How to Use Transfer Partners to Get 5x More From Your Points

00:00:00.000 | Do you want to fly first class for less than the cost of economy or even just cut your economy

00:00:05.300 | flight prices in half? Transferable credit card points are one of the most powerful tools in

00:00:10.420 | travel and when used right, they can turn flights that would cost you thousands of dollars or even

00:00:15.380 | hundreds of thousands of points in your credit card travel portal into something you can book

00:00:19.900 | for a tiny fraction of that cost. Honestly, these tactics are exactly how my family and I are able

00:00:25.380 | to regularly fly business class for less than it would cost to fly economy and it also works to

00:00:30.740 | stay in luxury hotels that we'd never normally pay cash for. So today we'll walk through all the best

00:00:36.440 | airline and hotel transfer partners you can start using today to book travel for less. We'll talk

00:00:41.760 | about how to avoid the ones that are a waste of your time and points and exactly how to approach

00:00:46.140 | these programs even if the idea of using a foreign loyalty program seems intimidating. I'm Chris Hutchins.

00:00:52.160 | If you enjoyed this episode, please share with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you

00:00:56.160 | want to keep upgrading your life, money, and travel, click follow or subscribe. Greg, when it comes to

00:01:01.640 | credit card points, why do you think so much outsized value can come from transferring to airlines and

00:01:06.960 | hotels? When you use credit card points directly, like when you go into the bank's portal and book travel

00:01:13.700 | and use your points to pay for travel that way, you're usually getting one cent per point value.

00:01:19.100 | Sometimes there's some uplift, you get 1.25 or 1.5 or something, something like that. But what never

00:01:26.160 | happens in those cases, you never get incredible value. So you never have a situation where a $10,000,

00:01:34.640 | $20,000 flight is available for a reasonable number of points if you're using points in that way. However,

00:01:41.220 | when you transfer to the right airline partners or hotel partners, there's often opportunities to get just

00:01:48.280 | incredible value. Like it's not unusual at all to get two cents value. But, you know, I frequently see 4 cents per

00:01:56.880 | point value, 5 cents per point value and more, especially for the most expensive things. So you might see, for example, a

00:02:03.280 | $10,000 flight might cost a million points if you were just going to pay with points through Amex travel, for example. But you might be able to get that same flight by transferring maybe 100,000 points, one tenth of that number to the right airline program and then booking with miles. The opportunities are incredible what you can do.

00:02:26.280 | Yeah, I think we both have countless examples, some of which will probably come up in this conversation about that. But I think one of the things that often scares people with the idea of transferring points to airlines is that most of the partners, not all, but most of the partners you might transfer are not the airlines that they're used to. If you live in the US and you fly American a lot or United or Delta, there's only a couple programs that transfer

00:02:51.280 | transfer to United, one that transfers to Delta and none that transfer to Americans. So it can be a little intimidating. So what I wanted to do today is try to walk people through what some of the best programs are. Because if you look and say, wow, you could transfer from Amex to something like, I'm looking at my list, 19 different airlines. Where do I even start? How do I think about this? And I'll link to an episode we did in the past together, all about the best tools to search this inventory.

00:03:20.280 | But I thought it might also be helpful today to just run through what are some of those airlines that you're going to see a lot, maybe some that you won't that you can get the most value out of that have really good kind of sweet spots or program kind of rules and leave people with a better understanding for that whole landscape.

00:03:36.060 | Steve McLaughlin: I think that's a really great way of framing this. I was just having a conversation about a week or two ago with a guy who was asking me about the best way he can use the points he's accumulated and I started talking about Virgin Atlantic Air France, you know, all these different options. He's nodding, nodding. And finally, he said, I have to admit it.

00:03:54.060 | Steve McLaughlin: I'm nervous about the idea of using these foreign programs that I don't know anything about. And so I ended up kind of backing off and saying, look, I know you're a Delta guy. Next time you're flying a short flight like Detroit to Washington, DC, check whether Virgin Atlantic. Just get on Virgin Atlantic.com. Do a search for point award flights and see if there's a Delta flight that you can book with Virgin Atlantic points. It should come up.

00:04:12.060 | Steve McLaughlin: As only 7,500 points, which can be an incredible deal because sometimes, you know, those flights are $300, $400. I said, so just start with something really small and easy like that. Then once you've, you know, gotten used to that, then you can expand to all these like bigger opportunities that we see all the time.

00:04:39.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So I would encourage anyone listening to as we're talking about all the different opportunities instead of feeling overwhelmed by all these things, just latch on to one or two that you might be interested in taking advantage of near term and just focus on that.

00:04:57.060 | Steve McLaughlin: If it scares you, the idea of transferring to these random programs, just pick one and, you know, try it out on your next trip.

00:05:04.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And you'll find most likely that it's really not as scary once you've actually done it. It'll unlock all kinds of incredible value for you.

00:05:13.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Scary is probably the wrong word. The only thing that I frustrates me is to really take advantage of this. You end up with 20, 30 frequent flyer a mile accounts, and you've got all these logins to keep track of. And if you have partners, maybe you have different accounts.

00:05:26.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Fortunately, if you have a good password manager, like it's not that hard to keep track of all of these things. I think it used to be a, I remember my parents had a spreadsheet before we really had password managers.

00:05:36.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Now it's a little more straightforward. But also the thing to keep in mind is that for the most part, you're not going to be earning points when you use points to book your travel.

00:05:45.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So if you're worried, gosh, I'm going to fly through Air France's program and I'm going to earn a few Air France points and then I'm going to earn a few Avianca points.

00:05:54.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Well, for the most part, what you and I do is not accumulate points in all these programs.

