Continental One-Pass Miles
 

Do you have any tips being able to use my one pass miles to Europe? We wanted to take a Mediterrian cruise but only if we can use our one-pass miles. When I called I have been told that there aren't any seats available for the several dates I checked on (May, June, Sept and Oct). I was told to call closer to the time, but how can I do that if I have to book the cruise now in order to get the cabin and date we want. I am starting to believe that "Visa-Continental" credit card is not worth it. I am thinking of canceling it and go with a card with no fee. What do you think?

Similar questions have been asked about using FF miles on other airlines. As the number of FF miles in peoples' accounts has multiplied, alrlines have gotten tighter about number of available seats for mileage travelers. As I am sure you know, times are tough for airlines.

Seats available on a flight for FF tickets is not fixed - there may be several on one flight, and none on others. Posters here have commented that it is very difficult or impossible to use miles for trips to Europe in the summer of Hawaii anytime. Sounds like you are doing the right thing by being flexible about dates.

You can usually get seats if you "spend" more miles. Sometimes days of the week matter. While it will not work for your purpose, closer to the date, the airline may release more seats if they think the plane will not be full. Any chance you can fly into a less popular city or airport and then pay for transportation to actual destination? Or buy one ticket and get the other for free. Or try mid-week. Other than that, you are experiencing what many of us have when trying to redeem miles. I have usually been lucky, but there have been other times when no matter how flexible and creative I was, there was no way. Good luck.

Please read all my following points very carefully about FF miles in general, and CO's Onepass in particular.

First, specific to CO Onepass:

- Do your research on Continental flights on continental.com. Since about 3 months ago, you can see a whole calendar on the route you choose which dates are Standard rewards, Easypass rewards, and BusinessFirst rewards available. Much much easier than having to type a date 30 times, or to spend 30 minutes with a phone agent to go through it day by day. Please use the website.

- You don't have to fly CO, but you must use the phone. <b>Do not take NO as an answer</b>, because there are many partner airlines available, especially for Europe. That includes Skyteam partners: Delta, Northwest, KLM, Air France, Alitalia &amp; CZA Czech between North America and Europe. <b>Plus</b> non-Skyteam partner TAP Portugal, Emirates and Virgin Atlantic. [I did not list the partners that don't fly NA-Euruope.] Make sure the Onepass phone agent searched for ALL of those possibilities.

Now, about FF tickets in general:

- It's seldom a good idea to use a card specific to an airline to collect miles. These cards also usually have annual fees. It's generally better to just get a rebate card with no annual fees. For the same $25,000 you spent, you now have $250 in cash to buy your own tickets on any airline that's available, and not tied to a specific ones.

- This is especially true if you don't fly enough to be an &quot;elite&quot; FF of any airline. Most airlines <b>severely</b> limit the number of FF award seats on each flight, but &quot;elite&quot; members have a larger inventory. [If you're aren't even a Silver Elite with CO, you absolutely shouldn't use that credit card to save miles that are hard to use.] Get cash in your pocket instead.

- CO and all airlines allow you to get FF awards with much greater availability, if you spend double miles. [CO calls its &quot;EasyPass&quot;] So, if you have lots of miles and don't care about value, use them.

- So, are FF programs useless? Absolutely not. If you fly enough to be &quot;elites&quot;, and are pretty flexible on your reward travel dates, FF programs can be very good deal to earn free travel.

[I'll give you examples why my parents love CO's Onepass program. Each of them are &quot;Gold Elite&quot; by buying two cheap roundtrips to Hong Kong each year, plus perhaps one roundtrip to Europe. Total cost, usually &lt;$2,200. But since they are Gold Elite, those flights earn them 100K miles a year, which is good for 4 domestic roundtrips - which are worth about $1,000 already. An almost 40% rebate.

Also, award travel seats are plenty, as long as you are flexible. Like if you're retired. My parents have no problem claiming about 300K miles last year on CO alone - including 60K miles for one-way US-Hong Kong BusinessFirst tickets.]

