Convert MR points to BA/DL/ or CO
 

Just received my 75k MR points with the recent Amex Gold offer and could possibily get another 25k MR before the end of month.

Which would you convert 75k (maybe 100k) MR points to.

1)Delta have a bonus for 50% on MR points
BA also have the same bonus until end of this month
CO have no bonus offer yet but their partnership with Amex ends in Sept.

2)I believe all 3 (above) have free stopovers so they are equal at least on that issue.

3)I frequently fly to Asia the most and sometimes to Europe. I rarely fly domestic. My hometown is NYC.

4)My "feelings" right now lean toward CO at this moment even with no bonus for conversion as my biggest peeve about the whole FF programs is to fly as free from any fees as possible and to have as many available seats for FF offer by airlines.


Delta have a great bonus but heard their FF program is not the best as seats are not always available. Also heard their booking fees are higher, also need higher miles usage to get FF seats, and also charges the dreaded "fuel surcharge" to Asia or Europe.

BA also have a great bonus conversion until end of month but heard their "fuel surcharges" to Asia or Europe is very high, which is why I may not consider this for now.

CO (never flown them before) but heard they have more seats available for travel to Asia or Europe as their alliances with other airlines are greater. Also they have very low fees for booking and lower "fuel surcharges" to Asia.

So what do all of you think I should do?

Thanks

I think the consensus is: don't convert unless you have a specific award in mind that will be used right away. There are a few exceptions, like if there is a particularly good deal.

If you can get 100k points asap, delta has a promo for 100k transfer with 50% bonus and 25k EQM which would give you their first tier status. That is a great promo and worth hopping on. Only available if it is your first transfer though.

Continental will no longer be MR partner, and the last day to transfer is Sept 30 of this year. Currently Continental and United miles are interchangeable once you link your accounts through UA or CO website. Later this year the programs will be merged and it will just be United Mileage Plus.

So if you think you might want CO or UA miles, wait until Sept 29 or 30 to do it and see if you still want that. The Delta promo would be worth doing now, if you can transfer 100k miles. Otherwise wait until you have something in mind you want to redeem. Bonuses like the delta 50% pop up all the time, so don't worry about losing it.

you prob will find this article very useful:

http://thepointsguy.com/2011/07/whic...ways-or-delta/

I've been mulling over the same dilemma recently (I created a similar thread to this a couple of days ago at the other big frequent flier forum).

My two cents would be to forget about Delta, even with their bonus. (Is that still available?? I thought it expired already.) The only reason to ever pick Delta over BA or CO is if you wanted to go to Australia. In that case Delta would actually be the easiest way to get there. For any other destinations, Delta's award availability is absolutely terrible. I had about 150k skypesos at one point this year and after looking for ways to use them, I ended up just buying AmEx gift cards at ~1 cent/mile. This is how worthless Delta was... I may have just been unlucky with the precise destinations that I was looking at, but my overall impression is that Delta sucks.

Now, CO vs BA is much tougher to call.

The main features of CO are the 1 stopover and 1 open jaw, which I use to travel US-Europe-Asia-US, rough-the-world. I think this type of award is pretty awesome. You get to go to two different continents. Also, CO has very good availability overall and very low fees. Booking oneway awards on CO is generally not a good idea, because stopovers are not allowed.

The main feature of BA is the 50% bonus until the end of July. Using BA to get to Europe is in my opinion too expensive. However, you can fly US-Asia on Cathay via Hong Kong. Cathay flies to most Asian destinations and availability is good. Fees are generally around $150-200 each way. You could also use JAL similarly, though their fees are typically around $300 onewy.
A huge advantage of BA is that you can stop anywhere along the way (though you can only use 1 airline per booking, which usually means you can only stop at that airline's hub). Another big advantage is that you can book roundtrip awards as two stopovers. I recently booked ORD-HKG-TPE on Cathay and TPE-KIX-NRT-ORD on JAL. This cost me 75k for Cathay (1st class) and 50k for JAL (business). Being able to mix classes in this way is itself pretty good. But the overall mileage cost was itself really good. A round trip in business would be 100k, which means 67k MR points. The same trip with CO would've cost you 120k MR points!

You can also use BA miles to get to S. America with LAN. A trip like JFK-Lima-Santiago-Easter Island-Santiago-JFK, with stopovers at every place will cost you 40k BA miles in economy roundtrip, or 27k MR points. Moreover, with LAN you can pay with miles and cash, at a cost of about 1.5 cents per mile. So this is a good way to use leftover BA miles.

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Long story short, if you really want to fly to Europe and have no other points to use for that purpose, transfer to CO. If you're happy to fly to Asia or S. America, transfer to BA. BA will cost you almost 50% fewer MR points and you'll have to pay about $200-300 more for a roundtrip than with Continental.