00:06:00.060 | Steve McLaughlin: It's transfer our Amex, Capital One, Citi, Chase points to the programs, book the flights, and then at the end, end up with usually a zero balance in all these programs until the next time.

00:06:12.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Yeah. Yeah. Although you do have to be ready to be, you know, end up with like a 500 point balance because a lot of times awards show up as like 70,500 miles.

00:06:21.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And with many of these programs, you have to transfer a thousand points at a time. So the way I think about it is like, all right, if I have to transfer 71,000 points to Eddie Had to make up an option and I'm going to leave 500 points there, I just think of it as like that award cost me 71,000 miles.

00:06:39.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And I don't even worry about those 500 extra miles that are sitting there because they'll probably never get used.

00:06:45.060 | Steve McLaughlin: If I happen to have another Eddie had award to book in the future.

00:06:48.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Great. You know, they'll be there, but it's just not worth worrying about those little piddly amounts that are stuck in some programs after you do that.

00:06:54.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Totally agree. And the one thing that I'll set as another kind of ground rule for people to be thinking about before we run through these different airlines is we're not usually, and I won't say usually, but like frequently, you might transfer your points to an Etihad or a Virgin Atlantic, but not because you're flying Virgin Atlantic or Etihad.

00:07:13.060 | Steve McLaughlin: They have all these partners, and whether they're partners from the three alliances, One World, Sky Team and Star Alliance, or they're just one off relationships they have, you end up in a place where it might be more advantageous to transfer your points to, let's call it Avianca Life Miles, which is a South American carrier to book the United flight you want, which seems counterintuitive.

00:07:37.060 | Steve McLaughlin: It seems, oh, if I'm going to book United, I should transfer to United, but in many cases we'll probably reference today, there are better deals to be had on airlines booking through an airline that is in a partner, but not the actual airline flight.

00:07:50.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Totally. That happens so much. Recently, like a really interesting one came up where if you want to fly Emirates first class now, you can't do that with Emirates miles unless you have elite status with Emirates.

00:08:02.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But you can do it with Qantas miles without having Emirates elite status.

00:08:07.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So you can transfer your points to Qantas and then book Emirates first class.

00:08:12.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So it's just kind of funny that there are times where it's not only a better deal, but even it makes award flights available that wouldn't be available directly with the airline.

00:08:21.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Before we jump in, why is Emirates first class such a coveted experience?

00:08:25.060 | Steve McLaughlin: I took it many, many years ago, almost a decade ago, but now with an A380, things have changed.

00:08:30.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Just give people a little highlight of what can happen in some of these aspirational bookings.

00:08:34.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Sure.

00:08:35.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Well, when you fly Emirates first class, I mean, the service, the food, the drink and the experience, the in-cabin experience are just extraordinary.

00:08:45.060 | Steve McLaughlin: The service, I mean, is just fantastic.

00:08:47.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And that's true of almost any international first class that you're going to find, that you're going to have flight attendants like ready to do anything for you.

00:08:56.060 | Steve McLaughlin: My wife and I were celebrating our 30th anniversary.

00:08:59.060 | Steve McLaughlin: I told the purser and the entire crew signed a card.

00:09:03.060 | Steve McLaughlin: They put together a treat tray and gave us roses and stuff as a surprise.

00:09:08.060 | Steve McLaughlin: It was really cool.

00:09:09.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But that's kind of service you might see on Emirates.

00:09:11.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But then as far as like the food and drink, like they ask you if you'd like some champagne.

00:09:16.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Sure.

00:09:17.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Well, it's Dom Perignon.

00:09:18.060 | Steve McLaughlin: It's this incredibly expensive champagne.

00:09:20.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You get served caviar and just all these amazing foods and treats along the flight.

00:09:26.060 | Steve McLaughlin: If you are lucky enough to fly on the Airbus A380 aircraft, there's a shower on board with great big shower suite that you go into.

00:09:34.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Regardless of whether you want to shower, actually, it's a treat to go into an airplane bathroom that's spacious and clean and looks beautiful.

00:09:43.060 | Steve McLaughlin: For example, one of the things they do is they give you pajamas to change into if you're on a long enough flight on other airlines.

00:09:49.060 | Steve McLaughlin: When I've changed into pajamas in similar situations, I'm like standing in a little tiny closet of a bathroom trying to take off my jeans or whatever without having my clothes touch the nasty floor at all.

00:10:03.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And then switching to the other one.

00:10:04.060 | Steve McLaughlin: It's very awkward.

00:10:05.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Yeah.

00:10:06.060 | Steve McLaughlin: The one thing you left off, which I was probably the first time I experienced this, was every individual seat has a door.

00:10:13.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Right.

00:10:14.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So, you know, this is becoming a little more common.

00:10:15.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Yeah.

00:10:16.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You know, I think in JetBlue Mint, you have a little door as you walk by, but this is a much bigger thing.

00:10:20.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Like it is a tall door.

00:10:21.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You really feel like you're in your own private room.

00:10:24.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Yeah.

00:10:25.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And that was our experience.

00:10:26.060 | Steve McLaughlin: We went on our honeymoon and managed to do it as an upgrade.

00:10:30.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Like we had status match to Emirates for a flight and kind of all just happened to work.

00:10:34.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And it was a short flight.

00:10:36.060 | Steve McLaughlin: It was not on an A380, but it was still pretty cool.

00:10:39.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You also have things that are kind of ridiculous.

00:10:42.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Like it's all blinged out.

00:10:43.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So there's gold coloring everywhere.

00:10:46.060 | Steve McLaughlin: There's a button you press to make your own personal minibar, like raise up out of nowhere from the side.

00:10:53.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And then you could take your selection of drinks from that and just kind of random things like that that are all over the cabin, which is just kind of fun and ridiculous.

