Doing a multi-destination trip via FF miles
 

I am a newbie to posting though I've lurked on the forum for years.

I have an upcoming trip that is:
IAH>LAS
LAS>SFO
SFO>IAH

This is pricing anywhere from $450-500 so I'd like to consider using points or miles. I've never attempted a multi-city trip using miles and would love some advice on if this is possible.

I have the following "stock" at my disposal:
Delta 138k
Continental 97k
AmEx Membership Rewards 94k
Qatar Airways 60k

The closest way I can find to do a multi-destination trip would be to use the AmEx points, but that's $0.01/point which is not a great deal.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Delta is your best option for this. The multi-city search allows you to plug in your segments, and this trip should price up at 25k miles (assuming you find "low" availability). In order to find that availability, search for individual round trips and identify flights that show up at the 25k level. Then, use the multi-city tool, and select the "low" flights you identified.

Welcome to FT!

if dl or co or other do 1 way awards like aa & ua, then its 3 half mi price awards.....if all you can do is rt awards, then you could do an open jaw iah-las & sfo-iah & buy las-sfo....good luck...

ps....you are stopping at las & sfo?..

There'd be a one-night stay in LAS. It'd be great if I could just do an overnight layover there and use it as a one-way IAH-SFO that stopped in LAS but I don't believe any airlines do that route.

It might be easiest to do openjaw on CO. IAH-LAS + SFO-IAH.
For LAS-SFO, bite the $49 bullet with SW. UA also does LAS-SFO but does anybody do one-way awards besides AA?

America West did it. It's now USAir, a CO partner. Check IAH-LAS-SJC or IAH-LAS-OAK too.

ANA's redemptions are often best for something like this - they calculate mileage needed based on the miles flown, and you can book as many legs as you want (up to 12, I think) within that limit. Additionally, since they are a *A member, you can use the miles for US, UA or CO flights within the US, making this perfect for a multi-stop trip around a region of the US. For a trip as shown above, IAH-LAS-SFO-IAH, according to milecalc.com, it is 3271 miles. On ANA, any redemption itinerary that is 2001-4000 miles in length costs 22,000 ANA miles. I did this for a multileg itin last summer (LAS-SFO-EUG(stop)-SFO-ORD(stop)-LGA) for the same amount and it worked wonderfully. I'm going to assume that you're unfamiliar with transferring MR and booking through ANA, so I'll list out the general steps.

1-Open an ANA mileage account. (http://www.ana.co.jp/asw/wws/us/e/)
2-Confirm availability. Once you log in, on the bottom left of the home page, there's a pull-down menu titled 'Award Redemption'. Select 'Award Reservation' and click GO. Click 'Use Star Alliance Member Airlines'. In order to book multi-city trips, click on 'Flight Search' on the bottom of the page. On the next page, enter in your cities and desired dates and click next. (Keep in mind that if there is only availability using connecting flights, then you will have to recalculate the mileage that you trip will be, and make sure to keep it under 4000 miles.)
3-Once you see that there is availability, then you can transfer your MR points. Log into your Amex account, and transfer the points to your ANA account through the 'Transfer Points' section on the MR page. They transfer 1:1, so you'd need 22k MR points per passenger.
4-Unfortunately the process of transferring miles takes approx ~2 business days (although Amex says it could take 5-7 days). Beware that if within those 2 days availability disappears, the miles will be stuck in ANA's program, and you'll have to use them from there. Therefore, try to pick days in which there are multiple options, or have backup flights to book.
5-Once the miles show up in your ANA account, repeat step #2, and then actually book. You only pay the 9/11 fee (something like $2.50/leg), and changes are completely free, as long as they don't have to reissue the award (meaning same routing, origin destination, stopovers, etc...). However, date changes are free, subject to availability. If you wanted to, actually, since your itin comes in 729 miles short of the limit, you could even book some flight for the future that is under 729 - basically anywhere within the circle from IAH: Great Circle Mapper. Keep in mind though that ANA classifies anything under 24 hours as a layover, so if your stop in LAS is under 24hrs, you'll only be able to change it for free to another flight <24 hrs after landing in LAS. Any other changes cost 3000 miles (which can also be transferred from MR if needed).

Everyone's standards are different, but a $450-500 domestic ticket is nowhere near my threshold for redeeming miles. (The ticket would have to be closer to $1000, and it would have to be for a trip I absolutely needed to take, otherwise I just wouldn't go.)

In the current market, $450-500 is not too bad for a multi-segment itinerary such as yours, especially if the alternative is using 25K miles.

Whoa! I looked at ANA, and from what your telling us and their website, it looks like I can book PDX-OGG-PDX and PDX-LAX-PDX (<7000 miles total) for 38,000 miles. So I can get a Hawaii RT and a LAX RT for less than the usual 40K? :eek:

Two problems:

1-You have to look at the mileage for applicable routes. Since there is no *A airline that flies PDX-OGG direct, you'd have to route it via SFO or LAX, making the journey PDX-SFO-OGG/OGG-SFO-PDX/PDX-LAX-PDX = 7444 miles --> 43,000 miles. And then the question becomes, since anything up to 9000 miles stays at that 43k mileage level, you could go someplace further than LAX.

2-Unfortunately, ANA has realized that this scheme would allow an add-on of extra RTs to get to the upper limit of their mileage ranges allowable, so they have implemented a rule: 'The place or country of original departure cannot be used as a transfer point to a final destination.(A_RULES_5A_007A)', ie, you can't transit through your origin en route. This would make it not possible to do 2 RTs originating in the same place. However, a routing like PDX-SFO-OGG/OGG-SFO-EUG/EUG-SFO-LAX-PDX (7299 miles), or something like EUG-SFO-OGG/OGG-SFO-PDX/PDX-LAX-PDX(7345 miles) would be perfectly acceptable. Of course, it's up to you to decide if that's worthwhile.

EDIT: Also, keep in mind certain nuances of the ANA program. Miles expire after 3 years. Also, technically, you can only use your miles for someone related to you within 2 generations (https://www.ana.co.jp/wws/us/e/asw_c...u/tokuten.html that you register on the site, although YMMV as to if they actually check that. Before transferring into ANA, I'd urge you to read up on their program and all the conditions.

Those two rules make things a little more complicated, but they make the kind of puzzle I like!

I have one more question (now that I have hijacked this thread - sorry!). Is there a time limit between the flights booked using one award? For example, can I fly to OGG in May, and then to LAX (or wherever) in October? I am assuming that I book both flights at the same time.

Thanks for your help!

Yeah, I believe any of your flights can be whenever until the end of schedule. Also, since date changes are free (up to 7 days before departure), you can change it to whenever you want within the validity period of the ticket (1 year after issue).

Also, another restriction is a maximum of 4 stopovers (defined as anything longer than 24 hours).

No worries - I'm glad to help!

I'm not sure how you value time vs. cost, but if time is not of concern, I wonder whether transfer points from AMEX MR to BA, then redeem on AA flights could work for you. I recall people mentioning BA mileage redemption rules for domestic travel is quite friendly (i.e., multiple stopovers within the US). Study the BA redemption rules before you take any further action.

[edit to add] Just read the post by dinosims and agree using ANA is better than BA for the OP, since BA would require 25K miles and using *A carrier is more direct routing for this trip.