Lkar,

You make an excellent and logical argument.

I also wouldn't normally buy a coach ticket and use miles to upgrade, but SQ is currently selling S-coded coach tickets for $1,860 that allow me to make over 30,000 Continental EQMs (at 150% EQM credit). It's a decent mileage run (2.4 cents per eqm) in a year where I expect to struggle to re-qualify for 1K. The upgrade to biz will cost me 170,000 SQ miles with the 15% online discount.

If I wasn't concerned with requalifying for 1K then I would completely agree.

I make that comparison, too, but it's always on a cpp basis. With SPG, if I can get 4 cpp or better, I use the points. There's always devaluation risk, and with my travel habits, that's probably the probably the right balance between using them and getting value out of them.

Hmm... thanks for the advice. I did check out TA and the FT threads on the two properties before I booked, and the more I think about it, the more I'm leaning toward the Sheraton. (We're not going until the end of Sept... plenty of time to decide.) When you're out and about all day, the out of the way location makes it hard to pop back in for a little R&R in the middle of the day. Also, there's some advantage to having the local restaurants and night life right outside your hotel...

W drives me nuts... I like the concept, but in more than a few places, the location down right sucks. Hip and trendy doesn't work so well if it's isolated.

Oh, I know. And I think that's one of the larger points of the thread -- sometimes, points find you. Another point is that for as much as one tries to compare them, comparisons only go so far.

Part of that stash of 900k miles is almost 300k AA miles... I'm using those for our 2013 trip. We're thinking about doing the Maldives, where we can get to CMB as Part of an Asia 2 award (BA zones it as India/Middle East.)

We have the same relocation problem that you do, living in DC. But we're a hop, skip and a jump from JFK and ORD, so it's not terrible. Also, don't forget that if you're arriving JFK, you'll likely have to overnight there. And you're right about the expense factor -- we're looking at about $1500 for repositioning and YQ costs. Not cheap, but I'm not going to pass up our first opportunity to experience CX F, either.

But for me, the alternative (using Avios points under the new scheme) isn't all that advantageous. That only works really well if one lives in an AA hub city, which I don't. As for the European bit, It's probably going to be 4-5 years before we get over there, and I'd rather not sit on that many points for that long.

Good point -- for people for whom RDM is not the be all and end all but instead are most focused on status and maintaining it, Amex can be the better option if what you are hoping for is to upgrade to the front part of the plane to make mileage runs for status more comfortable.

Nope. Go open all those credit cards for yourself

I just wanted to throw in there that it's only been the last couple of years when I truly jumped on the international travel/RDM/credit card bandwagon (despite the fact I've been on here for, oh, 10 years.) When I was an elite with NW, I could have cared less about RDM's. It was all about EQM's 100% of the way. I think I went about 4 years without redeeming any tickets for myself, and I even gave away some miles to family, cause I thought 500k was too many NW miles to sit on.

Once I relocated back east and my travel patterns changed, I decided it was time to start burning miles before they weren't worth anything. I'm glad I did, because we all know what DL did...

Now it's time to do the same with the credit card miles

It also can work out if you're flying to a hub city. One of the things I did when the Avios changes were made is take a look at where AA flies direct from my city -- even though it's only DFW, ORD and MIA, the redemptions are still good enough that I could see using Amex for them. I wouldn't typically use miles for this kind of domestic travel, but given that BA does bonuses on Amex transfers fairly often, I think it's good to have some on hand. A 12k Amex transfer right now is 16k, and 15k is enough for a RT to DFW for me. I would never spend 25k AA to go to Dallas, but for a $350 flight, getting close to 3 cpm for Amex if I'm not in the mood to come out of pocket isn't bad.

In this specific example you might want the flexibility to transfer to AC -or- NH because AC used zone based redemption charts while NH uses distance based charts. More generally, you are better off with multiple transfer partners in the same alliance because airlines change their programs and the reward you want may be repriced when UA devalues to match their competitors.


Indeed, it is ironic to read threads extolling the superiority of Mileage Plus after years of complaints about StarNet blocking .

All true. For example, right now, Aeroplan is offering pretty significant discounts on award redemptions. Coupled with the current Amex transfer bonuses, you can get some smoking deals right now. If I were looking for an award right now, I would much rather have the ability to transfer to Aeroplan, notwithstanding the surcharge. Tomorrow, it might be UA. Next month it might be ANA. To have concentrated in UR right now to the exclusion of Amex would leave you on the outside looking in of the Aeroplan promo.

The recent changes to Avois and Aeroplan, to be sure, have taken away some of the lustre of MR, but just as quickly as that happened, it can quickly go the other way. Some people have tens of thousands of dollars in spend every month and so can build up balances in MR or UR very very quickly if needed. For the rest of us, diversification is a good thing IMO, and anyone who advocates one of the programs at the exclusion of the other might be doing you a disservice. If your accumulation is such that you must choose and concentrate on one of the two, you have to make a judgment on how likely things are to remain static. I don't think Amex is going anywhere on their charge card loyalty programs, and I also think airlines have not been hesitant lately to make substantial changes on very short notice. While UR might be ahead by a nose at this point, I don't think Amex is just going to go away.