00:11:02.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But at the same time, it's it's so much fun.

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00:13:42.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So one thing to set aside also before we jump in is that we're talking mostly

00:13:47.060 | Steve McLaughlin: about transferable points.

00:13:49.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So if you're using a credit card that accrues, you know, miles like a Bank of

00:13:53.060 | Steve McLaughlin: America mile or travel point, you know, this is not what we're talking about.

00:13:57.060 | Steve McLaughlin: If you're earning Delta, you're earning United, American miles.

00:14:00.060 | Steve McLaughlin: This is not what we're talking about.

00:14:01.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But if you're earning miles with Citi, Amex, Chase, Capital One,

00:14:05.060 | Steve McLaughlin: now Wells Fargo, Bilt, they let you transfer those miles to airlines.

00:14:09.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And those are the ones we're going to focus on.

00:14:11.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And a few of the airline partners are just partners with almost everyone.

00:14:15.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And so I think we'll go in a couple tranches.

00:14:18.060 | Steve McLaughlin: It's like tranche one, what are some of the best airlines that no matter where your points are,

00:14:22.060 | Steve McLaughlin: you probably certainly have access to.

00:14:24.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Makes sense.

00:14:25.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And we can probably highlight a few of the ones that maybe you shouldn't think about

00:14:28.060 | Steve McLaughlin: that, you know, aren't that exciting.

00:14:30.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And then we'll move to some of the ones that you might need one or two programs

00:14:33.060 | Steve McLaughlin: before you have it because they're not partners with everyone, but they're pretty easy to find.

00:14:37.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And then we can run at the end through here are some of the kind of hidden gems

00:14:41.060 | Steve McLaughlin: that you might only have access to with one or two programs.

00:14:45.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But if you have points in that program, you really can unlock something outsized.

00:14:49.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And so we'll do that with airlines.

00:14:52.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And we'll probably at the end circle through hotels.

00:14:55.060 | Steve McLaughlin: There's just a smaller pool of them and they're not as many hotel groups that I would say like are as promiscuous as the airlines and have lots of partners.

00:15:03.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So when it comes to the airlines that are partners with almost everyone, what are some of your favorites?

00:15:09.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Virgin Atlantic is a really good one.

00:15:12.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Air France is terrific for SkyTeam flights.

00:15:16.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Air Canada is probably my single favorite of the ones that are transferable from most programs.

00:15:23.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So maybe we'll spend a couple of minutes on each each of these Air Canada.

00:15:27.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You said it's your favorite.

00:15:28.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You can't do it with city points, but pretty much everyone else.

00:15:31.060 | Steve McLaughlin: What makes Air Canada your favorite?

00:15:33.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So Air Canada has an unbelievable number of partners.

00:15:37.060 | Steve McLaughlin: First, they're a Star Alliance airline, which means you could use their miles to book any Star Alliance flight when it's available for award booking.

00:15:47.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And the Star Alliance is the biggest airline alliance.

00:15:50.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So right there with just the Star Alliance, it's really compelling.

00:15:54.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But then add on top of that, Air Canada has made individual partnerships with probably dozens of individual airlines.

00:16:01.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So when you add up what they have from the Star Alliance and all their separate partnerships, you have probably the single biggest group of flights that are bookable from one mileage program.

00:16:13.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So that's one thing. The other thing is it has some really great features for award booking.

00:16:20.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So, for example, you can book multiple different airlines on a single award flight.

00:16:25.060 | Steve McLaughlin: It will price the same as if it was, you know, just one airline all the way through.

00:16:30.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Not every program can do that.

00:16:32.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You can add a stopover for only 5000 extra miles.

00:16:37.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So, for example, if you're flying to, let's say, Australia or something, and maybe you're going via the Middle East or via Asia, you can stop in one of those places, add 5000 miles to your trip.

00:16:52.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Stop and enjoy that location before going on. And it has decent award pricing.

00:16:58.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So it's not the best award pricing, but it's decent and I'm good with that. I'm good with paying a little bit more.

00:17:05.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Let me just give you just a made up example.

00:17:07.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Like with Air Canada, maybe it would cost you 70,000 miles to fly to Europe from wherever you are in business class.

00:17:17.060 | Steve McLaughlin: With another program, there are other programs which can do it for less, let's say, 55,000 miles or 60,000 miles.

00:17:25.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Well, that's great. I would always rather use that other program that has fewer miles.

00:17:29.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But if the awards aren't available because they don't have as many partnerships as Air Canada, I'd rather take the one that is available than the one that's hypothetical.

00:17:37.060 | Steve McLaughlin: If you get my meaning there. Yeah. So Air Canada is like just a really good combination of miles that can be used more often, more successfully than others and a good enough award chart to make it a really good first stop.

00:17:51.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Yeah, I've used Air Canada a lot. I think the only thing that I'll add is sometimes if you're not certain about an award, you can pay extra miles to make it refundable.

00:18:01.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You know, one of the challenges with non US rewards program, so American, United, Delta, Alaska, pretty much for the most part, you can book an award and cancel it and get everything back with no penalty.

00:18:14.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Alaska, you don't get back that 1250 partner fee if it's not on an Alaska flight.

00:18:19.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Right.

00:18:20.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Air Canada, there is a fee, and it's reasonable, like it's not hundreds of dollars.

00:18:24.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But sometimes they say, hey, if you want to pay a few extra miles, maybe 5, 10, 15,000 miles, you can make it fully refundable.

00:18:30.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And I've found scenarios where the fully refundable Air Canada price is still cheaper than the United price.

00:18:38.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Yeah.

00:18:39.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So paying the extra to make it fully refundable still saves money over using a program that's already refundable.

