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Helios

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I think you get a better bang using airline miles rewards for Business and First Class reward tickets, provided you can get discounted mileage rewards.

I agree, for premium tixs miles are better. Hopefully you can get the saver awards.

As an example, I just got 4 F tixs IAD-LHR-CDG in BA for 170,000 roundtrip. But BA does get you with high fuel surcharges...:mad:
 

Quilter

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Weird airline pricing schemes. I have seen that a couple of times.

I have also seen that adding two more segments (before and after your desired flights) actually lower the price.:hysterical:

Interesting. Can you give an example of what you mean? Thanks
 

Quilter

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I think you get a better bang using airline miles rewards for Business and First Class reward tickets, provided you can get discounted mileage rewards.

You do better on Chase portal for economy priced tickets.

Check both, and compare.

Thank you. That confirms what I thought. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something on the travel portal.
 

Quilter

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I agree, for premium tixs miles are better. Hopefully you can get the saver awards.

As an example, I just got 4 F tixs IAD-LHR-CDG in BA for 170,000 roundtrip. But BA does get you with high fuel surcharges...:mad:

170,000 for all 4 or each one?

I booked B seats DTW-IAD-FRA-VCE for 70,000 one way. (Could have booked DTW-FRA-VCE but want to fly in a 747). Another 70,000 for the return VCE-FRA-DTW. That was the MileSaver rate.
 

rickandcindy23

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Thank you. That confirms what I thought. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something on the travel portal.

The UR portal only works for airfare you would otherwise pay for with cash, which you can purchase with points instead, points you already have saved in your account. I cannot imagine having enough points for $20K in First Class airfare. That would be a crazy amount of points. I think some people can do it, but transferring points to a partner, like United or British Airways, would almost certainly be preferable. First Class to Maui for us is different. $808 RT at times from Oakland, which equates to a huge savings for us with our Chase UR points.
 

Quilter

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The UR portal only works for airfare you would otherwise pay for with cash, which you can purchase with points instead, points you already have saved in your account. I cannot imagine having enough points for $20K in First Class airfare. That would be a crazy amount of points. I think some people can do it, but transferring points to a partner, like United or British Airways, would almost certainly be preferable. First Class to Maui for us is different. $808 RT at times from Oakland, which equates to a huge savings for us with our Chase UR points.

Even at the round trip rate of $5,000 the trip to Italy would take 1,000,000 UR points for 2 tickets.

$800 for a RT in F. Wow! It would be a far reach for me to think that fares like that would happen from DTW-VCE on the days I needed ;)
 

Helios

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Interesting. Can you give an example of what you mean? Thanks

As an example, you may pay less if you go on United First EWR-IAD-HNL-IAD-EWR than IAD-HNL-IAD. Both IAD and EWR have 767400 with international configurations going to HNL once a day. I have seen this with many other routes and airlines.
 

Helios

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170,000 for all 4 or each one?

I booked B seats DTW-IAD-FRA-VCE for 70,000 one way. (Could have booked DTW-FRA-VCE but want to fly in a 747). Another 70,000 for the return VCE-FRA-DTW. That was the MileSaver rate.

Per Person RT. 4 tickets at the same price using AA miles in BA 747400. I wanted to try the second deck, but I found the F tixs for all of us and decided to stay downstairs. Also, I don't like the rear facing Biz window seats upstairs.
 

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Even at the round trip rate of $5,000 the trip to Italy would take 1,000,000 UR points for 2 tickets.

$800 for a RT in F. Wow! It would be a far reach for me to think that fares like that would happen from DTW-VCE on the days I needed ;)

800 RT in F from OAK to Hawaii sounds nice. I wish I could say the same, it's about $15K for the 4 of us from EWR but in 767400 with flat seats and AVOD.
 

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800 RT in F from OAK to Hawaii sounds nice. I wish I could say the same, it's about $15K for the 4 of us from EWR but in 767400 with flat seats and AVOD.

Or 740K miles plus about $80...
 

rickandcindy23

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Here is the math for UR points:

$808 ticket (including all fees and taxes) cost us 64,640 points. This was at 1.25X UR. We now have 1.5X UR, so we would do better with the new Chase Sapphire Reserve portal. 64,640 was about 48,480 spend, but now that spend would get me 72,720 for the same spend at 1.5X.

