Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky, thank you for sharing so much info regarding reviews, tips and tricks to traveling. My wife and I will be traveling to Germany starting the midle of Sept, but we also want to book a multi city booking since we want to flight first to Toronto-Canada so my family could meet my newborn child. We would be there for 1 week and after that we would flight to Frankfurt-Germany for 4 weeks.I forgot to say there will be my wife, my newborn child, my service dog “small maltese” and I. It’s going to be a handful, that’s why I need your help for maximizing the booking with my points, which I have 110k points. We are from Los Angeles. California. Please Lucky, could you tell me how to book the flight and how could I use my points and make more points on the way, plus what airlines should I become member so I could get milage points. I’m trying to learn more about points but this is a little more complicated that I can handle. I know points would not be enough so I know I have to pay the rest. Thank you so much Lucky and we hope you could helps us. Beat regards, Edward Tong.

Congrats on the newborn!

When you log into your Chase account and click Ultimate Rewards on the bottom left corner at the bottom of the page. Assuming you have either the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Chase Ink Plus/Preferred/Bold cards, you should have access to the Chase travel portal. From there you can do a flight search with a multi-city itinerary.

You can also transfer points to United for award flights. Originating in LAX means you’d have to connect one of UA’s hubs to get to Toronto. In this case, it’d be either DEN, IAH, ORD, EWR, or IAD. From Toronto you can book either Air Canada or Lufthansa, both of which serve Frankfurt directly.

If you’re paying with Chase points on the travel portal or paying cash for the flights, you will earn award miles. If you book award flights, you will not earn award miles. What are your normal travel patterns? From LAX, you have quite a few options for airline reward programs that could be beneficial. It’s best to first get an idea of your travel patterns and goals before deciding on a program.

Thanks David for the reply, well most of my travel it has been to Germany and Canada. We don’t travel a lot but when we do I want to make sure I get something from those travels. I do have the Chase Saphire Reserve. When you said to book from Canada to Germany, do you mean doing one ways tickets? Does transferring points to British Airways works so i could use the star alliance partners so i could use Lufthansa and Air Canada, is that recommendable? Thank you for your help.

[QUOTE=”David W, post: 26684, member: 29″]Congrats on the newborn!

When you log into your Chase account and click Ultimate Rewards on the bottom left corner at the bottom of the page. Assuming you have either the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, Chase Ink Plus/Preferred/Bold cards, you should have access to the Chase travel portal. From there you can do a flight search with a multi-city itinerary.

You can also transfer points to United for award flights. Originating in LAX means you’d have to connect one of UA’s hubs to get to Toronto. In this case, it’d be either DEN, IAH, ORD, EWR, or IAD. From Toronto you can book either Air Canada or Lufthansa, both of which serve Frankfurt directly.

If you’re paying with Chase points on the travel portal or paying cash for the flights, you will earn award miles. If you book award flights, you will not earn award miles. What are your normal travel patterns? From LAX, you have quite a few options for airline reward programs that could be beneficial. It’s best to first get an idea of your travel patterns and goals before deciding on a program.[/QUOTE]

You should be able to book round trip via Chase’s travel portal. It’s not limited to one-ways.

Air Canada and Lufthansa are part of the Star Alliance group of airlines. British Airways is part of another one called oneworld. Unfortunately, you cant transfer miles to BA to book awards for Air Canada or Lufthansa. However, Chase does allow transfers to Singapore Airlines and United Airlines, which are both part of Star Alliance, which can book award travel on Air Canada or Lufthansa.

This hobby does take a lot of time, patience and flexibility – have you started with the beginners guide on this website? That may help you get a better understanding of the miles and points world.

Thanks David, So I decided to book with Air Canada, however I dont know how to use my points for it, I have points with Chase, should I transfer my points to Singapore Airlines or United Airlines, so i could transfer them to Air Canada? Plus which Airlines should I choose within the Star Alliance Program so I could accumulate miles? I like Air Canada but I read that their loyalty program is not that good. Would you mind helping me with that, Thank you in advance.

Once you have verified that the space is available for awards, you can transfer to either United or Singapore and use their program to book the flights on AC. You can’t and won’t need to transfer anything to AC. As long as the AC flights are saver level awards, any star Alliance program can book the seats.

Keep in mind that transfers from Chase to UA are instant whereas transfers to SQ take a few hours to three days or more to show up.

In terms of earning miles, note that SQ KF miles expire 36 months from when they’re earned or transferred. UA miles don’t expire as long as you have activity every 18 months. In this case, and since points can be transferred from Chase, I’d recommend UA as your program. Just remember that you don’t earn any miles for award flights.