00:18:44.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Right, right. Plus, you can't transfer to United from very many programs, right?

00:18:49.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You've got Chase and Bilt are the only ones where you get transfer points to United, Air Canada.

00:18:55.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So you're more likely to have access to Air Canada miles than United miles.

00:18:59.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Therefore, even if the prices are the same to book a refundable ticket, you might prefer to go to Air Canada because it's easier to get those miles.

00:19:07.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Yeah. One other thing, I know you published a ton of data on transfer bonuses on your website.

00:19:11.060 | Steve McLaughlin: I looked at all that data and I tried to calculate how often there are bonuses. So something to keep in mind is you can usually, and I say usually because there are some exceptions, but transfer one to one, right?

00:19:23.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Like one Amex point will equal one Air Canada Aeroplan point. But sometimes throughout the year, there are these bonuses and it'll be like, oh, well, right now for the rest of the month, it's 20% more. So one will go to 1.2.

00:19:35.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Air Canada, historically, over the last few years, has had one to four transfer bonuses per year. So not a ton, not something I'd say, oh, wow, it happens so often, you might want to wait for it.

00:19:46.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But anytime there's a transfer bonus, if you're in the middle of planning a trip, factor that in.

00:19:51.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Because if you get 30% more miles transferring to one program, right, we might say, you know, Air Canada is one of the better programs because they have good pricing versus another.

00:20:01.060 | Steve McLaughlin: If that other airline is going to give you 30% more miles, the fact that it's a little more expensive might completely be negated.

00:20:07.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So that's how I think about transfer bonuses. I'm not usually speculating and going, oh, it's 20% more. Let's just throw some extra miles in right now, unless I know I'm going to need them.

00:20:18.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But certainly, if I'm in the middle of booking a trip, and there is one, I'm trying to see if I can take advantage of it.

00:20:24.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Yeah, absolutely. The transfer bonuses can change the math on which is the best program to book from, because it does become a lot cheaper in terms of the number of transferable points you'll use.

00:20:34.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You mentioned Virgin Atlantic. And that's one where I'd love to hear more because I've just never used it. Like most of these airlines I've dabbled with, I've transferred some points, I booked a flight. I've never moved

00:20:44.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Any points to Virgin Atlantic. They're a partner of everyone. Where do you find a lot of value from them?

00:20:48.060 | Steve McLaughlin: First, let me clarify when Chris says they're a partner of everyone. He means all the transferable points currencies, not that they are partners with all the different airlines.

00:20:58.060 | Steve McLaughlin: They're part of Sky Team, which is a much smaller alliance than the Star Alliance, which is what we talked about with Air Canada. So there's far fewer options for who you can book with them.

00:21:10.060 | Steve McLaughlin: They do have some individual partnerships, like they partner with ANA, which is a Japanese airline, and you can get some great award prices booking ANA with Virgin Atlantic miles.

00:21:21.060 | Steve McLaughlin: That's tricky because that can't be done online. You have to figure out that the award space is available using some other program and then call Virgin Atlantic to book these. So that's not, if someone's just starting, I wouldn't be looking towards that.

00:21:36.060 | Steve McLaughlin: But there's a few sweet spots that are worth looking into. One is Flying Virgin Atlantic itself. They've moved recently to a semi-dynamic pricing model.

00:21:49.060 | Steve McLaughlin: You can't really predict how many points a particular award will cost for flying Virgin Atlantic itself, other than by doing the search and seeing what it costs for a particular flight. But what we've been seeing is flights as low as 29,000 miles from the Northeast US to London in business class, which is just extraordinary.

00:22:17.060 | Steve McLaughlin: And often with moderate fuel surcharges like in the $300 range. The reason I'm stressing that is that before they made this change to this dynamic pricing model, they had good prices to fly Virgin Atlantic, good prices in terms of number of points, but they tacked on close to $1,000 in fees each way. And so it became not as attractive as it would have been otherwise.

00:22:45.060 | Steve McLaughlin: So now the amount of fees that are tacked on also vary. And so you have to get lucky that one of these really cheap flights is available

00:22:53.060 | Steve McLaughlin: with low surcharges at the time you want to fly. And, you know, don't get hung up on trying to find that 29,000 point one, because those are really hard to find. But more often, you will see like 40,000, 41,000 points for business class.

00:23:07.060 | Steve McLaughlin: Now you're not going to see a lot of that from the West Coast, I don't think. But for those, especially in New York, Virgin Atlantic just has tons and tons of flights between JFK and London. So a lot more award availability is there. In addition to business class deals using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Virgin Atlantic, they have some incredible prices for economy and premium economy. So we've seen, you know, economy as low as about 6,000 miles.

00:23:09.060 | You're not going to see a lot of that from the West Coast, I don't think.

00:23:12.420 | But for those, especially in New York, Virgin Atlantic just has tons and tons of flights between JFK and London.

00:23:20.480 | So a lot more award availability is there.

00:23:23.440 | In addition to business class deals using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Virgin Atlantic, they have some incredible prices for economy and premium economy.

00:23:32.400 | So we've seen, you know, economy as low as about 6,000 miles one way to Europe.

00:23:38.780 | To London.

00:23:39.780 | Yeah.

00:23:40.080 | Wow.

00:23:41.200 | Premium economy starts at, I want to say, 9,000 or 10,000.

00:23:46.920 | I'm not sure exactly off the top of my head, but it's just like dirt cheap.

00:23:51.060 | Now, this is especially, again, New York, between New York and London.

00:23:55.320 | You can find good prices elsewhere in the U.S., but that's where those lowest, lowest prices, at least in my experience, where I've seen those.

00:24:03.340 | Okay, so Virgin Atlantic, by the way, I should mention, people might not realize this, is they don't have a very complicated route network.

