Best use out of Chase Sapphire Card

I see no one has responded so I'll do my best even though I haven't yet redeemed through Chase Sapphire but have slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

But really, I've read a lot about the program.

First off, it would be helpful if you told us where you are going. You can't just give blanket advice on how best to redeem your points. Do you want to fly first class or economy? When are you going? etc. Any preferred airline or just want the best deal?

This is all important because the best value of your Sapphire points is NOT to book through chase at 1.25 points per $. The best value is to transfer the points to airline partners and then book through the airline. Also, the more expensive the ticket, the more "value" you get with those points, but that's only if you would actually want to fly the expensive first class seat, which you may since it is your honeymoon.

Lastly, when you are going is very important. I can't tell you if award seats are going to be available for a flight 3 months from now. The general wisdom is they are available 330 days out and then when the flight gets close, as the airline wants to fill the seats. Also, who knows if you will have enough points or value with them, in which case you might want to pay this out of pocket and save them for the next trip, etc.

I recommend you Google some travel blogs that talk about the Chase program and familiarize yourself with the program before you end up getting shitty value for the money you spent.

Well, I had to sort of guess how long you were staying.

I tried booking award travel through United, which should also check all the Star Alliance companies, and found nothing particularly good there.

Checked Delta, which has award flights from MSY to UVF for 55,000 points plus $60 in taxes. Dates were March 8 to March 16 2014. Again, I have no idea what dates you are looking for. Also looks like some massive layovers, but there was a 65,000 point option that didn't have that.

You'd have to transfer your points from Chase to Korean Airlines and then book, since Korean is a Chase partner that is part of Skyteam with Delta.

I stopped looking after finding this. As its a lot of effort to try to find the best deal. Again I suggest you learning more about the program.

I have the Chase Sapphire and have used points for a car rental. I have points saved for a future vacation.

Sometimes I get a better rental car rate through the site than I can even with my corporate discount code.

For a lot of airline flights, you are better off transferring the points for miles at a 1-1 ratio. I know they do this with United. As an example, from my home, a flight to Hawaii is a minimum of $900, and that is if you are effing lucky. You can get there on 40k United miles most of the time. Those 40k points are free to transfer, and would only equate to $480 towards the purchase of a ticket through their system. The points I was talking about having saved are going to be used exactly like this. 120k gets my family to Hawaii next business trip I have there.

Similarly, if you ball out w/ points, if you saved 320k and transferred to Marriott, you would get a week at a Category 7 hotel, plus 120k airline miles to your airline of choice. Again United is usually best on points, so you are looking at about a 2-3k hotel stay, plus enough airline miles to get you where you need to go more than likely.

Also, make sure you book what you can through their site when paying because you get an extra point per dollar. However, keep in mind that you always pay up front when doing that.


In summary, save the points, plan with the points, and compare to see if you are better off transferring them to a loyalty program.

I think the trick every one tries to do is transfer to British airways Avios points and then use those points on american. It's the main way people get around the domestic redemption problem.

I find one way tickets on delta or American all the time for $125-150 (each way)

I could spend the same amount if converted to miles but then I would not get the miles / segments for actually flying

DCA -> OAK is consistently $250ish on Delta... But I don't know why one would go to OAK