Please help me use my travel rewards intelligently
 

I'm planning a somewhat spur-of-the-moment trip to France in July. I'm a long-time traveler but have never used FF miles / points / rewards. I have 115,000+ with my BofA Visa Travel Rewards, 68, 000 with my CapOne Visa Venture and 77,700+ miles with AA.

It appears that I am way too late to use the AA miles for a ticket and, unfortunately, those will expire this November. Even if I bought extra miles I'd wind up paying about $1000 through AA. I can buy a ticket outright for very little more than that through studentuniverse, webjet or another aggregator. Can I do anything else with those AA miles?

Both BofA and CapOne will allow me to "erase" travel purchases with my miles / points. So it seems to me that I'd do best to purchase my airline ticket using the BofA card which will cover it, or almost, depending on what I wind up paying for the ticket. And I could then use my CapOne for car rental and other expenses. (Anyone know if they would cover a rental through air bnb or abritel? Or restaurant meals? I know, I should call them.)

Am I overthinking this? Does it matter which cards I use for what? Like I say, I am new to this.

Any and all help appreciated.

Can you use your BoA and CapOne points on another airline? If yes, I would look into that because AA is pretty much the worst US carrier.

Anyhoo, a better place to ask this would be FlyerTalk because they specialize in FF programs.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/globa...alliances-391/
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/airli...-programs-374/

Couple of ideas--you could use your AA award miles for one way (there are quite a few dates open in July from CLT (if that is where you still fly from) <i>to</i> Paris, then use BofA or CapOne for the return. You can also use them for car rental in France.

Also, do follow sparkchaser's suggestion to post on FlyerTalk.

Can't the AA miles be used for hotels and car rentals?

It is easy to keep miles from expiring for many carriers. You just need to create activity in the account. You can do this by spending the miles on something such as a magazine. Or, what I prefer, donate a some to charity thru the frequent flier website. I know this works for United, you'll need to check the rules for AA.

You can also look online for other ways to keep miles from expiring.

Thanks for the ideas and comments thus far, everyone. Yes I will likely be leaving from CLT on American since that's the only non-stop flight from my area. (Other than Atlanta which I'd rather avoid.) And non-stop is worth a lot to me. Problem is that at the moment that flight is over $2000 for my dates if I buy directly from AA.

evecolorado, if I used different miles/points for one way each, would that not be two separate purchases and cost a lot more?

Obviously, I need to call AA and maybe CapOne as well. Will try that tomorrow.

CapOne "eraser" requires that you erase the exact number of points for the exact price paid check with them so that it is clear to you.

I used CapOne points to erase the cost of 2 nights in a hotel in Vienna so that i paid about $12 with the rest was erased with the points.

When you use Capone points, do you end up in Alcatraz ?

Betty1, I think the easiest way to extend the expiry date for your AA miles is to log in to your account and shop at one of the many online retailers through the AAdvantage awards shopping portal. Just buy something you would anyway but get to the website via AA's site.

Or, if you don't have one already, get one of AA's Citibank credit cards and get the considerable sign-up bonus too.

Hi Betty- I just checked CLT to Paris on AA. All of the flights that I found on my quick check were not direct, but you can make the trip in coach for 30K miles one way on 19 of the 31 days in July. If you want to fly in a little more comfort, business class is 57.5 K miles many of the days in July. Direct flights using AA miles usually require more miles or, in some limited cases, reservations 11 months in advance. I didn't check that out.
Also, you can extend the expiration date of your AA miles by purchasing 1K of miles. I believe the extension is 18 months from the purchase date. I personally keep my (almost worthless) Hilton miles from expiring using this method. Go to the AA website (www.AA.com) to figure out your options.
Have a great trip!!!

LOL @ Whathello

If your points are about to die, the airline might allow you to donate them to a charity. In my minimal experience, phoning an airline agent will provide more itinerary possibilities than trying to work out the kinks on its website. Some airlines are awarding points for the cost of the flight rather than miles, which likely will be even less generous.

