filmwill

Oh boy, do I hate mileage programs!

I've spent the greater part of the last week trying to figure out how best to use the various and sundry miles we've accumulated over the past few years for our return trip to SEA next November...and I'm happy to report that I'm about yea-close to pulling every strand of my hair out.

Hoping you avid airline buffs can give us some advice. Here's the breakdown of our mileage right as it stands now across the programs:

UNITED: 80k
CONTINENTAL: 93k
DELTA: 95k
AMEX REWARDS: 60k

So as you'll see, we could move those 60k Amex points to either Continental or Delta (but not United) and have enough to fly to Asia...hypothetically But of course that's not the way it seems to be working out.

For starters, it doesn't seem like we have enough in United to do anything with--and Amex isn't partners with them so that seems like a dead end (even though they have the most options for mileage use to Asia from LAX.)

Continental doesn't even fly to BKK--and I see on their website that either Northwest stops flying there in May 08...or their partnership with NWA to fly there ends then. Either way--also a dead end.

Delta wants to put us on a KAL flight from LAX to Incheon to BKK for 60k each...with like a 14 hr layover. I've heard KAL stinks--so that doesn't seem like a great option.

I look at all these options and I wonder if it just makes more sense (although I really didn't want to spend that much again this year) to just buy tickets outright on Thai's direct flight from LAX and not even mess with this mileage business. That's kinda depressing as I really thought we had enough to get there...and that's a huge portion of our trip budget. I'm sure EVA's cheaper, but we've done that twice already and was hoping for a change of scenery.

This is extremely frustrating--seems like you can't use miles nowadays unless you have a stockpile of 300k miles to burn or you want to fly to BKK via Oslo and Cairo...so any advice or brilliant suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Craig

Well, all I know about is United. You have 80,000 miles. You could "buy" an additional 40,000 miles for $1110 and then redeem the 120,000 total for two economy tix on Thai from LA - at least its a lot cheaper than 2 econ tix and you get a direct flight. Looks like you need to focus your flying on one airline in the future. They all s_ck so pick one and go with it.

Kathie

Here's the problem (as you know): you have mileage on a number of different programs and none are enough to get you where you want to go. As much as you can, put all of your miles on one program. So if you fly Thai, put your miles in the United program, for instance. We use our miles to buy upgrades from coach to biz on United.

If you had purchased tickets on Thai the last two time, you'd have enough miles for a free ticket on Thai. I know, at the time, the trip was once in a lifetime, but now that you are addicted to SE Asia like the rest of us, you'll have to start planning all of your flights around getting enough mileage for tickets or upgrades. Also, if you confine your flying (mostly) to one alliance (like Star Alliance), you can get a premiun status that gets to extra miles each time you frly, from a 25% premium to double miles.

This may be useful advice for the future, but it doesn't help now. Except to say, bite the bullet and buy those tickets on Thai and use your United Mileage Plus number with Thai to get your miles credited. You may well make it to Premier status if you take a couple more flights during the year.

Kathie

Or, you could use your United miles for one ticket and buy one ticket on Thai... Make sure which ever one of you flies the most gets the paid for ticket...

travelduo

If you don't already have one, I would suggest you and your spouse each getting the Chase United credit card, you 20,000 miles each after the first purchase, then just dump the card. That's 40,000 miles right there! Free! If you already have the card, and have had it for over 6 months, cancellit, then get it again in feb to get the 20,000 bonus again. The guys/gals over on flyertalk.com are excellent help for your exact situation. Its a VERY active board and you should get a response back quickly from an expert on any of the FF programs you post a question to. Im there on the American AADVANTAGE forums often, and get help from people that fly to bkk every month for work and have 2,000,000 miles in their account!

Kathie

Good call, travelduo, I forgot to recommend the credit card.

filmwill

travelduo, thanks for the card suggestion--I've been mulling that idea over too. Not to make this a financial discussion (since this is still a travel board) but my biggest fear about opening and closing credit cards like that, though, is the impact on our credit history. Other than that, I do think it's a brilliant idea.

Kathie, yes, I know...we kind of screwed ourselves...but didn't get here intentionally: we had a bunch of miles on Delta, which we couldn't use since they don't fly anywhere we want to go

...and we just happened to accrue all those Continental points due to our EVA flights over the past 2 years (in addition to whatever we already had in there).

