Questions and Answers

So I am completely new to mileage travel points. I have a goal of flying to Shanghai in a year and a half, hopefully business class or better. Staying for maybe a week or so. I currently am not a member of any flyer program so all options are open. I do not travel a great deal. No favorite airline. I have a Chase Freedom card right now which I use for most expenses. I’m looking for a little guidance toward that goal. Thanks.

[USER=1294]@EtieSanDiego[/USER] what is your current balance of UR points through your freedom card?

Sadly right before I discovered Onemileatatime I cashed in all my points. So I will be starting from scratch.

Well the good news is that you have plenty of time to plan your trip and accrue the miles you need. It’s hard to forecast what awards and availability will be like that far in the future so your best bet is to accrue some sort of flexible currency. Given that you have a Freedom card I’d get a Sapphire Preferred to boost your UR total and then make sure to take full advantage of your quarterly bonuses to boost your total. If you have not already, make sure to max out the 10x rewards on Amazon by stashing gift cards for the future. If you have family members willing to help you see if they are willing to open the same cards. If you have a small business consider the Ink Bold. Once you have the UR cards in place (since Chase will not approve you for these if you have more than five new card applications in the past two years) then consider other cards to boost your total–maybe the United Explorer Plus and some sort of SPG and AA combo. Between those two sets of currencies you should have a solid shot fo landing your choice of award. Good luck and feel free to ask if you have more questions!

[QUOTE=”Gaurav, post: 10881, member: 79″]Well the good news is that you have plenty of time to plan your trip and accrue the miles you need. It’s hard to forecast what awards and availability will be like that far in the future so your best bet is to accrue some sort of flexible currency. Given that you have a Freedom card I’d get a Sapphire Preferred to boost your UR total and then make sure to take full advantage of your quarterly bonuses to boost your total. If you have not already, make sure to max out the 10x rewards on Amazon by stashing gift cards for the future. If you have family members willing to help you see if they are willing to open the same cards. If you have a small business consider the Ink Bold. Once you have the UR cards in place (since Chase will not approve you for these if you have more than five new card applications in the past two years) then consider other cards to boost your total–maybe the United Explorer Plus and some sort of SPG and AA combo. Between those two sets of currencies you should have a solid shot fo landing your choice of award. Good luck and feel free to ask if you have more questions![/QUOTE]

Er, UR? It appears that the Amazon offer had to be ‘activated’ by Dec 14. I don’t see a way to click through on Chase to get to Amazon. I’ll have to watch for that in the future. The Sapphire card is on my radar. Thanks for the advice.

Ultimate Rewards. Sorry, when you answered my initial question I thought you understood that acronym :). Did you activate the bonus category at all this quarter? If so you are eligible, you don’t need a second activation.

Sorry, I thought it might mean unrestricted. I didn’t activate. Until today I didn’t realize there was such a thing.

[USER=1294]@EtieSanDiego[/USER] you’re killing me. Go forth and bonus henceforth! 🙂

LOL, Yeah, there are nubes and there are, well, me 😉

No worries, we all started somewhere. Feel free to ask if you have other questions. Try calling Chase customer service to see if there is some way to activate the bonus manually. Long shot but can’t hurt.

Worth a shot. Now that you mention it I do have a ‘private banker’ at Chase. Maybe he can be of some use to me for a change.

[QUOTE=”EtieSanDiego, post: 10847, member: 1294″]So I am completely new to mileage travel points. I have a goal of flying to Shanghai in a year and a half, hopefully business class or better. Staying for maybe a week or so. I currently am not a member of any flyer program so all options are open. I do not travel a great deal. No favorite airline. I have a Chase Freedom card right now which I use for most expenses. I’m looking for a little guidance toward that goal. Thanks.[/QUOTE]

I am now up to 125,000 or so points with Chase. The general plan is to fly from LAX to Shanghai spending a week or so with a side trip by train to Bejing. After that a hop to Seoul and then back to LA. One question is regarding routing. Would it be best to return to Shanghai from Seoul or to go directly from Seoul to LA? Travel is still planned for the last week of May and first week of June 2017. Also I’m wondering about the logtistics of buying tickets. Do I buy them from Chase or …. not sure how this works.

