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Buy United or Lifemiles to complete award?
Looking at a trip on EVA Air to Southeast Asia in Royal Laurel next summer for a honeymoon. I’ve got about 90k in Chase points but little else, and no way of attaining more miles so purchasing the rest of what I need is my best bet.
Should I transfer my miles to United and book one ticket, then purchase the miles for a second ticket during LifeMiles’ next big promo (about $1300). Or would it be better to capitalize on United’s current bonus and book both tickets through United (about $1800)?
The potential cost savings are real with LifeMiles but I’m worried about splitting us up into different bookings and running into issues.
I guess the question may lie with what happens if you have to work with a customer service team. In that case you may wish you’d paid the extra $500 for United – though if you speak Spanish that might not be an issue!
Another thought – could you book flights one way using one currency and the other way with the other? Say outbound with Life Miles and return with UA? That way, even if there were issues returning at least you’d be dealing with United. And if you have connecting flights within the US you’d still get your PreCheck (assuming you have it or GE).
[QUOTE=”MidSouth Skier, post: 37168, member: 184″]I guess the question may lie with what happens if you have to work with a customer service team. In that case you may wish you’d paid the extra $500 for United – though if you speak Spanish that might not be an issue!
Another thought – could you book flights one way using one currency and the other way with the other? Say outbound with Life Miles and return with UA? That way, even if there were issues returning at least you’d be dealing with United. And if you have connecting flights within the US you’d still get your PreCheck (assuming you have it or GE).[/QUOTE]
This is just for the outbound flights, sadly. Still mapping out options for our return flights.
Bumping for a bit more insight
Bumping one last time because of the new sale on Lifemiles, still looking for some advice. Is EVA award space on Lifemiles reliable? I’d hate to book one seat with my United points and go to book the second with Lifemiles and find the seat disappeared.
Are you asking if Lifemiles tends to show phantom space, or if EVA tends to make more than 1 award seat available?
Also, I assume you saw Lucky’s post from earlier today:
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/09/05/lifemiles-promotion-september-2017/[/URL]
[QUOTE=”rickyw, post: 38671, member: 1436″]Are you asking if Lifemiles tends to show phantom space, or if EVA tends to make more than 1 award seat available?
Also, I assume you saw Lucky’s post from earlier today:
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/09/05/lifemiles-promotion-september-2017/[/URL][/QUOTE]
Asking more generally if I can rely on LifeMiles to have a seat available — since I’ll likely have a second seat booked through a different program.
The best you can likely do is try go as far in the booking process as you can on lifemiles and double check the award availability on UA/ANA/Aeroplan. There are no guarantees against ghost space unfortunately.
Thanks for the input, all. LM/UA/AwardNexus show 2+ seats available nearly every day at the back of the calendar, so I’m feeling more confident. May actually end up buying enough LM points for both outbound flights and save my UR points for the inbound.
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