There is plenty of availability throughout July using your British Airways or American miles. However it's important to note that either using BA miles, or AA miles on BA-operated flights for transatlantic travel, will subject you to BA's extortionate surcharges (previously called "fuel surcharges" until BA got sued in US federal court, now just "carrier-imposed fees," AKA "profit.") These can be avoided by flying on AA "metal," for, for example, the one-way taxes and fees will be under $10, vs. something like $250 (or $450+ in business class) on BA "metal."

I can also see space from JFK to Paris on AA (both coach and business class) on several days in July ($5.60 fees in coach, $11.20 in business) but you might have to connect from La Guardia or Newark coming from CLT.

There's also space during July in business class from Miami to Madrid using Iberia; you'd connect in Madrid to Paris. You'll also pay a surcharge for using Iberia (owned by BA's parent) but not nearly as high as you would on BA. You can't book Iberia online with AA; you'll have to phone to make this reservation.

Contrary to popular belief, it's often easier to reserve award seats, particularly in business or first class, closer to the flight date. The airlines' "yield management" computer systems constantly look at how flights are selling, and if they determine that a flight isn't likely so sell out (for cash) they'll release some seats into award inventory. Often they don't do this until a few days or weeks prior to the flight date (hoping for last-minute business travelers who can't miss some meeting) but it happens with great regularity.

Just back in on this thread and so happy Gardyloo is helping, he is <i>the</i> guru.

I checked and Economy MileSAAver awards (30K) nonstop are available on July 3, 4, 6, 13, 19, 25 and 26 (47.5K on July 2).

A lot more dates for 1 stop but, besides the nuisance of changing planes, as Gardyloo mentions if you have to do that in England rather than in, say, Miami, connecting through LHR before going on to Paris costs 30,000 miles +$90.90 USD taxes & fees, whereas flying nonstop to Paris is only $5.60 USD in taxes and fees.

For your return trip, there aren’t any nonstops available in July at the MileSAAver level so that would be the time to use BofA or CapOne.

Wow, I really appreciate all the trouble you guys are taking to try to help me. I probably should have said to begin with that my dates are pretty fixed. I am doing this trip in order to attend a course at a school in Brittany which runs from July 4 to July 15, so I would hope to leave July 1 and return July 17, taking the train from Paris to Brest and back. I could add a day at either end but, of course, that would add to my expenses.

Since I've been searching, I keep getting emails and pop-up ads from AA, Hipmunk, Airbnb, etc. (It's a bit spooky!) I just got an email from AA that indicates that I can use those miles for things other than flights so that's something to consider,too.

I'm waiting to hear back from the school (a few questions I need answered) before I make a final decision on this.

Thanks again.

@Southam writes "If your points are about to die, the airline might allow you to donate them to a charity."

Actually any earning or redemption of miles in the account, including donating miles to charity, extends the expiration date. So a nominal donation (which I previously recommended) keeps all the rest of the miles from expiring.

Betty, our favorite way to extend the expiration date of our miles is to buy something through the AAdvantage eshopping site. Login with your Aadvantage number and go shopping. Even buying a .99 ITunes song to a pair of shoes will do the trick :) every store is on there. I've earned thousands of miles by purchasing online items I would normally buy on there. We are flying to Europe this summer on miles, on AA from DFW- 6 of us! :)

I have had AA miles for a zillion years and mine have never expired even though I don't think I flew AA for about 20 years. It is very very easy to extend them at minimal cost, all you have to do is donate at least $10 to one of the charities they list on their website. I prefer that to buying something I don't need or want. just go here and look at the "specialty" page under "more ways to earn miles"

https://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/earnMiles/main.jsp


I earned mine when I used to fly them, I guess because I lived in a different area, but finally decided to use them last year and AA has lots of flights to Mexico and South America, you can get better deals there. I flew RT to Mexico in 2014 at Thanksgiving, first class all legs (or at least business) for only about 50K miles total. And it wasn't even to Mexico City, but to Guanajuato, they have a lot of flights to Mexico that other airlines do not.

So I wouldn't use them for a Europe flight, I think they are optimized on other routes. Mexico and Central America is a bargain for using AA miles because the miles requires are just slightly above those for some domestic trips, same for Caribbean. In fact, they require fewer miles than to go to Hawaii. South America is next and also requires fewer miles than Western Europe.