Questions and Answers

Hi, I searched the blog and could not find anything about flying to Dublin using mileage points since 2014 – My husband and I have the Presidential Plus United card with Chase and AMEX Premier Platinum awards that we use and spend quite a bit on every month. We also have the premier platinum Chase visa debit that I don’t use much. My question is with United I don’t even have enough to purchase their very expensive business class flight. It seems like we should have more points as much as we spend. Should I look at just doing another airline out of Houston? Or flying somewhere like Boston and then to Dublin …I’ve been searching and can’t seem to find a way to use points or get more points to use. Thank you

Most of the time its 1 point/mile per dollar spent unless youre spending on bonus categories. What is your spending like, if you dont mind sharing? The Chase series of cards (Sapphire Preferred, Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, Ink & Ink Plus) may be better than AMEX in your situation. With the right mix you can earn at least 1.5 points per dollar on spend and can transfer points to UA, as well as some other airlines when necessary.

How many UA miles do you have? UA charges 30k miles one way econ for US-Europe. IAH is dominated by UA; youre going to have a hard time being fully committed to flying a different airline.

I only have about 140,00 UA miles and my husband is down to 60,000. We would want to go business from chicago to dublin. From IAH. Spend about 30,000 a month on credit cards sometimes more, hardly less.

If you’re spending 30k a month on credit cards, you should be banking at least 30k points/miles a month. I would absolutely look into opening those Chase cards I mentioned, since some carry 2x points on dining & travel. Freedom has quarterly bonus’s with 5x points and the new Freedom Unlimited earns 1.5 points per dollar on all purchases. The Ink business cards are compelling since they earn up to 5x points on certain categories. All these transfer to United’s miles. The Presidential Plus card helps you earn PQMs but for everyday spend, its still just 1 mile per dollar. Unless you really need PQMs, I’d put the spend on the card on other Chase cards

Business award space is a bit harder to come by but UA/Star Alliance has several partners that could work, such as the Lufthansa group of airlines

Also, look at routing on Turkish Airlines. They have a very nice business class product out of Houston, and a great lounge in Istanbul. You should be able to get that for 140,000 miles roundtrip in business class.