Questions and Answers

Hi all,

Planning to pull the trigger on a Marriott package soon. Not quite sure where we will use the hotel yet, but leaning toward Hawaii (Maui) as there aren’t too many places we would want to be stuck in one hotel/city for a whole week without hopping around. Would it make sense to get the United miles or is there a better program to use (Alaska/BA/Flying Blue?) even though they give fewer miles for those packages? For reference, we live in ATL. I have no UR points (5/24) and have approx. 200k MR and 90k TYP. No miles with anyone (used up my skypesos last summer). Wife has approx. 160k Skypesos. Thanks!

PS – should I just wait until there is a bonus offer from one of the airlines for transferring (like the recent Air Canada promo)?

The United miles are great, but if you live in Atlanta I feel like you have to look towards Delta (for better or worse!) The transfer bonus to United is nice from Marriott, but you could still get up to 120,000 Skymiles. Also, your wife has some Skymiles lying around too, so then you’d easily have enough on Delta to get you both to Hawaii.

Skymiles rates are really high for all school holiday times (of course). I’ve been reading up and it appears that Avios (using Alaska metal) and Korean (using Delta metal) are the best options, except that Avios charges by segment so that could get expensive coming from ATL. If we can find 4 saver level seats on Delta, we can all fly R/T in economy for 100k Korean Skypass miles total from ATL-OGG. The booking process is complicated but worth it, considering the same exact flights on DL would be 180k Skymiles. Will probably wait until Spring Break 2018 opens up this week and see what availability is like.