One of the amazing things about the miles and points game is how far your miles can go if you know what you’re aiming for. It’s one thing to rack up miles from bonuses and promotions, but actually redeeming miles can be more complicated.
Continue reading: How Many Miles Are Needed For An Award Ticket?
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
My three favorites so far are:
One I just booked for my family of six from Orlando to Hong Kong, 5 in business and one first class on Cathay Pacific using 342,500 AA miles,
Bodrum to Cairo to Luxor to Cairo to Amman to Istanbul on Turkish and Egyptair using 144,000 ANA miles (instead of 420,000 United miles),
and Miami to Liberia, Costa Rica on AA using 90,000 BA Avios (instead of 210,000 AA miles)
A good article Tiffany, and I realise you needed to keep things simple, but I think when comparing award costs by program for various destinations you can unintentionally misled if you also don't provide some indication or guidance that earn rates also vary too by program (meaning it's very hard to offer comparison on an apples for apples basis, when just looking at redemption costs).
It would be too hard to provide exact numbers on costs to earn points (as it's multi-factorial, and shifts and changes regularly), but perhaps anecdotally you can highlight those programs on which cheap point earn is more common, to give added depth to current comparison.
Like some many things when it comes to determining which is the "best" frequent flyer program, the answer there - "it depends" - extends to this element because there are a lot of moving parts to consider. Readers should take this article as a starting point to kickstart their own research to see what works best for them - newbies to this might not understand that points (of the various frequent flyer schemes) are not created equal.
@ Kieran -- Perfectly stated, and great advice. Certainly intended this to be an intro, and you're spot on that there are SO many variables involved.
Tiffany, I just booked an itineray in Business JFK/HKG/BKK/SIN/HKG/JFK, being the SIN/HKG/JFK just a connection on the way home and I was charge 155,000 miles by AA.
It did not look bad to me, but now that I am looking at your award chart I am not so sure anymore.
Please let me have tour comments.
Nice piece but with respect to United, I don't know where these award numbers are coming from.
If I go to united.com and look at award travel everything is at least double the numbers being quoted in the article. One way to Europe is 150K miles in business, 170K in first. To Mexico it is 70K. To Australia it is 175K.
Is the article quoting saver fares (which never seem to be available) or am I totally missing something?
A little help? (be kind i am new at this stuff, ha)
How much does it cost in points to upgrade a ticket from economy to business, say for a roundtrip journey from US - India?
Thanks
Kind words Tiffany and I appreciate the difficulties involved in walking the balance between having a general article aimed at starters and avoiding it getting too complicated and dense due to it getting bogged down in heavy technical analysis.
On a side note, I wondered if you or another member of the OMAAT team might write an article outlining the advantages/disadvantages of purchasing tickets (especially mistake like fares) through an online travel agency/consolidator vs an airline website. I must admit I stick with the airline websites for ticket purchases, especially when the fare is deeply discounted, because it feels a little safer to me (even accepting less preferred flight arrangements than can be had through an OTA) but that's just gut instinct. It'd be interesting to see what the OMAAT view is here.
Hi Tiff,
There is a mistake on the chart to Asia. Flying to North Asia, South Asia and Central Asia cost 75K and 78K on Avianca instead of 62.5K and 65K.
They still providing great value though as I can purchase the miles at 1.5 cent per piece.
Eric
@DougG
Yes I believe the chart is for saver fares. Most of the articles here only talk about saver fares, as only those are available to partner airlines. And that is what we considered as "award seats availability".
Have you play around the dates? You should be able to find availability somewhere in United's system.
Good luck
Great resource Tiffany - thanks!
Would you mind expanding it to include non-US destinations e.g. Europe to/from Asia, Australia to/from Europe.
I can see a very useful app so will try to convince TPJ Jr to write the code.
TPJ
Milez. Biz will also display this information. Specifically for each city to city pairing
Hi everyone at OMaaT!! I'm so excited to have found this website and looking forward to getting started. I'm planning on going to Brazil next year. I've decided to focus on AAdvantage rewards. Which would be the best credit card to link with that so I can earn the miles faster? I see that you have SPG listed as a travel partner on the table above but I was also considering Citi Prestige or Citi Aadvantage Executive. Which would you recommend to start off with? Thanks!
When are we going to get back to industry news and trip reports again? It's a shame you guys have just stopped doing all that.
Also, does lucky share his referral money with you guys - it's interesting that this post wasn't covered in referral links (lucky normally tries to shove in as many links as possible)
Okay, this is an embarrassingly naïve question I've been wanting to post for a year, but since we have a bunch of virgins reading now, maybe someone else needs to know this: Are these miles the same regardless of where one is flying from (w/in the 48, of course)? In other words, if I'm flying from an AA hub, like CLT, to say Paris, or I'm flying from beeboptown, Montana (assuming that AA has any flights from there, so does service that airport), are the miles the same? It's just a much better deal for the bebopper than the Charlotte resident (as opposed to the cost in $$)? I'll be so glad to finally get this last piece of the puzzle in place. ; ) Thanks.
@ mbh -- Oh noes, you should always ask!
And you're correct -- whenever you have a zone-based system there's a flat price between anywhere in Zone A and Zone B. So it's 50k miles if you fly CLT > CDG or 50k if you fly BFE > ORD > CLT > CDG.
That being said, sometimes it's tough to find award availability out of secondary and tertiary airports, so you might be looking at buying a ticket to the hub regardless.