00:24:13.380 | They basically fly from London and a couple other airports in the U.K., but mostly London, to some international destinations.

00:24:23.840 | But they don't have, like, any short-haul flights around Europe, for example.

00:24:30.240 | So Virgin Atlantic is best for if you're flying to or from London or if you're going really far past London, like flying U.S. through London to South Africa, for example.

00:24:45.040 | You might be able to get good deals for that.

00:24:46.500 | If you want to fly to Europe, sometimes you can get lucky because they do partner with Air France and KLM, well, and other Sky Team partners.

00:24:53.800 | But those in particular, if you're flying to one of their airports, then you might be able to find a award flight that goes through London to Paris or Amsterdam.

00:25:05.220 | Okay, so ANA, but you've got to find it somewhere else, flying Virgin Atlantic Metal.

00:25:09.700 | And you mentioned that example earlier for Delta.

00:25:11.860 | So if someone's looking for Delta flights, is Virgin a good place to look?

00:25:15.420 | So if you're flying domestically in the U.S. on Delta, and it's a fairly short-distance, non-stop flight, then Virgin actually has some really good pricing.

00:25:28.860 | Where things start to go awry is if you have any stops along the way, Virgin will price each leg of your journey separately.

00:25:38.460 | So it all adds up and quickly becomes a bad deal.

00:25:41.240 | Well, I said domestic, but actually you can find good deals between like Southern Florida and the Caribbean, for example, because, you know, those are short-distance or even Atlanta and the Caribbean.

00:25:51.140 | So there are good deals to be had on just about any short-distance flights.

00:25:56.040 | Virgin used to be the best way to book Delta business class to Europe.

00:26:00.600 | But what's happened is they recently started tacking on about $1,000 in surcharges when you do that.

00:26:07.620 | And so that really kills the deal.

00:26:09.940 | And so that's where Air France Flying Blue comes in.

00:26:13.780 | So we'll talk about that soon.

00:26:15.040 | Great.

00:26:15.660 | Let's do that because Air France is probably the airline I have booked the most international business class with.

00:26:22.400 | Because prior to, I guess, a month ago, you know, things change all the time, right?

00:26:28.160 | It seemed like last year and in years before, finding Air France business class inventory was easier.

00:26:33.540 | Then it was really hard.

00:26:35.400 | And now as we're recording, it seems like it's gotten a lot easier again.

00:26:38.480 | But why do you love Flying Blue, the program for both Air France and KLM?

00:26:43.700 | Let me get into that in a second.

00:26:45.160 | But I realized one sweet spot of using Virgin Atlantic miles I forgot to mention is to book Air France or KLM flights.

00:26:53.800 | So those flights, business class or economy or whatever, Virgin Atlantic does not tack on huge surcharges the way they do with Delta.

00:27:02.880 | So you can get good deals.

00:27:04.400 | I just recently flew to Europe in business class on Air France for I think it was 48,500 miles each way and a couple hundred dollars in taxes and fees.

00:27:16.180 | When you look, did you happen to see what that would have cost if you booked it with Air France or KLM?

00:27:21.480 | Yeah, I'm sure I did at the time.

00:27:23.440 | I don't remember, but it was a lot more.

00:27:25.920 | So now let's talk about this.

00:27:28.660 | So Virgin Atlantic has a fixed award chart for booking their partners.

00:27:32.960 | You can look up their award chart and see how much it will cost to fly different routes.

00:27:37.940 | And that's what it'll be in terms of the miles you use.

00:27:41.460 | Air France, KLM, though, when you're using their miles, they don't have an award chart.

00:27:47.100 | So what they have instead is if you're booking business class between North America and Europe, those awards start at 60,000 miles, which is good if you could find it, especially flights from the West Coast U.S. to Europe.

00:28:03.440 | If you get that for 60,000 miles, that's a great deal.

00:28:07.000 | And I'm saying that because, like, you know, I mentioned before around 48,000 Virgin Atlantic miles to fly Air France business class.

00:28:14.100 | That was from U.S. East Coast to Europe West Coast.

00:28:17.780 | So that's a short, much shorter flight.

00:28:19.640 | Virgin Atlantic charges more.

00:28:21.520 | The reward chart shows it charges more from the West Coast U.S. to Europe.

00:28:25.300 | Air France KLM would be a better deal in that case if you got the 60,000 point award.

00:28:29.860 | In the case I was talking about, no, I know the 60,000 point award was not available.

00:28:34.540 | I can't remember what they were charging.

00:28:36.660 | It might have been 90,000, might have been 120,000.

00:28:38.680 | It's it feels very random when you're looking these things up.

00:28:42.500 | Yeah.

00:28:43.080 | One of the things I liked about Air France is that some airlines are not as easy to find multiple seats.

00:28:49.880 | So, you know, oh, I can find one or two business class seats.

00:28:52.680 | But Air France seems to, at least in the past, be easier to find four or five seats, which for us, traveling with a family is easy.

00:29:01.660 | And they offer a discount for kids, I think, under 12, maybe you get like 20 or 25% off.

00:29:06.600 | Right.

00:29:07.400 | So, that's part of the reason I liked it.

00:29:10.040 | What about you?

00:29:10.640 | Yeah.

00:29:11.180 | I mean, I'm usually flying, just my wife and I.

00:29:14.120 | So, I'm not as focused on the number of people or the discount for the children.

00:29:18.440 | But that's certainly a great feature.

00:29:21.840 | For me, it comes down to a few things.

00:29:23.960 | One is I'm at a Delta hub in Detroit.

00:29:27.000 | That's where I fly out most of the time.