Let me offer a responsible opposing viewpoint to the thought that:

&quot;It's seldom a good idea to use a card specific to an airline to collect miles. These cards also usually have annual fees. It's generally better to just get a rebate card with no annual fees. For the same $25,000 you spent, you now have $250 in cash to buy your own tickets on any airline that's available, and not tied to a specific ones.&quot;

I ran about $22K through my airline-specific card last year. I value FF miles at 1.5 cents each, so that's $330. Subtract the annual fee and it's $275. I received discount coupons for several flights that I would not have otherwise received, which saved me a couple of hundred dollars. I received several thousand more miles from miscellaneous promotions. I also received a coupon good for 4,000 miles off three roundtrip award tickets; a savings of 12,000 miles (which is another $180 by my 1.5 cent/mile calculus).

All of the miles I earned or saved were tied into my primary airline's FF account. Cash rebates are nice, but they won't help you top off a balance to reach an award level and in my own case, the annual rebate would end up being worth considerably less than what I received in trade for travel.

I don't disagree with Flyboy. I guess I am saying it's &quot;seldom a good idea for the casual flyer, who takes several years to collect enough points for a trip...&quot; :D

And seems like Flyboy's card is a little generous than some others with coupons and deals like that. The only one I've used is the AE Delta Skymiles card, and while I'd racked up plenty of miles in previous years, I've never received any bonus other than the one companion coupon per year; and I find that coupon very hard to use as well, and often isn't a good deal with the specific fare class, especially between Texas and California.

Again, what I was saying is in very general terms, mainly about those people who bought into the sales pitch of the airlines and the banks. One should really look closely in the details as well as the alternatives. But the bottom line is that if you don't fly a lot, and you aren't qualified as an &quot;elite&quot;, then please don't play the FF Miles game, as you'll more likely to be burned by it then not.

To pattyshearts - not only on Continental. Last night I was forced to spend 40,000 for RT Boston to Savannah on USAirways in February since all 20,000 mile tickets were &quot;sold out&quot; I know flight is not full, because I could have paid $231 for the same ticket.

And to those who tell me this is a ridiculous waste of miles - I know - but we have hundreds of thousands of miles on USAirways that I am guessing we will never be able to use.

For a major trip where you may be planning a year in advance, it helps to book the FF seat on the first day the flights become available, 11 months in advance.

Have you considered adding a few days to the trip before or after the cruise? That might allow you to hit days when FF seats are available.

Keith

I think valuing FF miles at $.015 is a bit high. For example, using the concrete figures cited by Gail, the highest value of the FF miles would be $.011, while the actual value (since she had to pay twice the miles because of inavailability) would be $.006, or just over half a cent. While a few coupons would be nice, you have to calculate how many of the coupons you actually use, and also consider that, on Continental and many other airlines, tickets bought with FF miles do not earn miles, making it more difficult to maintain status in the FF programs.

The affiliated credit cards are issued by banks, and I'm positive they have carefully calculated the costs of those promotions, and apparently concluded that they can make more money by offering FF miles than by offering the not uncommon 1% rebate.

While I like Continental's display of the calendar on their website, it is still very difficult to get FF award flights (particularly when you need more than one seat) unless you are exceptionally flexible, almost to the point of logging on today and finding tickets for later this week, and deciding to go.

First, the disclosure of bias: I am a loyal CO Platinum Elite, have been that or gold each year for several years now. I use the OnePass Visa - standard, not the platinum edition - for pretty much everything I can.
The experience: Usully rack up enough CC miles for at least a domestic RT, often more, so it's worth it to me. In addition, signed up for a special where I paid $99 and get double miles for one year on all CO flights paid for with this card (on top of the Elite bonus miles). Since I do a lot of flying it worked out to be a good deal, may not be so for the mopre casual flier. I pay the card off each month so interest rate is not an issue.

In terms of getting reward seats, it can be difficult on every airline to get the exact seats you want - especially more than one - during peak times such as you are seeking. CO's online system with the calendar showing availability is great. In all cases, flexibility is a big plus. Midweek reward travel is usually more available than weekend. It is simply the nature of the game that trying to confirm FF dates around another fixed schedule event (such as a cruise) is dicey. My own feeling is that when planning one needs to be prepared to foot the cost of purchasing tickets, and if FF seats are available, that's great, but don't count on it. If it is a significant fare cost, you can always purchase seats that will work, and if FF seats open up later consider returning the purchased seats (usually can, with a penalty, and apply the cost to future travel.) I have also used the suggested strategy of flying to or from a few days outside the fixed event dates, and as long as the place I am staying isn't terribly expensive it works well.

