I am great at finding deals in most things but this points/mileage thing reallly has me confused.

We (my DH, myself, 13 year old, 12 year old & 7 year old) has a Timeshare week planed for June in Cancun. I have 114,874 AMEX points. We live in Northen CA. so we could fly out of Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose or Sacramento. When I call the airlines they tell me "well it is 70,000 points now but it could be 25,000 later" What is the best way to utilize my points to get the best deal? When should I shop for my flight. Am I too early? Why is it 70,000 now and 25,000 later? How do I know how many points to transfer?

I would appriciate any education you could give me on this.

Thank you,
Theresa

It is hard to talk about the mileage difference without knowing which airlines you contacted.

Mileage from Amex should only be transfered when you have a reservation on hold. This way you know there is a flight available that will work for you. As far as Delta, miles cannot be transfered back to Amex.

Just in general, the availability of "saver" awards versus unrestricted awards may be affecting the miles required. Most airlines will have a saver award (that can be purchased with less mileage but is heavily capacity controlled) and an unrestricted award (for a higher cost in miles you eliminate most restrictions). If the saver awards are gone then you would be relegated to the higher mileage award to get your tickets. Sometimes airlines will open additional saver awards as the flight gets closer (based on ticket sales and other factors), which is why the agent may have told you to call back later.

With MR, in addition to transferring points to certain programs for miles, you can also redeem MR for travel certificates (such as on Frontier). You might also consider checking with Aeromexico and Mexicana.

Five minimum level award tickets is a tall order on most carriers and if you have a specific week that you have to hit -- and probably specific DAYS for travel -- then you might not have the luxury of being able to wait around to see if your seats open up. You might be better served to shop for good fares for some of you and then be prepared to bite the bullet with the higher point requirement seats if you want to hold out for a couple of them. (This assumes you will have the points to cover that by the time you need to pull the trigger.)

I fly continental. Go to their website. Contintental.com, Up at the top gray tab area Travel Center > Reservations> Reward Travel> put your city pairs in and dates you want to travel and number of passengers. Flight details will come up with a calendar. It will show you availibility for two months. Usually 25000 mile reward rquires sat stay roundtrip travel and is for domestic flights. Anything over the water is going to be more. In any event the calendar will show you when those types of rewards are available. If you are not traveling with a sat stay the reward jumps to 50000, again this is domestic.
Amex usually takes 72hours to transfer but for a small fee you can now do that on Continental.com and the transfer will be immediate. If you have a problem call their web help desk the number is on the web.

Pananna