But a lot of my maintenance fees will result in points at 3X (at least $70K annually).

Manufactured spend is about $6/1,000 points. That makes the ticket about half price for us: 64,640 X $6/ 1,000= $387.84. It pays to MS. We only do about $100K per year at 5X.
 

Helios

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Here is the math for UR points:

$808 ticket (including all fees and taxes) cost us 64,640 points. This was at 1.25X UR. We now have 1.5X UR, so we would do better with the new Chase Sapphire Reserve portal. 64,640 was about 48,480 spend, but now that spend would get me 72,720 for the same spend at 1.5X.

But a lot of my maintenance fees will result in points at 3X (at least $70K annually).

Manufactured spend is about $6/1,000 points. That makes the ticket about half price for us: 64,640 X $6/ 1,000= $387.84. It pays to MS. We only do about $100K per year at 5X.

Did I misread your post? Did you say your MF are $70K?:eek:

Enjoy MF while it's around...
 

rickandcindy23

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Did I misread your post? Did you say your MF are $70K?:eek:

Enjoy MF while it's around...
Yep, they are that high. We own a lot of Wyndham points and Sheraton weeks, too.
 

farsighted99

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Here is the math for UR points:

$808 ticket (including all fees and taxes) cost us 64,640 points. This was at 1.25X UR. We now have 1.5X UR, so we would do better with the new Chase Sapphire Reserve portal. 64,640 was about 48,480 spend, but now that spend would get me 72,720 for the same spend at 1.5X.

But a lot of my maintenance fees will result in points at 3X (at least $70K annually).

How do you get 3X out of maintenance fees? I only get 2X (supposedly gold)... Are you Platinum? Just curious.
 

Helios

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Yep, they are that high. We own a lot of Wyndham points and Sheraton weeks, too.

Those are some high MFs.

BTW, my second MF reference was supposed to be Manufactured Spending.
 

rickandcindy23

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How do you get 3X out of maintenance fees? I only get 2X (supposedly gold)... Are you Platinum? Just curious.
Chase Sapphire Reserve gets 3X on MF's.
 

Sandy VDH

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melissy123

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Here is the math for UR points:

$808 ticket (including all fees and taxes) cost us 64,640 points. This was at 1.25X UR. We now have 1.5X UR, so we would do better with the new Chase Sapphire Reserve portal. 64,640 was about 48,480 spend, but now that spend would get me 72,720 for the same spend at 1.5X.

Cindy, do you have to transfer your old points to the new portal to get the 1.5X instead of the 1.25X?
 

Sandy VDH

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Cindy, do you have to transfer your old points to the new portal to get the 1.5X instead of the 1.25X?

Im not Cindy, but I can answer. You can transfer the UR points between any of your UR accounts. So I earn on Ink, Freedom and Sapphire, but move them all over to Sapphire to book travel and use UR rewards.
 

melissy123

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Im not Cindy, but I can answer. You can transfer the UR points between any of your UR accounts. So I earn on Ink, Freedom and Sapphire, but move them all over to Sapphire to book travel and use UR rewards.

Thank you!
 

tschwa2

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Freedom has a much more limited UR program. I don't think they can be transferred into the other UR accounts.
 

DavidnRobin

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If 3x on UR and worth 1.5c/UR = 4.5c/UR
If 2x on SP and worth 2.25c/SP = 4.5c/SP

other than optimizing or maximizing their Spend - aren't these the same (approx.)?
 

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If 3x on UR and worth 1.5c/UR = 4.5c/UR
If 2x on SP and worth 2.25c/SP = 4.5c/SP

other than optimizing or maximizing their Spend - aren't these the same (approx.)?

No, The value in UR is "real" in that you can use that amount to purchase any travel. The value in SP is "opportunistic" in that that you need to find a use.
 

lily28

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Freedom has a much more limited UR program. I don't think they can be transferred into the other UR accounts.

You can transfer UR from Freedom to sapphire preferred or reserve. I just did that last week
 

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No, The value in UR is "real" in that you can use that amount to purchase any travel. The value in SP is "opportunistic" in that that you need to find a use.

So the opportunistic value is higher since we get about 4-5c/SP upon redemption and not 2.25c/SP (I used that figure for SP as the approx. consensus value)
 
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