to the other airline's program.

This may be a long shot, but if your parents can get a Starwood AMEX in China, SPG allows the transfer of points between family members at the same address. If they can get the card, you can turbo-charge your points by having them do all their purchases on their Starwood AMEX (they will also get the sign-up promotion, so they should each have their own account and not share a joint one) and then transfer their points to you if you still use their address as yours.

Did you check to see if you graduate school accepts credit cards? If so, you may be able to request a one-time increase in your credit limit to take advantage of that. Just be sure they're not charging a service fee. If they do, it's not worth it.

Good for you for starting this at an early age. I see lifetime Gold status in your future! Good luck.

This is a minor detail - but don't necessarily give up on your UA and DL miles. You never know what will change in the future.

There are ways (like shopping portals) to credit a few miles to those accounts (like once every year or two) and you will keep the account open and active, even if you don't fly them at all for now.

Do some MR. Participate in AA Plat Challenge and get Plat.

Do more MR.

You can accumulate a bunch of AAdvantage miles quicker than you thought.;)

Thank you so much;), But What is MR??

oops brain working backwards this morning

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8703e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/104)

giggy, I think you got the math wrong. You can convert 30,000 AAdvantage miles to 60,000 HHonors points (for a $30 conversion fee). But you cannot convert 30,000 HHonors points into 60,000 AAdvantage miles.

14K UA miles could get you a one-way domestic (actually including Canada) award ticket. So if you find an extremely good airfare for city pairs, you could just buy the ticket, and use your 14K miles to redeem for ticket to the origin city or from the destination city.

Not sure how much flight miles you'd earn, your $1k/month spend on credit card (CC) might not earn enough miles to support a RT business class award for TPAC every 2 years. You can probably pull if off the first year with sign-on bonus miles but don't expect to repeat it every year (that is, without churning, you cannot count on earning enough miles).

AA is an excellence choice; however you can also consider UA for ORD-PEK. There is an ongoing CC promotion with 50K UA miles, search the UA forum for details. Either one would be viable choices. If your parents don't have their own FFP needs, have them sign up for BA (if going with AA/OneWorld) or BD (if going with UA/StarAlliance) and credit their PEK-ORD flight miles there, as both BA and BD allows family accounts.

Last but not least, I hope you meant to redeem the biz class awards for one of the parents to travel in style. We, the young people, are a better fit to endure the lengthy transpacific flight in coach than the elderly.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8703e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/104)

+1 to the suggestion about the current Chase/United Visa 50,000-mile bonus offer. Act quickly if you are interested in pursuing this. And United offers service from both GRR and SBN.