Questions and Answers

My wife and I recently retired, are on a budget and wish to travel business class once a year from San Diego overseas. I am tall with enough claustrophobia that it’s probably impossible for us to fly economy that far. We have great credit and received a number of new cards, with the bonuses. We each have the Sapphire Reserve and Preferred. I now have 160,000 points and she has 110,000, which will get a 50,000 point boost in the next few months. (We have a chunk of Alaska miles -100,000-, accumulated over the years and about 50,000 AA miles which will get the 50,000 mile boost with our new Citi card).

We recently received the opportunity to fly with a group from LAX round trip to Tel Aviv in September. They will be flying Air Canada. I’m looking for advice on how to secure business class tickets on those flights using our accumulated points and I’m getting a lot of runaround. I know I can transfer the Chase Rewards to United and then can transfer to Air Canada. United can also get us to Tel Aviv but they’re not showing availability around the dates we need. I don’t want to transfer the Chase points to United before I know I can use them to get to Tel Aviv. I’ve looked at the mileage charts and we’re going to be pretty close, even before my wife gets her extra 50,000. I tried contacting a couple of recommended sites where you pay for help but no one has replied.

I thought I had a good strategy to help us with our travel but so far it’s discouraging. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I read the daily blog, via my email.

Hi Brad! If United isn’t showing availability on the dates you need, you don’t want to transfer your points there. Tel Aviv is a tough destination for points lately, but if you have some flexibility in your dates and routing (like maybe leaving from LAX) it shouldn’t be impossible.

I’m not sure who else you’ve contacted, but if you click “Award Help” at the top of the page we’d be happy to assist.