Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky,

Living in Dubai, and just booked a stay at the St. Regis in Aspen this winter with Marriot points (super exited – read your review!) for two persons. I’m trying to book flight tickets and would ideally like to fly business on the longhaul part of the flights. I’m an Emirates gold (current balance 100K points or so) and a Marriot platinum premier elite (current balance 200K points or so), Hyatt Explorist (80K points). Also I have some random (10-20K) points in Finnair, SAS, Aeroflot without status. Any chance I could consolidate these points to score business tickets for two persons? I’d be happy to for example pay normal full flex economy tickets (>$2,000) and upgrade. Also I’m quite flexible destination wise (could spend a couple of days on the west coast, alternatively Denver a day or two). Any recommendations?

Regards, Roger

Hi Roger –

What dates are you looking to travel? Emirates makes it relatively easy to book and upgrade. See this post here for more details – we can help research if you need, or you can follow the instructions and just plug in your own dates and routes.

[URL]https://onemileatatime.com/is-upgrading-emirates-flights-a-good-deal/[/URL]

Emirates flies to Los Angeles and San Francisco on the west coast.

Alternatively, if you’re willing to pay >$2,000 cash – you could look at just buying tickets. For instance, it is the long way around, but you could fly all the way in Cathay business class for $3,300…

[ATTACH=full]582[/ATTACH]

And from personal experience…you’ll have a lot better chance getting flights into/out of Denver but it’s a 3.5-4 hour drive to Aspen. Booking a shuttle is the cheapest way to get there though of course your hotel may not be the first stop. If your flight out of DEN is in the morning you’ll either have to leave very early or you’ll want to drive back closer to the airport the night before.

I doubt you can get award seats into Vail/Eagle County (EGE) at this late date but it’s worth a look. That airport is only 1.5 hours from Aspen. You can rent a car or take a shuttle from there.

The Aspen airport (ASE) is super-convenient to the town but it can only accommodate regional jets and it often subject to delays due to low clouds or snow. I do not recommend flying into that airport if you’ll be connecting to international flights.