00:29:28.680 | And so, if in the rare situations when Delta releases international business class award space to their partners, Air France, KLM Flying Blue is the way to go.

00:29:41.080 | So, I just booked one.

00:29:42.840 | Actually, I think it was just yesterday.

00:29:44.460 | I booked a return flight from Amsterdam to Detroit nonstop business class for two for, I can't remember the exact number of Air France miles.

00:29:54.960 | It was 70 something thousand, I think, Air France miles and a couple hundred dollars.

00:29:59.800 | And I chose that instead of around 48,000 Virgin Atlantic miles and 1,000 euros.

00:30:07.780 | You know, so that's, I don't know, 1,100, $1,200 or whatever is what Virgin Atlantic wanted to tack on.

00:30:12.960 | And so, by paying a few more miles with Flying Blue, I was able to get a much better deal overall.

00:30:20.020 | And I'm sure both of which were extremely better than using Delta miles.

00:30:24.320 | Well, yeah, I don't even look at Delta miles anymore because the cost is almost tied to the price.

00:30:29.980 | And so, if the price was, you know, $3,000 for that flight, I don't actually know off the top of my head what it was, but they probably would want 300,000 or in that neighborhood Delta miles for that flight.

00:30:43.140 | I have not found a great use of Delta miles other than kind of short haul domestic flights where I'm just trying to offset the cost of the flights versus, you know, sometimes I've seen flights be 60,000 points that were otherwise 450,000 Delta miles.

00:30:58.800 | So, it's just Delta miles are hard to burn in a really, really outsized value way.

00:31:05.220 | They are.

00:31:06.140 | I think of them more these days as like, these are pennies that are sometimes worth a little bit more than that.

00:31:12.860 | So, you know, if I could get 1.3 cents per point value from my Delta sky miles, I'm happy because I'm not looking for that outsized value.

00:31:22.800 | And that's also why I don't look to use my Delta miles for international business or first class because I know it's going to be outrageously expensive in miles.

00:31:32.540 | I more look at what the Delta mile cost is when I'm thinking of paying cash for a flight.

00:31:38.740 | And that's usually for economy flights domestically.

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00:34:18.660 | All right, back to Air France, KLM Flying Blue.

00:34:25.340 | So Air France and KLM share this rewards program called Flying Blue.

00:34:30.440 | Those miles, as I said, can be used to fly Delta.

00:34:34.460 | When flying Delta domestically right now, Virgin Atlantic is a better deal for that.

00:34:42.720 | But we saw that next year.

00:34:45.920 | So starting in 2026, it looks like Air France, KLM is lowering their award prices for Deltas like short-haul flights and things.

00:34:55.180 | So flying Blue might become the better way next year for booking Delta.

00:34:59.520 | Beyond booking Delta, you know, it's definitely worth mentioning that flying Air France or KLM can be a great deal.

00:35:07.880 | We talked about that briefly, about how business class awards to Europe start at 60,000 miles.

00:35:14.340 | And that's not just limited to nonstop flights.

00:35:18.040 | That can be flying L.A. to Paris to Naples or something.

00:35:23.420 | And if you can find that, that's a fantastic deal.

00:35:28.020 | They also have other partners that could potentially play into that.

00:35:32.680 | So potentially you might fly the long haul on KLM or Air France, but then connect on to ITA or one of the other Sky Team partners in Europe.

00:35:44.320 | And sometimes they have these promo rewards where they're like, hey, I don't know if it's monthly or quarterly.

00:35:49.380 | I can't keep track of it.

00:35:50.760 | But they're like, hey, here are some discounts and there are better deals than our normal pricing.

00:35:55.040 | I don't know if you've ever booked one, but I see them all the time.

00:35:57.700 | Yeah, no, absolutely.

00:35:59.260 | I don't think I've booked them, but they have those.

00:36:02.080 | I think they're monthly.

00:36:02.860 | They're usually great for flying economy.

00:36:06.260 | And that's where we do see they have like a selection of cities that if you're flying from or to one of these cities, you get in on these good deals.

00:36:16.860 | And they'll often advertise them wrong in our favor.

00:36:21.920 | And what I mean by that is like they might advertise if you're flying from Austin, you'll see economy flights starting at 14,000 miles one way.

00:36:32.600 | But then you go to look and you might see economy flights starting at 9,000 miles one way.

00:36:37.760 | And so they kind of sell themselves short by I guess they're, you know, over delivering on the deal in those cases.

00:36:46.120 | Sometimes they do have business class deals sometimes, but it's usually just one North American city and seems to be as likely to be in Canada as in the U.S.

00:36:58.900 | So, you know, I feel like I frequently see them out of Montreal or wherever that, which is great for people who could easily get to Montreal, but not so great for everyone hoping to find a deal from L.A. or New York or Chicago.

00:37:10.860 | The only other thing I'll say is, you know, this inventory that these airlines offer changes all the time.

00:37:17.580 | And everyone was kind of in a sour mood about Air France, KLM flying mood this year because there was just not the availability we'd seen historically.

00:37:25.200 | And then in the last week or two, it seems like if you want to go to Europe, now it's a lot easier.

00:37:29.600 | And so, you know, things are going to change and ebb and flow with the release of inventory.

00:37:34.220 | But I'm hopeful that this is back to the old flying blue where there's a lot more availability and it's a lot easier to book.

00:37:42.260 | And so right now, at least recording at the end of June, you know, it's gotten better.

00:37:47.020 | And so hopefully that trend continues.

00:37:49.380 | I'm hoping it's better than before, even because those business class flights to Europe used to start at 50,000 miles and some number of months back.

00:37:59.740 | They change it to starting at 60,000 miles and they told us, well, we're doing that so that we can afford to basically release more word space.

