re: Credit Card Rewards and Points Discussion

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Checked UR and flights were approaching 2k a person with super long flight times and multiple inter Europe connections (granted long way out). Flying with two young kids so convenience of 1 stop factored into decision and My rudimentary math went like this, "I can get 4 people to Venice on a relatively short total duration for 100k miles and 90 bucks, sold"

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And that is 100% the right way to think. The only point I was trying to make is that the 25K to Europe is not a "get it or lose it" type deal but can be had any time you want it.

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Korean (with its wonky process)

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No longer wonky and can be booked online. Just need to add family members to your account first.

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Only booked one way to Venice. Not sure where want to fly back from but open to any suggestions in northern half of Italy.

ETA will have 140k UR, 90k Amex, 70k United.

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You aren't going to Florence/Rome? If yes, then I'd just fly back out of there instead of having to come back all the way.

United is 30K one way so any star alliance flight coming back is an option. I'd first search for the overwater leg then add domestic connections. So search for flights to New York (both JFK and EWR), ORD and IAH.

UR has access to all three alliances so really all you need to do is find the availability. oneworld will be highest in fuel but you can reduce those by transferring UA to BA then to Iberia (then fly out of MAD instead of LHR).

Korean no longer an option for you because they only allow round trips.

If anyone is trying to make it out to Jamaica, American Airlines has flights for $264 RT Slickdeals link


For reference taxes for a SW Points reward flight was ~$150 RT, so the "fare" is ~$110 which is a solid deal

Out of Miami only

There's always good sign up bonuses.

80K ink preferred is what comes to mind first.

1) & 2) Correct. I'd outright cancel both Ritz and Plat and downgrade CSPs to either Freedom or Freedom Unlimited

3) Yes. Downgrade ASAP

4) Yes but why would you do that and pay the additional fee + add to her 5/24 status? Just cancel your CSR and get her a new one. That way she gets the bonus points and you both still enjoy the benefits

5) Ritz - This one is tougher to use but anecdotal evidence suggests you should be able to buy $95 SW gift cards and call and request "pet fee" reimbursements. But this is YMMV to some extent. Personally, this is what I would do. Worst case scenario you have $95 in SW credit that never expires.

Plat - Buy $50 SW GCs for automatic reimbursements. Remember - you cannot change your selection of airline if you already have made that for this year anymore. If you haven't then you can choose SW.

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Also you can "hack" an Alaska award to get the 40K RT pricing throughout the year.

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If you don't want to post publicly, please email me how to do this. I checked in April and it's 20k from HNL to Paris as an example. I checked in late May and it was 27.5k-45k each way.

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3) Booking through Korean will get you the same exact flights and the price is 50K RT always in economy. 80K in biz.

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Might be good for me for biz since they won't charge more miles coming out of HNL. Looks like AS doesn't charge more either from HNL so that's good.

Also, you mentioned Korean can be done online now, how? I just called a month ago to hold flights for me to Sundance next year. I forwarded the paperwork to them last week with our ID's and Bonus Redemption Award and they just emailed me a couple days ago it's booked. I can do this all online and check availability through Korean's website now?

ETA: I went to Skypass and did a sample flight and got a message saying it's not sold online and to contact KA service center so I'm guessing I'm not at the right place.

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If you don't want to post publicly, please email me how to do this. I checked in April and it's 20k from HNL to Paris as an example. I checked in late May and it was 27.5k-45k each way.

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Nothing special. Just a bit advanced. Alaska allows 1 stopover each way when booking trips between 2 regions. All you have to do is "start" a trip in the off season. You can end that trip at anytime to make use of the off peak prices.

For ex for your trip to Paris: You could fly HNL-SLC in April, then fly ORD-CDG in May and the price of that trip when booked as one would be 20K points as Alaska will treat the time between SLC and ORD as a stopover. Now, ofcourse, it is a lot more complicated for you coming out of Hawaii. But for others on the mainland, a lot more practical. Especially with the 1 airline rule with Alaska.

