iowa guy

I am trying to find a way to use miles/points for a r/t DSM - LIR trip.

I am not yet too familiar with how to use Star Alliance to book flights. My goal is to find out if I can use less miles with a Star Alliance member than I would have to use when booking with United Airlines.

Is there a quick way for me to do this or do I have to check with each Star Alliance member to see how many points/miles they need for this flight?

I don't have enough UAL miles to do this trip but I do have enough Chase Ultimate Rewards that I could transfer to an airline that could book this route for less miles.

dvs7310

Lot's of ways to go about answering your question, none perfect of course.

First I think the best point to get out of the way is that there aren't Star Alliance Miles nor booking though Star Alliance. There are 26 airlines in the alliance with their own unique mileage programs, and earning / award chats. Each alliance member can in theory book seats on flights for the other alliance members, however some of those seats may be limited outside their own programs (I.E. LX F, SQ C and F, etc.). Some Star Alliance programs also have expanded award availability to only their own members, sometimes at standard rates, sometimes at higher rates (UA is a good example).

So, while in theory, other Star programs may have better redemption rates for DSM-LIR, due to Geography and only 4 Star Alliance members in the Americas region, for LIR you're mostly bound to actually flying on UA flights. UA has dynamic redemption pricing, so it means much of what you see on United.com is not actually available to other Star Alliance programs (saver level only is available to other members). I suppose you might be able to piece together something using UA to a gateway of CM and use them for the international segments, but domestic UA availability is hard to find on partner programs as well and of course CM doesn't fly to Iowa, or even Chicago if memory serves correctly. (AV, formerly TACA and LACSA pre-merger doesn't seem to fly to LIR, nor the parent airline via BOG)

With Chase Ultimate Rewards, your only Star Alliance choices are UA and SQ which are identical as far as miles required on a Saver Award. So if you already have some UA miles then you'd be best just topping up with your Chase points and using that.

Chase points can also be transferred to BA and AF, so it does give you OneWorld and SkyTeam options (pretty sure AA and DL both fly to LIR during normal schedules). This is the benefit of the credit card transferrable points like Chase, Amex, Citi, and CapOne, is that you're not tied to any alliance, especially if redeeming for business class (which should be the default in most circumstances, usually economy redemptions are a very poor value.)

Hope that helps, for Star Alliance, almost certainly UA is going to be your only option, and if not, it and SQ KrisFlyer will price the same. If it were me, I'd look at your dates and compare mileage pricing using UA MileagePlus, BA Avios, and AF Flying Blue then divide and conquer. Also what's the ticket price? Don't forget that Chase points can be used like cash in their travel portal with a 20% bonus.

Mwenenzi

Post 2 is good

Look here---> https://www.awardhacker.com/
Does not have all airline ffps'.
Is very general. May not take into account the detailed award rules.
Joining a new ffp and immediately getting an award is an issue with some ffp's

A map from Great Circle Mapper - Great Circle Mapper
What is the cash price?

Credit card transfer links

• Credit, Debit and Prepaid Card Programs forum
  
• Amex MR Transfer Membership Rewards points to which airline or hotel program?
  
• Chase UR Ultimate Rewards - Airline and Hotel Transfer Partners, Rules, Timeline, etc (2017)
  
• Chase UR Ultimate Rewards - Which airline/hotel should I transfer points to?
  
• Citi TYP Citi ThankYou Points (TYPs): airline transfer partners
  

iowa guy

To say the very least, that helps a lot! I completely forgot (if I ever knew) that using the Chase portal allows a 20% bonus for the points.The ticket price is only $550 to $600 a piece but it definitely helps.

Mwenenzi

To me $600 for a return flight 2x 2187 miles (~5hr each way) would be better value than using ff miles plus taxes

iowa guy

Are all Chase Ultimate Rewards eligible for the 20%, regardless of the card they are associated with? I closed my CSR and put all my rewards in my Chase Ink Business Preferred.

dvs7310

That's a good question, I'm pretty sure the Ink Business is the same as the Sapphire cards in terms of Ultimate Rewards. Just log in and check the portal, if it shows you a points total then you're good to go.