I saw a problem forming, so, since last year, I had the brilliant idea [insert sarcasm here] to remove ourselves from the 'one program' idea since I felt like we were getting scattered with our miles. So we enrolled in Amex Rewards...thinking that'd be the best solution. Obviously it wasn't--mostly due to the fact that we like to travel East and not West. If we were Europe fans, I don't think I'd be lamenting that decision right now like I am.

Thank you so much, though, for your frank assessment--you're beyond right. I feel like we just need to focus on United now since LAX is a mini-hub for them and it serves a great deal of Asia.

I'm curious as to you input on how to split things between me and David. I've found in the past with mileage programs that the tricky part is figuring out how to best "split" your miles between you and your partner. They won't let us pool our miles together, so how do you best distribute your miles evenly and sensibly going forward?

Craig

Please reread my previous post. Based on your lack of comments, it seems that you might have missed it. United is the best program for Asia as others have said. You and your partner should try to accrue miles equally but you can transfer miles from one person to another for a fee. As with the purchasing of miles, you have to weigh whether this is worthwhile to do. Most of the time it is cheaper than buying a ticket outright. Do get the Mileage Plus credit card. There will be no impact on your credit rating as long as you pay on time.

Gpanda

See if you can switch the AMEX points to Starwood points. If so, you can stay at Sheratons and meridiens in SEA with your points.

Even if you can't, you should get a Starwoods AMEX. You'll build up enough points to buy lots of hotel rooms. Hotel purchases are more valuable than transferring to FF miles.

DonTopaz

Credit cards are an excellent way to accrue miles and to get a large chunk of miles quickly. If you have a small business, you can get one personal card and one for your business, getting the bonus miles for each. Flipping the cards as travelduo suggests has always been a great plan, but some of the banks have been closing that loophole, as well as getting bonuses for multiple cards.

You should also get a Starwood Amex, as Gpanda suggests. Last I looked, that carries a 20k point bonus on sign-up, which is worth 25k miles on most airlines (United the primary exception).

A BIG caution is that using the miles on long-haul routes can be problematic.

travelduo

I have heard a lot of different stories about how the card churning can hurt your FICO score, and also lots of stories about how it hasnt impacted it at all. The only debt we have is our house, and I have no idea what my FICO score is, and to us it doesnt really matter because we never plan to borrow money again. So the card churning works good for us. Actually we just got in the mail today 2 visa platinum citi AAvantage cards, one citi AAdvantage business card, all together 60,000 miles Plus we just got the SPG AMEX cards, 2 personal, and 1 business, so thats 30,000 SPG points I had not given it that much thought until Bob told me how he does it


Rizzuto, can you elaborate about the problems that can occur when using points/miles for long-haul flights? Are you speaking of Business/First, or back in coach also? I know that the F/B inventory is sometimes small on certain routes. Thanks.

Kathie

Bill, here are my thoughts about how to distribute miles. I used to travel a lot for business and I've had a mileage plus credit card for many years, so my Mileage Plus account had a big balance when Cheryl and I started traveling together. She has since moved as much of her travel as possible to United and she has her own Mileage Plus credit card. But when we started out, I turned in miles for a biz class ticket for her to Asia and used my miles to upgrade me to Biz (so I was still accruing miles). While I was traveling a lot, sometimes I'd use my miles to upgrade both of us. Now she's traveling more for business than I am, so I expect that at some point in the future she might need to use her miles to get my Biz ticket.

By using the miles for upgrades, we still accumulate miles on our Asia trips, which keeps upping our mileage balance and contributes to our Premier status. It's important that at least one of you accumulates enough miles to get premier status (25K actual miles per calendar tyar), as there are a number of perks associated with that. Presently, we both travel enough to be Premiers on United, but I used to travel enough to be a Premier Exec (50K+ actual miles flown per year) which has much better perks. Maybe I'll get back to that much flying once I retire!

I think it makes sense to accumulate the largest number of miles in the account of the person who travels the most, so you might want to put household expenses on the credit card of the most frequent flier. That way you will have one acount that will more often pay for tickets or upgrades, and there should be enough miles there to "pay" for both of you.

