I was looking at my Avios transfers and noticed I transferred close to 500k to Avios. I was curious where did I spend all those Avios? I looked at my redemptions list.. and well, they are doing a lot of work.
52 LIM LATAM Y $1,300
22 DCA AA Y $900
80 JFK AA F $2,000
26 PVR AA Y $400
95 LHR BA PE $2,000
36 BGO-HEL AY J $800
125 HEL AY J $5,000
80 BOS AA F $2,000
I was planning to apply to a BizPlat and PerPlat in December, and just biding my time until that happened.
I went 5k over MSR on my latest card (lots of unexpected expenses), the Hilton Surpass. It still can get a FNA after meeting $15k by end of year… although its value is questionable.
I felt I was wasting away spend, and applied for a P1 BizGold LL with referral (this would be my third bizgold) two weeks ago for 200k+30k $15k MSR. 6mo-0%APR The application never went anywhere. It didn’t even register in the application status page.
So last weekend I had P2 apply for a NLL 200k $10k, which was instantly approved. Then I learned about the immediate PizPlat upgrade trick to get 120k more out of the same spend and was pondering it.. hmm will this be worth the extra annual fee..
And then three days later the original BizGold was approved. I guess we are just doing these two until December and not any other BizPlats, then.
Booked domestic transcon first class with Avios. Then rebooked in economy, still saving $900 in the process.
My mother recently had a major spinal surgery and has been in recovery for a few weeks now. During labor day weekend, we had to urgently travel from LAX to DCA. She was unsure whether the travel would be okay given her recent surgery. Her doctor said it was okay. I thought we could ease her worry if we booked it in first class, and luckily found some D-6 in AA first with Qatar Avios! A Friday 9am flight! Booked LAX-DCA for three at 43k Avios+$10 pp, for $800 tickets. Also found that Alaska was running lowered first class prices, and booked return flights in frst at $730 pp.
Then we had a sudden change of circumstances and had to postpone the trip two weeks. We cancelled, and now we were stuck with a big stash of Alaska flight credits. Mom wanted to drain the credits ASAP. So we booked us the flights again. Then, mom’s health worsened and she had to cancel. We still had to go, so my wife and her sister went to DC.
Unfortunately, there was no AA nor AS partner F availability this time.
We were about to book the crazily overpriced D-4 $450 LAX-DCA oneway Y tickets with Alaska credits, and I said wait a minute.. maybe we can book these for just 11k Avios via Finnair! And there they were, luckily available.
On the return, they are flying AS F with the flight credits. ($850/pp)
We were left with $480 in leftover Alaska credits. I told them we’ll book them the AA Y flights, and we’ll take the leftover Alaska credits for ourselves in exchange. (Since these flight credits belong to my mom.) Combined with an Alaska companion voucher, the credits will cover us for a roundtrip for two to somewhere in Mexico.
Family saved money, and we got ourselves a two-person roundtrip to Mexico for 22k Avios. Everyone is happy.
> Going to Valdivia, Chile, in the fall. I haven’t been able to book sooner because I’ve been waiting on good dates to visit my college student who will be studying there. I would welcome any recommendations regarding flights (coming from Austin; I have about 500k UR points and a bunch of AA points) as well as other things to do while in Chile.
BA and Virgin can get LATAM flights in economy and business. Economy from LA to Chile is around 40k? and business is 95k. Alaska is the best deal for LAX-SCL business at 50k.
> Cash tickets on Student Universe for July 25 Hanoi-New York are $700, but on Amex Portal it’s over $1,000.
It’s too late to buy the ticket. Unlike cash tickets, lowest priced award tickets are available in limited quantities. Usually 0-4 seats for business class, and ~20 seats in economy. The remaining seats are priced dynamically, meaning usually much higher. That’s the delta prices you are seeing. (Also delta very rarely makes award tickets available at lowest price).
The best time to buy a July 2024 ticket was between July 2023 and September of 2023. The window of opportunity to grab economy seats is usually longer (sometimes they never run out), but your target date is in the middle of summer, which is when everyone travels. So they run out, and they run out fast.
If you now search for award seats for May 2025-June 2035, you can find:
Hanoi-Taipei-New York EVA Air Economy using 47k Lifemiles+$80 (Lifemiles is an Avianca Airlines points program, and Amex points transfers there)
Hanoi-Tokyo-New York in JAL Economy using 38k American Airlines miles+$64
But seats priced at that range sold out for this summer.
Your last chance is something people call T-14 tickets. Starting 14 days before flight, when airlines feel their airplane is too empty and seats aren’t selling well, they dump the seats into award seat inventory and suddenly you can grab some seats at lowest price. But that may or may not happen for the specific date that you need and it’s not guaranteed.
On the other hand, if you are very flexible with your travel dates (“eh I would prefer to fly on Thursday but I’m okay with flying Wednesday, or Friday, or Saturday, or Tuesday… It’s all good as long as it’s that week” kind of attitude), then a T-14 strategy can yield a decent chance of success. I just ran a search for the week spanning 6/7-6/14/24 and I see the two flights I mentioned above plus a Air France Hanoi-Paris-Newark flight for 35k Air France points plus $210, a Hanoi-Hong Kong-JFK flight in Cathay for same price as JAL above etc.
One last note, you can’t transfer Amex points to American Airlines so the AA examples are meaningless to you. I’m just mentioning them to illustrate the general ideas that I’m talking about.
Alaska Business approval
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Trying to figure out how to redeem points for maximum value across different cc
byu/K0N-ARTIST inawardtravel
From time to time Amex runs employee card promotions for BBP, Biz Gold, and Biz Plat. “Add an employee card for your business card, and spend a minimum of X amount for Yk rewards” is their promo. The latest promo ended recently.
> We are skeptical that once all credit-card expenses are taken into account, you are not actually saving any money on your expensive business class ticket.
Your surcharge comment is interesting in multiple ways.
First, I’m surprised that major merchants in Australia put a surcharge just for accepting Amex. Second, I’m surprised that the surcharge is so TINY (less than 1%???). Third, it shows that you are not approaching credit card points via the mainstream way at r/churning, which is chasing sign-up bonuses.
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