I'm looking for some help from more experienced members to maximize my points.

I have a trip from LA to DC at the end of the month.

A non-stop from LAX to IAD on United costs $400. I have 21k Continental miles, 0 United miles. I have 80K Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points, and my wife has 11k Chase Ultimate Reward points.

I see several options:

1. Pay cash

2. Use wife's 11k points, book through UR and pay the difference, around $230

3. Use my points and book through UR, around 32k points

4. Transfer my CO points to United, transfer 4k UR points and get a domestic flight award.

5. Transfer 25k UR points to United and get a domestic flight award.

It seems as if options 4 and 5 are comparable and thats what I'm leaning towards. Am I maximizing my points/miles? I appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you have.

ps. I'm hoping to save up points / miles to be able to use for international first class travel late this year/early next year.

$400 vs 25k is a poor value for points (<2 cpm)... I'd take the $400 transcon.

Are the 25k mile tickets even available on your dates?

Folks here will tell you to pay cash and continue saving your points for international first class travel.

Using 25000 points for a $400 ticket is by no means the worst possible way to spend your points, but you're still only getting 1.6 cents per mile.

On international first class, on the other hand, you'll find yourself getting an effective value of something on the order of ten cents per mile or more.

Thanks for the feedback. I was under the impression that as long as I got 1c / mile then, I was good.

What is sort of value for the mile should I be looking for domestically?

I should have asked for help before using my miles last time (2 tix for 50k vs $800 cost).

Looking at the award charts, it looks like I get more bang for my miles by booking award travel through alliance members.

The common pattern of thought is that you get the most bang per mile on international, premium cabin redemptions. Getting much more than 2cpm domestically is pretty hard (as usually, when fares are sky high [due to demand, not PMCO's silly minimum stay rules ], UA award availability is scarce.

You might be confounding that with international travel in general. The low "saver" awards on UA/CO cost the same as Star Alliance awards in terms of miles.

I travel internationally and want to fly in premium cabins. I therefore use my miles for those types of redemptions. $400 r/t for a transcon is not enough to spur me to use miles.

If you realistically may not use your miles (after all, about 3/4 of people do not use their airline miles at all) then go ahead and book the domestic ticket using miles. Deferring the use of miles for an international biz/first ticket only makes sense if you will actually book that trip.

I know I will, so that's what I do with my miles, but many a year a go I lost more than 100,000 miles because I was one of those idiots who let miles expire. . . and I now wish I had used them for any purpose, including domestic tickets.

Great insight. Since I don't travel as much as I would like - very little business travel and about 4-5 times a year for personal travel, I think it may take me a long time to gather the necessary miles and points for my international first class trip (well, to cover the entire family of 3). A lot of my miles have come from credit card offers.

I think I might just use the points for the award travel. When I checked, there was an award ticket available - worst case, I'll just pay the cash. I appreciate the insight that you all have given.

is there a few threads / blogs that you would recommend to get a better understanding of how to maximize miles for international travel (business / first)?

I would just go to continental.com and plug in some international destinations you may consider going to get a sense of award availability. From the U.S., Europe is 50K/67.5K in biz/first, and SE Asia is 60K/70K biz/first. Cheap award availability is pretty good from U.S. hubs to international destinations. The domestic trip to get to the hub is usually where the award availability is lacking. Good luck!

I just booked a business (except for one leg) round-the-world trip for 187.5k miles and, given the prevailing fares for those legs, it works out to six cents per mile. Given that I wasn't planning far enough in advance for best results and had limited miles to spend, I thought I did pretty good for a first-timer on international mileage awards.