Questions and Answers

Im planning a trip to Europe in the next couple years and want to fly first or business class. I have the Chase Sapphire and Chase Freedom cards and use them dutifully to amass points. Can I book first class travel with them? When I go to the site to book travel, the only class available is economy. Im new to this so thanks in advance.

Kelley

Welcome [USER=1742]@kelley[/USER],
When booking through the Ultimate Rewards (UR) portal, just do the search and then on the left side there are filters where you can specify Economy, Premium Economy, Business or First.

But to get more bang for your buck you’re usually better off transferring your points to a frequent flyer program and booking the tickets that way.

If you book through the portal, the URs earned by your Freedom card are worth just 1 cent per point while the URs earned by your Sapphire (Preferred, I’m assuming) are worth 1.25 cents each. Even if you have the Sapphire Reserve card, those URs are only worth 1.5 cents each. But if you can find award space on the routes you want to travel, those URs could be worth 2 cents or more apiece.

First, you’d need to combine your URs because URs earned via the Freedom card cannot be transferred to airlines. But if you pool your Freedom & Sapphire URs, then you can transfer them. Here’s Ben’s post on how to do that: [URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/09/06/combine-ultimate-rewards-points/[/URL]

Next, before transferring to any airlines, find the award space on one of the airlines that partners with URs. MileCards has a pretty good guide here: [URL]http://milecards.com/1588428655/chase-ultimate-rewards-points/[/URL]

Then you can transfer the points to the frequent flyer program and use those to book the tickets.

Let us know if you have more questions and we’ll see if we can answer them.

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THANK YOU!!!