Questions and Answers

Hello everyone , i hope to receive some help for my upcoming trip in NOV-DEC 2018 ( or a bit later if needed ) from PDX to NAS
I currently have only 80k points from Chase ,and am trying to get the sign up bonus 80k from chase business but they’re giving me a hard time ( completed 1st round review now waiting for final decision in 8 business days 🙁 so..maybe a no then .
I just checked thru Chase travel and first class costs around 97k points /each ,for 4 tickets so i will need around 388k points , which i believe its impossible at this point .
I plan to fly with american airline , so am thinking to get Citi AA Platinum 60k miles and Citi business platinum 60k , if approved do i get 120k miles in total ? My wife can apply to get her extra 60k too .That’d be great if we could be able to get enough miles for 2 tickets and pay 2 with cash . would you please give me some more ideas/tips on how to get there in 6-9 months ?
Man it takes time and effort to play this hobby so hats off to those who travel first class all the time .
Thanks so so much,
Tim

Welcome, Tim.

Yes, if you get both the Citi Platinum and Citi Business card, you would end up with 120K miles. Same for your wife, if she applied separately.

I understand the desire to use points for your flight, but is there a reason you are trying not to pay cash? I just did a quick search, and flights on American from PDX to the Bahamas next November are relatively reasonable — only $445 per person (with one-stop in Charlotte). That price seems to be the same almost every day of the month.

Also, just a heads up, flights from Portland to the East Coast, then to the Bahamas will just be regular domestic first-class seats. So, the premium cabin photos that Lucky regularly posts won’t really apply for your flights. You’ll get a somewhat larger recliner seat and a meal… but you won’t have a flat bed or anything. Unfortunately, won’t even have lounge access (unless you get it through your credit card). Just making sure you have the right expectations!

Personally, in this situation, I would probably pay cash for my flight and then use my Chase points to cover hotel.

And I’m not sure if you were thinking you could combine the AA miles and the Chase points but you cannot. To use the AA miles you’d need to find flights with award seats available (unlikely to find 4 on what are essentially domestic-length flights). Going through the Chase portal and purchasing the tickets with your points you can pick any flight their search engine shows at a fixed rate of 1 UR point = 1/1.25/1.5 cents, depending on which Chase card(s) you have.

But Ricky is correct, for those prices I’d look at cash.

Hi Ricky, thank you , yes i can pay cash but after landing on this site i am thinking about saving up miles/points to help cover flights or hotel if possible . So in my case i should pay cash for 4 tickets and would you please tell me what credit card(s) should i apply for hotel ?
Hi [URL=’http://asklucky.onemileatatime.com/members/midsouth-skier.184/’]MidSouth Skier[/URL] ,oops i thought i could . Thank you for your clarification .I’ll need to spend more time to read more info on here . If you happen to know which credit card for the hotels please let me know . Thank you again .

For the hotels I’d check to see where you want to stay to be sure they have award availability. Then we can look at the best way to accumulate those points.