If it weren't for the 50% BA bonus I would probably transfer to CO.

Very well said.

I've just redeemed for 300k BA miles and looking to fly F to hk and 1-2 more stops next year. I'm a bit confused as to how the unlimited stops work so if you have some stop ideas, please PM me or share. I'd thought about SFO-HKG-Sin-DPS.. on the map they look like they're direct routes and no back tracking but I dunno if that would fly. BA agent I spoke to was a bit impatient. Figured I'll call back when I have time.

Don't forget about Aeroplan. They also have had a transfer bonus. You can use these miles on Lufthansa, 90000 miles business class to Europe with two stopovers.And no fuel charges. Aeroplan has some of the best CSR and Lufthansa has some of the best availability.

If I want to take advantage of one partner awards with free stopovers to South America, I have to fly to LAX, NYC or MIA first. Similarly if I want stopovers on the way to Asia, I have to fly to JFK, LAX or SFO first. After buying the positioning ticket and extra fees on BA, I'd rather get CO miles. Just something to keep in mind for anyone else thinking about transferring to BA.

For domestic flights, BA for sure (to redeem on AA).

The rest depends on destinations. For my kind of travel (European destinations, medium-term advance booking, some originating overseas, some one-way awards) it makes a lot of sense to transfer to CO even without the bonus. I think Delta miles are worth about 50% less anyways since the medium bucket tickets cost 50% more in miles than CO/UA saver awards – which are actually available.

If you're going to Europe from a gateway city for short trips and don't mind being highly flexible, or can make spontaneous trips by booking at the last minute (last 2 weeks) then Delta could be a good way to go. If you can redeem at 60,000 roundtrip to Europe, that is great value. Although that is basically the same as AA off-peak to Europe (40,000 miles).

But my conclusion is basically I'd rather avoid all the hassle with DL skymiles. It might work in some situations, but for general flexibility in transatlantic flights CO/UA is the way to go if you're going to Europe (Australia is a different matter). I always travel economy though, and Delta's J redemption is supposed to be even worse.

Also after the UA Explorer card this week I think it's pretty obvious UA miles will be tough to come by (as they traditionally are), and since the AMEX agreement for Continental transfers is expiring in Sept., now is a great time to top up on new United miles with MR points.

I think the real problem is with these bonuses (BA/DL) and the transfer to CO expiring, there's a lot of time pressure to make transfers in the next few months and not just let them sit in your MR account. But I think only the transfer to CO is a real time pressure, since I think the BA/DL bonuses will be repeated (although how soon or how good is a question). But in general I think UA/CO miles are just a better "investment" if you don't have a specific itinerary available. BA and DL miles have some serious serious downsides. If you avoid them they can be great, but they might screw you in the future (YQ to Europe on BA, or non-availability on DL).

Yeah this is an insanely good redemption. 27k MR points for a trip to multiple South American capitals and a jaunt to a famous remote pacific island.

Are you saying that i can do JFK - FRA - HKG (stopover) - NYC with CO as one ticket? how many miles is it for business and/or first?

The problem with SFO-HKG-SIN-DPS is that you can't do it with a single BA partner, unless Cathay flies directly from SIN to DPS, which I don't think they do (I maybe wrong though).

The main constrain with BA stopovers isn't that they should be "direct routes", but rather that your stopovers have to be at partner hubs. So e.g. you can always stop at HKG if you're flying with Cathay, or you can always stop at NRT/HND or KIX/ITM if you're flying with JAL. To stop at SIN on your way to DPS, you would need to find a direct Cathay flight. If there isn't one (which I think is the case), then you could do SFO-HKG-SIN and DPS-HKG-SFO. So you'd need to purchase a separate SIN-DPS oneway flight, or book it as a separate inter-Asia award flight with BA or another airline.

Cathay and JAL both fly to ORD now, by the way. That's a pretty important addition to the list.
[And you're right about the domestic US flights. I forgot to mention this because I live in Chicago.]

Yep. E.g. I'm flying ORD-AMS(stop)-FRA-ICN-SFO(23 hour stop, does not officially count as a stopover)-ORD this summer. It's 65k/120k/140k roundtrip.

Did you piece that one together on CO.com or call that in? That sounds like a great redemption!

I have searched around for the Aeroplan bonus and cant find anything, do you have a link? thanks.

You have to call for anything more complex that a basic roundtrip award. It's an extra $25 to book over the phone.


There is currently no Aeroplan bonus. There hasn't been one for at least 2 years. I know, because I've been hoping for a while. I'm guessing whenever it last happened, it was a fluke.