Here is what a more practical scenario would look like:

Book LAX-JFK in April (stopover), JFK-CDG in May (destination). Pricing will be off peak and can be done all on AA.

Ofcourse, you will have to find your way back from JFK in April. But this is also a way of doing a free domestic one way. So you could replace JFK with wherever else you would like to/have to be.

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We're planning on doing MP next year I think. May ask for some recs from you. This is a good starting point for me to read and there's lots online

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Not a problem. You can flag me down in any thread.

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For biz class it really is worth it but it blows through points so quick. How did you have so many to do this trip and South Africa?

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Nothing too crazy besides rotating around between my wife and I for apps. I will say we do have pretty high income and therefore our spending generates a healthy bit. My wife was able to snag Reserve which was a big boost of course. She's also flying under 5/24 so we got her the Unlimited and she will get the 70k United bonus (2nd United card she would have had) in about a week when the 2 year period runs out from last bonus).

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How many miles/points did you go through for these trips just for airfare alone for you two?

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South America business class to Northern countries isn't that hard on the wallet either. Also, Peru was about 18 months since our last trip due to new jobs and new city. I guess combined is about 460,000 points. I probably have earned a handful thousands from paid flights though.

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What did you do to hack those airlines for the SA trip?

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I discovered that for a particular routing through the same cities and airlines, with one segment difference, United would show business award space and price at "X" but in another search would not and price at "X+Y".

The route I eventually booked was JNB-DAR-ZRH-JFK with SA airlines first segment and Swiss the rest. All Biz.

However, here is what happened. I was searching for alternatives to flying Economy back on Ethiopian Airlines and discovered some Swiss availability out of DAR via ZRH to JFK.

A generic JNB-Whatever-America = 80k miles like it should
DAR-ZRH-JFK priced at 80k, like it should. But I performed that search as simply JNB to JFK not using multicity.

JNB-DAR-ZRH-JRK priced out at 125k I believe whether I did it multicity or not. The JNB-DAR flight on South African Airline showing up as Economy only available. WTF I think.

I keep testing United new pricing structure that's working in the background these days, and do DAR-ZRH-JFK as multicity and it prices out at 125k instead of 80k, so I'm seeing that Multicity may be the problem.

So I think to myself, where does Swiss also fly into? MIAMI!
So I do a JNB-MIA search not using Multicity. Not only does it spit out as 80k, it uses the exact same routing except the last segment; JNB-DAR-ZRH-MIA. But here's the kicker, JNB-DAR shows up as Biz class when I perform this search, not Econ. I run both searches multiple times to confirm the discrepancy and call United.

I tell them it makes no damn sense that JNB-DAR-ZRH-JFK prices out at 125k with JNB-DAR in Econ while JNB-DAR-ZRH-MIA with all the same exact flight numbers w/ JNB-DAR now showing Biz class pricing out at 80k.

They agreed and manually booked my JFK route for me. What this tells me is, like always, the search engine isn't perfect, and to perform alternative routings to show them something is wrong. If I hadn't found the MIA route with the JNB segment inconsistency they probably would have told me tough shite.

Booking Africa has been a real hoot. On the outbound IAD-ADD-CPT flight the United search tool would show biz class but sometimes I'd get to the booking screen and it would error. Other times it would let me get there but I didn't have enough points. The United agent also couldn't see availability. So I took a leap of faith, transferred points to United, and mess with it until it let me get to booking and confirmed it. Essentially both legs would not have worked if I had quit at the first sign of website error

I've found out that I have zero patience for when things that should be easy become difficult, but almost limitless patience if I perceive it as difficult going in.

It's weird.

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80K ink preferred is what comes to mind first.

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This is the one I'm eyeing up next. It'll give me the trio:

CSR
Freedom
Ink

Thinking Vietnam in Feb and wanna use that 80k for a business class seat. I've never flown to Asia and as discussed by others above, I don't know how much I'll enjoy "roughing it" in economy on a 20 hour flight.