question
 

i am going to go to bangkok and singapore next year, have gone for 3 years in a row, although coach, and i have not flown first class international in over 15 years or so, i was an airline brat, and so may i ask to the experts, is it better for me to go first class to south america, to southeast asia, or to europe? i am going to go to all of those places, what i am asking is for is which would i get" the most bang for my buck" and i will use points, i have done the denver challenge on united and am going for my second 90,000 miles bonus, i hope i can get those, my questions are: i want to stay awake the entire time as i do not want to sleep through it, and miss anything, if i want to sleep i go coach, lol lol, and would Singapore airlines be the #1 airline to take, and should i go first or business class? how much better is first than business, as when i flew first way back when, i do not remember a business class on the planes..... i have heard tha singapore is a nice airline to fly and the way i look at it, is i spent about 1,200-1,400 on the denver challenge and by the time all of the bonuses are added, i am about at 120,000 miles or so, the cost of a free first class ticket and i have seen some singapore first class tickets to asia for over or around $10,000 us dollars... so to me, it is a heck of an oppurtunity...thanks for everyone's input.

How about 20K AA intra-europe award?

This includes everything from Central Asia (armenia, georgia) to the Canary Islands!

I like the AA/Citibank reduced mileage awards to Canada. 17,500 miles for a coach ticket and the cities offered are usually YYZ, YUL and YVR. Once in awhile YYC appears. Tickets to Canada are generally $500. Received 20,000 bonus for applying for the AA CitiBusiness card and there is no fee for first year.

No question but that the old Delta FF awards are great. Upgrades for 5,000 miles on some fares (I upgraded RT to Bermuda a while back for 10,000 miles total), two FC to Hawaii for 75,000 etc. I just got two FC tickets from SDF to LAX for 50,000 (award is one FC for 25,000) next October. Normally, one FC domestic ticket would cost 45,000 miles.

As an SPG Plat if you have points available then transferring 40k would give you 50k BA miles (or 35k points --> 40k miles)...

BA97,

Good point - I had forgotten about SPG. Yes, I'm Plat with them.

One question, though - I signed up for BA 8-9 years ago and never flew them. Is my membership # still good? Looking at the BA site, it says that I would have to fly a BA flight first, before getting an Executive Club card/#.

SPG Platinum?
 

So why do you need to be Platinum to get the extra 5,000 miles? Any SPG member gets the bonus.

True...don't have to be Plat. Thanks -

Here's a great value for only 9K Diners Club points that many aren't aware of:

With the summer 50% BA bonus for 9K DC points you'd get 13,500 BA miles. BA allows 1-way coach awards for only 12,500 miles on their travel partner Alaska Airlines (but not AA) to any city they serve in the US or Canada so - in theory at least - you could get a one-way ticket from say Miami to Nome for only 9K DC points (if you had to buy a this ticket the cheapest 1-way purchased fare would be about $600) and you'd still have 1K BA miles left over! One thing to keep in mind about BA partner awards is that once ticketed they are absolutely positively non-changable - not even for a fee - so your plans had better be set in concrete.

That BA rule has been relaxed. :)

That sounds like good news, if you could elaborate a bit or include a link where the new "relaxed" rules can be found I'd really appreciate it. Thanks

This sounds very cool... I called AA about this. They said routing would be through DUB with Aer Lingus, LON with BA, or MAD with Iberia, but I wasn't asking about a BRU stopover. (I most certainly would on the way home, though! :p )

for 30k Maracaibo, Venezuela to lax then a stay in miami on the return. Mother in law gets to visit both kids. Usally prices out at about $1000-1200

The official terms and conditions still say no changes and no redoposit on partner awards.

The winner has to be using a WN companion pass on an award ticket