DonTopaz

travelduo, the "problematic" thing is (or can be) finding award seats. United is by far the worst Star Alliance line to deal with, as they appear to have imposed a harsh limit on seats on other *A carriers -- they implement this system through the Starnet program. With this system, there have been numerous instances reported (including by me!) in which award seats on a *A carrier are available to any *A airline, but United chooses not to make those seats to their Mileage Plus members. I've run into this on both the JFK-BKK route and on BOS-FRA routes.

Now before people start saying that they've got seats through UA on the JFK-BKK flight ... of course some seats are available at certain times. But there are also time that UA will not make the award seat available, even though the operating has made it available to United.

One symptom of this is when the agent says that the flight does not show up on his/her screen when asking for an award reservation -- not even to show 0 seats in the award booking class. But when the agent looks for the flight for revenue seats, the flight does appear. If you then ask the agent to request a "manual sell" -- that is, type in the code that requests the award seat from the operating airline -- the request would immediately be approved (assuming, of course that the operating carrier has award seats available). However, United will not permit its telephone agents to request the manual sell for award tickets.

In short, there certainly are award seats available on Thai's JFK-BKK flight. However, there will be times when those seats are less available to united's FF members than to other *A carriers' FF members.

hawaiiantraveler

Hi Will,

Craig and Kathie have the correct info about UA. Linda and I also do what Kathie and C do with their UA miles. We bank a lot of miles that way and are flying Intl First to Japan in April for 90K each. Decided to spend some mileage that was piling up

If you have a UA logon on the United.com site you can change your profile setting to the "expert" level instead of the default novice level. That way when you check for flights the site will give you the seats that are available on all the flights you are checking including the amount of ff seat available.

Stick with one airline if possible from now on to avoid the problems you are now having.

Aloha!

filmwill

Thanks for all the great advice, guys (as if I should expect any less from you all...)

Craig, I did see your first post--and thanks for your advice as well--and I appreciated the suggestion about buying 1 and using miles for the other.

Think the plan, as of right now, is maybe pushing our trip back a few months (to early 09) and start accumulating more United miles ASAP so we can aim for biz class outright on Thai direct.

My only remaining concern about that is waiting to long to book as we accumulate miles. I know it's a risk, but I guess we'll just have to play our cards (so to speak) and see how it works out.

Cicerone

If you have enough points to get to Hong Kong on one of more of your mileage programs you could connect on to Bangkok from there, either directly or after a few days here or even a few days in Macau (see below). There are some discount carriers operating out of Hong Kong, like Hong Kong Express which flies to Bangkok http://www.hongkongexpress.com.

You can also easily go by ferry to Macau airport for more discount carriers, and also to Shenzhen (may need a PRC visa, but probably not just for transit, check the PRC embassy website). This could be done directly from airport to airport, or you could spend some time in Macau first. Air Macau flies to Bangkok daily from Macau and Air Asia flies daily from both Macau and Shenzen; Air Asia is currently quoting US$30 round trip fare to Bangkok from either Macau or Shenzen. Websites for Macau and Shenzhen airports are http://www.macau-airport.gov.mo/tran...on_local.phtml.
http://eng.szairport.com/, this will show you what carriers are operating out of those airports. I would expect more to be added to Macau in the next year as more casinos open up there.

You could even go overland comfortably by train from Hong Kong to Shanghai and even in 3 days to Tibet from Hong Kong, an interesting trip no doubt.

Also look into non-stops from the US to Beijing or Shanghai and then on to Bangkok from there. The prices for PRC-Bangkok flights may not be as much as you think.

glorialf

For the future -- open up an Air canada ff account and have your united miles posted to that Star alliance account. Then you can transfer you am ex miles to it as well which will give you a better ability to use the miles.

Pulley

My family & I flew Korean Air last Christmas to BKK and it was excellent! The FA's were very friendly & helpful. Lounge in ICN was great. We too booked/redeemed through Delta. I have no reservations about flying with them again. For more information about Korean go to www.airlinequality.com

glorialf

another fabulous airline you can book thru delta is malaysian. Best flight I evre had.

rhkkmk

generally you can book FF tickets about 330 days in advance and then you often get availability....remember it is 330 days from your return flight...

the credit card game is interesting....i do it all the time....the only people i have had any trouble with are chase....they caught up with me eventually...unfortunately they run many of the programs....