Thanks again.

Did you open up an Ultimate Rewards card that has an annual fee like the Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve? If not, your URs are only going to be worth a penny per point, I believe, and you’d use them to “pay” for your ticket that you’d purchase through the UR portal. If you do have one of the premium cards then the next step is to figure out which programs have award seats on your dates and go from there.

[QUOTE=”EtieSanDiego, post: 10847, member: 1294″]So I am completely new to mileage travel points. I have a goal of flying to Shanghai in a year and a half, hopefully business class or better. Staying for maybe a week or so. I currently am not a member of any flyer program so all options are open. I do not travel a great deal. No favorite airline. I have a Chase Freedom card right now which I use for most expenses. I’m looking for a little guidance toward that goal. Thanks.[/QUOTE]

Yes I have a Sapphire card. I don’t know what a ‘program’ is though. Is that one of the airlines?

Correct. So you have two options–you can use the UR points you have to buy tickets through the UR portal which will give you 1.25c/point (1.5c if you get the Chase Sapphire Reserve, which you should do if you are still below five new accounts in the last two years). The second option now that you have the Preferred (CSP) is to transfer the points to an airline mileage program like United, Korean, etc and use those to book your tickets. Given that you wanted to fly J, you’re probably more likely to have luck with the transfer.

This page lists all the transfer partners for UR
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/04/27/value-of-transferable-points/[/URL]

Here you can find the mileage costs for an itinerary:
[URL]http://www.travelcodex.com/award-maximizer/[/URL]

And last, if possible it would seem to be better to come back from Seoul rather than backtrack to Shanghai if you don’t need to. This will depend on the rules of the transfer partner you choose. Not sure how much reading you’ve done since the last time we talked but if you’re still at low knowledge level consider using an award booking service (OMAAT has one but there are others as well) to help you.

Another consideration is that it appears a number of Chinese airlines have fares that are vastly cheaper than the U.S. carriers. I wonder of that might make it better for me to fly the cheap airline, paying with Chase Sapphire, and banking the points for another trip. There are a lot of variables to think about here.

Yes. That’s why it’s good to have some value for your points in mind. That way you can compare to the cash rate and use the points as appropriate.

I decided to buy my tickets this time around and accumulate the points for another day. I bought business class on Delta from LAX to Shanghai, business class on Korean Airlines from Bejing to Seoul, and business class on Korean Airlines from Seoul to LAX, using my Chase Reserve. It appears that Delta and KAL have a relationship, does anyone know if points can be transferred from KAL to Delta? Also I purchased the tickets of my husband. I’m wondering if if Delta will credit the status points to me or to my husband. Thanks.

Each passenger gets points/mileage credits for status to the Skyteam member of their choice. Use the 6 digit record locator you received on each ticket to modify the reservation and put the number of the frequent flyer program you want the credit to go to and they will credit that program with the appropriate number. No airline credits anything to a passenger other than what is on the PNR.

Members of Skyteam; you can credit flights from one Skyteam to any one FF program of the other members of the alliance.
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTeam#Member_airlines[/URL]

Also a lot of airlines have relationships with some airlines that are not part of their alliance.

Fastest and easiest way to check where you can credit a paid flight is this website:
[URL]http://www.wheretocredit.com/[/URL]
Just chose the airline you will be flying and the booking class.

Thanks so much for the info. Of course my next question is about booking class. I don’t see anywhere on my Korean Airlines reservation where booking class is mentioned. I have looked around and found info that indicates class J if you pay full fare business class. Any idea how to nail this down for sure?

Sorry, but I can’t remember ever having booked a revenue flight true the KAL website. I normally use Expedia for one off paid bookings for airlines I don’t fly very often.

Try looking for the Fare rules, then find the fare code. First letter should be the booking class.

As an example ZB64US on Delta means booking class Z:
[URL]http://www.wheretocredit.com/delta-air-lines/z[/URL]