00:38:09.820 | They didn't say it in those words, but that's at least how we interpreted what they said.

00:38:13.840 | And the reverse happened, like after they made that change, all the word space dried up and we're like, hey, what's going on here?

00:38:20.100 | I'm hopeful that that was a technical issue or an accounting issue that they've worked through and that now they actually have delivered on this promise to open more word space.

00:38:30.500 | That would be excellent.

00:38:31.680 | The pessimist in me says, I keep getting these emails from Air France saying they're celebrating some kind of anniversary.

00:38:38.760 | And so they're they're having like special deals that like, you know, a sale on their miles and so on.

00:38:44.400 | I'm hoping that this award space is not part of that anniversary celebration.

00:38:48.720 | Oh, I hope so.

00:38:49.880 | OK, I should mention, you know, Air France and Virgin Atlantic often have transfer bonuses.

00:38:56.380 | I averaged it out at five to seven a year every month or two.

00:38:59.940 | You'll probably see one or probably every two months.

00:39:01.920 | So often, but not something you can necessarily count on that regularly.

00:39:06.560 | But definitely I would be surprised if three months don't go by and you don't see at least one from some currency.

00:39:12.420 | If you want to do that kind of math yourself, our website, frequentmiler.com, we have a post called current transfer bonuses.

00:39:20.020 | And Chris, you mentioned that earlier, but I just want to point out that despite the name of the post current transfer bonuses, we have a second table in that post.

00:39:30.820 | That's all past transfer bonuses.

00:39:34.420 | And so if you're curious about what has happened before, like maybe you're waiting and hoping that a transfer bonus will appear to a particular program.

00:39:44.220 | And so you want to look back at were there any transfer bonuses in the summer or in the fall to this program I'm interested in?

00:39:52.940 | So you can use that data on that page to look back in time.

00:39:56.580 | Chris even helped us recently.

00:39:58.180 | We were missing a couple historical ones and he found those for us.

00:40:02.360 | And so now we've fixed that.

00:40:03.560 | So it should be pretty darn complete for the last, I don't know, five years or so.

00:40:08.220 | Yeah, it's great.

00:40:09.240 | Let's run through quickly a few of the other programs that are pretty commonly seen.

00:40:14.060 | I'll say Avios because depending on the partner or the currency you have in points, you might be able to transfer to one or multiple of the Avios programs, which is Finnair, Aer Lingus, Iberia, British Airways, Qatar.

00:40:29.320 | But you can move between them all.

00:40:32.540 | So while all the different programs have some different nuance, if you have access to just one of them as a transfer partner, you effectively get access to all of them.

00:40:42.100 | What do you think about the Avios program as a place to book flights from?

00:40:46.240 | I think it's awesome that we have that option.

00:40:49.280 | And it's really cool that all these different programs let you move the points around because even though they often have similar pricing between like booking through British Airways or Qatar or whatever, and they don't always have the same availability for booking flights.

00:41:05.940 | It's a terrific option.

00:41:07.260 | And it's not as user-friendly as some of the programs in that there's no easy way to check which of these programs have the best deal on this particular flight.

00:41:19.140 | You have to like go into each of these separately and run your award search and see how much it'll cost.

00:41:26.940 | Some of them don't display the answer if you don't already have miles in that account.

00:41:31.560 | You know, so it's challenging.

00:41:33.460 | I wouldn't say there's like amazing deals in there, but there are some good deals to be found.

00:41:39.060 | And there are things that you might not normally think about that is really good.

00:41:44.480 | So, for example, if you're interested in flying Qatar Q-suites, which is one of the best business class flights you can do, international business class,

00:41:53.520 | You can use British Airways Avios to book Qatar from the US to Doha for 70,000 Avios, which is good, or you could use Qatar's own Avios to do the same thing for the same price.

00:42:08.440 | But here's where there's a difference.

00:42:10.100 | If there is not that saver level award availability with Qatar's own miles, you'd be able to book for 140,000 Avios that same flight.

00:42:21.520 | And if you have enough Avios and you're really set on, you know, a particular date to fly, that gives you the ability to book even, you know, yes, it costs twice as much.

00:42:33.740 | But especially when there's a transfer bonus involved, that might not actually be that expensive.

00:42:39.860 | And it gives you the perfect flight on the date you want.

00:42:43.340 | And so it's really good from that point of view.

00:42:46.320 | Yeah, I think one of the things that is often the case is booking with the airline for their own flights.

00:42:53.680 | You get access for some programs to a lot more inventory.

00:42:57.160 | I know on United, you can book any flight you want with miles.

00:43:00.360 | It's just not always the best deal.

00:43:02.140 | But even when it's not the best deal, it might still be a better deal than, you know, booking in a travel portal, getting one cent per point.

00:43:11.560 | And I've seen this with United a lot.

00:43:13.980 | Yes, you can go to Europe for, you know, under 100,000 points in business class.

00:43:18.920 | But sometimes it might be 130, 140, which sometimes I feel, gosh, I know it could be better, like there are better prices.

00:43:26.740 | But if the flight otherwise is still going to be $5,000, you know, it's still going to be half a million points in the portal to book.

00:43:34.300 | So having access to that extra inventory, which usually only comes from the program that operates the airline.

00:43:43.980 | So in this case, Qatar, it's not true for every airline, but it's definitely a reason that these transfer partners can be really valuable is because some of them have access to more availability on their own flights.

00:43:54.840 | Yeah, yeah, that's a great point.

00:43:56.760 | So I was just pointing out one very specific example of that.

00:43:59.980 | But yeah, but to expand on your United example, I think United, American and Alaska all share that characteristic that sometimes you can book their own flights when you couldn't book them with partners if you have their own miles.

