Sometimes the best use of your miles is not for a luxurious longhaul first class flight but simply getting to your destination far more cheaply than paying cash. Boring? Yes. But smart? Yes, indeed.
An Award Expert client in Chicago has to get to Frankfurt on Tuesday, but the cheapest nonstop ticket is $1787.30 one-way:
Even if we get creative and put in a return that she may just happen to skip…the price only drops to $1292.40…
But how about using miles? That same ORD-FRA flight is only 40K miles plus $78 in taxes/fees. In fact, business class is only 70K miles one-way.
Is that as sexy as a one-way in Lufthansa First Class? Nope. But Lufthansa First Class is not available and the client is happy to fly in economy class. Even taking the lower $1292.40 price, that comes out to about three cents per miles in value.
Yes, miles are a depreciating asset and I do not recommend stockpiling them. But this rather boring example still demonstrates how valuable miles can be for last-minute ticket or international one-way ticket purchases.
Always compare the mileage price versus cash price, but in many cases using miles even for rather boring redmeptions makes a great deal of sense.
Yup. Miles & points are not just for aspirational redemptions.
These types of redemptions are excellent, even if they aren’t Instagram-worthy. We live in Tampa and have family just west of Charlotte. AA has a monopoly on that route and routinely charges $500+ RT for those short flights. Using Qatar miles (transferred from AmEx), we can take almost any flight for 6k points each way, yielding a redemption value of more than 4 cents/point. A 90-minute economy-class flight on American is boring, but using 60k Qatar miles to save almost $3,000 for our family of 5 sure gets me excited.
Did you check fares via FRA? I would imagine that sort of route would give a lot of opportunities for hidden city ticketing.
Baggage has to be checked.
“ … has to get to ABC on Tuesday …”, “… $1787.30 one-way … price only drops to $1292.40…”, “same XYZ-ABC flight is only 40K miles … business class is only 70K miles …” and “do not recommend stockpiling (miles)” = non sequitur.
You describe an excellent example (last minute travel) of exactly why miles should be stockpiled, had your client not stockpiled 40k or 70k miles, they would not have been able to obtain the “Boring, Extremely Smart Award Redemption”. Yet you conclude with an admonishment of stockpiling, not logical.
Maybe a balance of 70k isn’t considered stockpiling? How about 1M miles? At what # is it considered stockpiling?
I beleive what Matthew is likely suggesting is keeping your miles in transferable currencies (ie chase points) that can be transferred to United, for example, instantly. Rather then stockpiling UA miles
You can just buy Aeroplan miles cheaper than the value given in Matthew’s example. They appear instantly. Did it myself for exactly this situation recently flying Turkish. The actual cash cost of buying the miles for business was less than half the cash cost of buying an economy ticket.
This is particularly a last-minute phenomenon when cash prices rise, at the same time as the airline releases last minute mileage seats.
$693 one-way on LH431 that day with a little trick, direct ORD-FRA.
Still not cheap yet no comparison to $1.787.
And you get to fly the Queen.
How does one become an Award Expert client?
I’m not taking any new clients at this time. Unfortunately, I don’t have the bandwidth.
Any recommendations for alternatives? Obviously email me if u don’t want that in the public domain
LOL
Nowadays among the major North American airline programs, my favorite award is the 4.5k mile tickets issued by Alaska Airlines.