I don't think there's any set valuation for FF miles. It's totally dependent on how you would normally utilize miles in your own situation. If you redeem mostly domestic coach awards, then the valuation will be lower. If you redeem international premium class awards, then the valuation will be higher. I don't think it's possible to come up with a standard that would apply universally. I try to use my miles primarily when the cost of the ticket is very high, i.e. last minute domestic trips, international business class, etc. I redeemed 120,000 miles each for 2 business class tickets for a trip to Paris and Kenya next week and based on ticket prices, I think I captured about 6 cents per mile.

Oh and considering that I probably wouldn't have taken this trip otherwise, I think the miles are actually priceless :D

You guys are so informed. Thanks so very much for all your info. Just one last question. Where on the website can I view the FF seats?

For my upcoming trip to Japan, at the urging of people on this forum I called at midnight the first day that FF reservations opened up on COntinental. I had a hard time determining that day to begin with though. One agent told me it was 320 days ahead. Another said something else. So at about 300 days ahead I started calling every day. Finally the day before the FF seats opened, the agent told me that I needed to call back the next day. That is the night I called at midnight and got the FF reservations. The flight is on NWA through Continental (I know, the worst airline to Asia) and I then called at 2 a.m. on the first day of availability to get seat assignments 90 days before flight (I was in CA and that was midnight for NWA reservations). Then I had to call back 13 days later at midnight to get the seats I wanted for the return flight. Alot of planning, but it worked out and I got what I wanted. I used to try the more spontaneous route, but it doesn't work so well for international FF reality. Planning way ahead works better.

pattyshearts - Log on to continental.com using your Onepass number and passwords. Search for flight under Onepass/Using Miles. A calendar will show up with yellow/blue/green dates, and the flights available for your specific date will be listed below.

Continental still makes you wait until close to the flight date to get seat asignments?

When I booked AA 330 days out, I was able to do seat asignments right away. Bulkhead window where I will get the least disturbance trying to sleep.

Keith

I think Continental doesn't reveal their strategies, but the frequent fliers at flyertalk's Continental forum seem to agree that a limited number of FF seats are released about 11 months before the date of the flight, and that, often, more seats are released near the date of the flight. Some report success going in very early, while some report success going in at the last minute.

clevelandbrown: and that is why I am now starting to recheck the flights leaving japan from Kansai airport, my preference for the departure flight. I already have the FF reservations in and out of Narita airport, and could not get Kansai departure when I called early on. But I might be able to get it closer to the trip date and change the existing Japan departure reservation then. But I have a bird in the hand now at least.

emd,
That sounds like a good plan - a bird in the hand AND a bird in the bush. Also, my understanding is that if you decide to cancel a reward ticket, you can with only a very small penalty, and have your miles restored.

As my interest was piqued, I visited Continental's web site. My vague understanding is that their on-line calendar lists only Continental flight availability; calling is still needed to get availability on partner airlines.

Anyway, I picked a popular route, Cleveland to Paris, just to see what was available. Tourist seats were shown as being available through December 12 (but none were available in June), far farther out than I had been led to believe. Front cabin seats, however, were only available through April, which might mean the later ones have all been gobbled up, or that they have a different policy for the two types of tickets. What really surprised me was that front cabin seats were shown as being available tomorrow and friday! What a temptation.

Yes, there's a redeposit fee if you want to change your FF schedules or class, unless you're a Onepass Platinum Elite. There's also extra fees if you are booking flights very close to departure. Everything's written out in the Onepass section of Continental.com.

Dec 12 is about 330/331 days from today. That's how far one can book FF awards for most airlines.

And yes, only CO flights are listed on continental. Few of its codeshare as well. For all partner stuff, you need to call Onepass.

We were in the same dilema as you. I suggest that you call CO instead of using the website. We are going to lax-lhr using FF miles in August. 330 days ahaed, there was no availabe business class seats on the web. However when we called, the agent was SO helpful and had tons of alternatives for us. She went way above and beyond the call to find something for us at the lower awards point level.