The Etihad Guest program is becoming increasingly interesting to me. The program is transfer partners with Amex Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou, and Starwood Preferred Guest, and we've even seen several transfer bonuses. Not only can Etihad Guest miles be valuable for travel on Etihad (especially now that American AAdvantage has devalued those awards), but they…
Continue reading: The Great Value Of Buying Etihad Miles When Booking Awards
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Ben,
A few questions. Is this processed by Etihad meaning you receive 3x/5x points on your credit card? To get the points for this price do you have to actually book a ticket? I don't know if the Middle East carriers are subject to the 24 hour cancellation rule. Also, given partner awards usually need to be booked over the phone, will the agent give you this option for a partner award?
Thanks
@Jeremy - Lucky does say that this option is only online and not available for booking partner awards via phone. I do believe that it's processed directly by Etihad though and it's charged along with all the taxes and fees when booking the ticket. Not sure how it works if you cancel the ticket and ask for a refund. I believe all tickets that involve flying to or from the US, regardless of carrier, is subject to the 24 hour cancellation rule
I recall there was a Residence price for LHR-AUH but didn't realize that JFK-AUH is now available for points redemption at a whopping 2.44 million EY miles! WOW! Thinking more about it, I believe you can put 2 people in Residence for that same award price so at 1.22 million it's not *that* bad. Remember the days when SQ Suites class was 1 million miles per person... hopefully someday EY will lower the award price.
Does this allow you to book awards that you don't have enough miles for straight up but you do if you buy up the last 25 percent? Or do you need enough to cover the award fully first?
@Andy as long as you have the minimum required miles, you can purchase the rest
Can you do this with phone bookings? Like when you try to ticket oman air awards, will the agent allow this cash and points option?
I am trying to get 2 First Class JFK-AUH but limited availability at 117k miles...nothing if you want to plan for next year :0(
Hi Everyone, The question from @Joey was quite a good one, deserving of an answer (Oh knowledgeable Lucky, please) as to whether for the Residence, with two people flying together, you are booking the Residence itself as a total ticket (good for up to two people), or if one books the Residence tickets entirely on a per person basis. PS: This question possibly has a"double" answer... based on cash-purchase, versus a booking with points!
So if my flight redemption is, for easy math's sake, 100K miles, I would only need to transfer in 75K miles from Amex MR to be able to get to the redemption screen and book using this method? If that's the case, this could then be combined with a transfer bonus (whenever the next one comes) for some serious value.
Hi, Etihad used to award 25% of the miles & Tier miles for these bookings and published that fact BUT when I queried my missing miles from my last flight they said "Flights booked on these fare classes prior to 01-Jan-2017 were earning miles for the cash part due to a system anomaly which has now been fixed." Has anyone else encountered this?