Questions and Answers

My partner and I got the Chase Reserve card – we’re planning our wedding and had some spend that would get us over the minimum spend requirements to get the 100,000 points…

We’re planning to go to Europe for our honeymoon – We’ve booked our flights over, starting in Rome we redeemed 70,000 SkyMiles/person to fly in DL One – I’m platinum with Delta so if we need to change our plans, we can easily redeposit without penalty. Anyway…

We’re trying to figure out what the best way to make the most of our 100,000 UR points – Using it to book travel directly through UR doesn’t seem like the best way to maximize the points since it’s capped at $1,600 – our first thought is to transfer to United MileagePlus and redeem for two business class tickets back… seems like the best way to maximize their value. Is that right or am I missing something here?

With Star Alliance – when’s the best time find their Business saver availably? We’re planning on coming returning late June/early July of 2017.

Or am I thinking about this in the wrong way? Thank you for the help!

Now is the time,
United aircraft 57.5K in business or 80K in first. That means you could do round trip for 115, buy the extra points. Or partner is 70K, like Swiss or Austrian. Depends on where you are departing from but UA flies to FCO from IAD and ORD and is one of those routes that they open space on. Transferring to SQ wouldn’t help as they have surcharges. BA is an option but probably more expensive

While SQ does have surcharges on awards, if you find 2 saver award seats for their FRA-JFK flight in Suites, I think it’ll be worth it, even if you have to separately position to Frankfurt and then a separate JFK-home ticket.

United is a decent option, SQ would be great, depending on where you’ll be in Europe and where you live in the US. FlyingBlue promo awards would also be an excellent value, potentially, if the city pairs work out and you don’t mind the fuel surcharges.

Thank you all for the advice. We live in Boise, ID – but can usually find decent fares out of LAX, SFO or Seattle. Our plan is to start in Rome work our way around to Santorini, Greece. While Santorini does have an airport, it makes the most sense from an award perspective to position ourselves to more of a gateway city like David suggested. Suites class on SQ would be an amazing experience, but there’s the challenge of getting from JFK to Boise. Flying Blue would also be an option as KLM offers a direct AMS -> SLC flight we could redeem miles for.

If there is award space, I think you can tack on UA domestic segments to the SQ award but you’d be giving up the 15% discount for booking online and you have to change airports since UA doesnt serve JFK.

Thanks David. As of now SQ doesn’t have any saver award available from FRA-JFK if I search directly on SQ’s website. Will have to keep an eye out incase anything turns up.