Questions and Answers

Dear Lucky and All,

This might be a bit outside your normal area of expertise, but here goes.

I have moved to India from the US, but make a trip back to the US about once a year.

I have a flight coming up from India to the US (SFO) on Singapore Airlines. In the past, I have credited the miles on Star alliance to my United Mileage Plus account. The account activity every 18 months keeps my miles from expiring.

I make trips within India about 4 times a year. Mostly BLR-DEL, but not always on Vistara.

I just flew Air Vistara, SQ’s JV in India, for the first time, and liked it. Now I’m wondering whether to credit the miles for my upcoming trip to my Club Vistara account or to my UA account.

My flight is in premium economy (P), but my first flight from BLR-SIN is on Silk Air metal, which I think means that it is not eligible for miles on UA.

What are your thoughts and other the considerations I should consider? E.g., sign up for Kris Flyer?

Thanks so much.

These questions are always tough to answer. It really depends on how much your flights earn with each program, how many miles you currently have, what redemptions you are aiming for, what you expect your earning rates to be in the future etc etc. Have you taken a look at : [URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/08/06/credit-airline-miles/[/URL] ?

Yes, I know it’s a complicated question, which I why I turned for help to the experts! No, I hadn’t seen that link, so thanks. But I did a bit more homework and it seems that perhaps starting a KrisFlyer account may be the right choice for me. It seems that having Vistara miles are better for booking flights within India, but KrisFlyer miles are better for flights everywhere else. Since the flights in India are cheap as it is, I’d be better off using the miles to go outside of India. That is the major consideration. The secondary consideration is that my ticket will be me 110% accrual on KrisFlyer and only 100% on United for the transpacific part, and for one of the India-SIN legs I’m on Silk which gets no credit on UA (even on a SQ codeshare). Anyway, I’ll keep thinking about it. Thanks

Also better to check [URL=’http://www.wheretocredit.com/’]wheretocredit.com[/URL]
Credit to UA only if you are looking for UA Status thru PQMS and/or your paid ticket fare is quite high and earning more miles. UA Base members get 5 miles per dollar excluding taxes and fees. For your route ([URL=’http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=BLR-SIN-SFO’]BLR-SIN-SFO[/URL]), you should be getting at least 10,400 miles. Unless the fare is more than $2000, going the UA route is not recommended.
I would not credit to Vistara personally. Their miles are used best for within India trips. Usually I consider them to be personally on the affordable side.

SQ Miles are very good even when using within the US. If you are not going to use them you can use them for family (may be). Keep in mind SQ miles expire within 3 years of earning. No matter what kind of activity you have.

Last, there are very easy ways to renew the expiry date on the UA mileage. Use their shopping portal, buy a 10$ amazon gift card from their MPX app, transfer few hotel points if you have any etc. Google is your friend. 🙂

Enjoy your stay in India. How is the situation in BLR?

Hi there,

Thanks for the helpful reply. I, through more research, came to the same conclusion: start a KrisFlyer account and credit the miles to there.

The ticket does not start with “016” so I believe the miles are credited to UA not the value x5. Nonetheless, it makes most sense to get a Krisflyer account and credit there.

Bangalore is good now. The protests shut things down for a few days, but now back to normal!

Namaskara!

Just make sure you have a plan for your KrisFlyer miles. They expire after 3 years, regardless of whether or not there’s other activity in the account.