Hello, I didn't know where to post, but hopefully this is the right forum.

Goal:
I have 120K miles on British Airways, and 85k miles on American Express Gold.
I need to go to Korea from NYC one way in August, and would like to go using the miles

BA
BA does have routes, and their mileage points are good with under 50k miles for one way, but mileage mile purchase for this route is not available in August.

Iberia
I know I can transfer BA to Iberia, but Iberia does not have route to Seoul at all.

American Express
For American Express points, I tried Delta. They do have routes in August to Korea, but it requires 160k miles! Talk about over priced.


Does anyone have suggestion? It looks like Amex allows me to transfer to Asia Miles among other airlines.

Are they any good?

Any help will be appreciated.

Tony

As a volunteer moderator I've moved your topic over to the MilesBuzz forum as this is the better forum to ask for the kind of feedback your seeking.

tcook052
Mileage Run Forum Moderator

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Welcome to FT!

You can redeem BA Avios on any BA partner, including AA, CX, and JL, each of which serves Seoul. However, there are significant cash surcharges assessed when redeeming Avios on TPAC routes.

DL would be a poor choice, because DL charges roundtrip rates for a one-way redemption.

Another possibility is to look for "Saver" availability on United at united.com. If you find an all-UA itinerary, you can transfer MR points to Aeroplan, and redeem Aeroplan miles for UA award flights, surcharge free. (Aeroplan charges a little extra mileage for one-way redemptions, but there's no cash surcharge when redeeming on UA.)

Unless you wanted to open a United card, spend $2500 on it ASAP (in order to get you to 32,500 miles, which is what you'd need to book a one-way saver award from JFK>ICN), your best bet is prob to transfer your MR points to Aeroplan and book a one-way for 50K miles.

I did a quick search on Aeroplan, and there is availability in August on multiple days. Some options are better than others...for some (that I looked at), there is a 19 hour layover in Toronto, for others the layover is only a few hours.

I would book soon. August award availability to Korea can be difficult (in my experience...although we only really fly KAL to korea, so we don't have quite as much flexibility).

Edit: just FYI, I did search on United and there is a lot of saver award availability in August, if opening a United card is an option for you and you wanted to go that route.

+1

Transfer MR points to Aeroplan to book on UA. You could also use Aeroplan points to book on Air Canada or Asiana, though there will be a surcharge.

Thanks guys! I assume when you say MR, you mean american express. I will look into Aeroplan option right away!

There's a lot of availabilty on aeroplan from nyc to korea and for 50k miles. Awesome.
Thanks all!!

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Just be sure that the availability is on UA metal. If it's on AC metal, you'll be hit with hefty surcharges on the redemption.