00:44:16.720 | But what they also share is is the free cancellations.

00:44:20.000 | And so what I like to do is if I see, you know, I need to fly to Europe, I need to fly to Australia, wherever it is on a particular date or in a narrow window.

00:44:29.860 | And I see a not horrible use of United miles, Alaska miles, American Airlines miles, if I have enough of any of those miles, what I'll do is I'll book it.

00:44:39.260 | But then I'll also set up a word alerts with some different tools to be alerted when a better deal comes up.

00:44:47.960 | And when that better deal comes up, OK, I'll cancel my United booking and get back the miles, get back the fees that I paid and book this new one.

00:44:58.960 | And if if if one never shows up, then great.

00:45:02.740 | I still have a good award flight that I can take.

00:45:05.420 | I have never yet taken that good award flight.

00:45:08.320 | The alerts have always come through for me.

00:45:10.540 | Yes, I think when we talk about examples with these airlines, you might not find them today, but that doesn't mean you won't find them before your flight.

00:45:17.940 | So when it comes to obvious, my historical use of them, which hasn't been very recent, is that, you know, booking short haul, medium flights, especially on American can be a great deal.

00:45:31.840 | Internationally, the fuel surcharges were so high that I've never really seen great obvious uses kind of going to Europe on British airways or something.

00:45:41.920 | Are there any other kind of obvious sweet spots you found that or places to avoid?

00:45:47.920 | Yeah, I mean, as you said, certainly flying British airways itself long haul using well, using any points, actually almost any points.

00:45:57.440 | They tack on these huge surcharges.

00:45:59.440 | And so that's a problem.

00:46:01.020 | The one exception there with using Avios is if you're flying British airways and booking through British airways, British airways often these days gives you an option of paying more miles and fewer surcharges.

00:46:16.920 | So you might be able to book, you know, a business class flight to London from North America for, you know what, I don't know what the pricing is off the top of my head.

00:46:26.940 | So let's say it's 60,000 Avios, but with high surcharges or you pay 85,000 Avios and low surcharges.

00:46:35.260 | And I actually recently did that for my son for a flight that we're taking later this summer because I had found a really good deal for my wife and I, but there were only two seats using different miles.

00:46:47.120 | And then, then I was like, oh, he wants to fly.

00:46:49.740 | He wants to go on this trip too.

00:46:51.020 | And oh my gosh, the, you know, the surcharge is so high.

00:46:54.420 | But then I remembered that, okay, wait, if I look through British airways itself at the award, I might be able to, you know, just pay more Avios.

00:47:02.080 | And I'm willing to do that because all the Avios I have in my account have been accumulated from when there have been really big transfer bonuses.

00:47:09.540 | So I'm talking 40% or more.

00:47:12.080 | Yeah.

00:47:12.480 | And again, similar numbers, six to seven transfer bonuses a year to Avios.

00:47:17.140 | And the fact that there are so many programs you can transfer to makes me feel like that number is going to be even higher going forward.

00:47:24.060 | Because if there's a transfer bonus to thin air, well, great.

00:47:27.620 | That's also a transfer bonus to Qatar and British Airways and all that.

00:47:30.420 | So yeah.

00:47:31.500 | And keep in mind the feature you just mentioned.

00:47:34.600 | One of the things you won't find with a lot of award search tools is stuff like that.

00:47:39.560 | Knowing that you can go to British Airways' own site and buy down the fuel surcharge is not something that you'll probably see on award tool or points, yeah, or somewhere else.

00:47:48.700 | So that's a really good call out.

00:47:50.220 | That's a really good point.

00:47:51.820 | If you are eliminating flights from your searches, all those tools let you say, you know, I don't want to see flights that have more than X amount of dollars in surcharges.

00:48:02.600 | If you're doing that, you might be missing some opportunities for awards.

00:48:06.860 | Yeah.

00:48:07.900 | Okay, let's try to do a rapid fire here where we're not going to go into as much length because, you know, we kind of hit on the programs that I think are among the best, unless I missed any.

00:48:17.200 | But I'm going to run through a few of the commonly transferable airlines, maybe give me a couple bullets on whether they are or are not a good use or things people should explore.

00:48:28.680 | I'll start with Emirates, which has been unable to transfer to for a while while I think they upgraded tech, but it seems like it's back.

00:48:36.380 | Back.

00:48:36.940 | But is it is it something people should be using or looking at much for one specific purpose, use Emirates miles to fly from New York to Milan in business class or from Newark to Athens in business class for a reasonable number of miles.

00:48:55.240 | And then at the airport, ask to upgrade when you go to check in at the airport, ask to upgrade to first class.

00:49:03.680 | You throw in some more Emirates miles to fly in first class.

00:49:06.600 | And that's how my wife and I recently flew Emirates first class.

00:49:09.920 | But aside from that, I don't know of any good, really good uses.

00:49:12.860 | Yeah, they rarely have a transfer bonus.

00:49:15.000 | The miles do expire, right?

00:49:16.800 | Yeah.

00:49:17.860 | Yeah.

00:49:18.340 | So, you know, don't transfer until you're ready to use it.

00:49:23.040 | And you can even if in that airport example, as long as transfers are back and working, which I believe they are, you don't have to transfer the miles in the hope that you'll get upgraded at the airport.

00:49:34.160 | What you do is you ask at the airport, can I upgrade with miles?

00:49:37.420 | If they say yes, then transfer the amount of miles you need right then and there, then you should be good.

00:49:43.540 | Yeah.

00:49:44.160 | Most of the transfer programs now, and we might call out a couple exceptions, are pretty instant.

00:49:50.100 | I think ANA is the most notorious one of taking a while, but most of them are instant.

00:49:55.840 | And you could probably search online pretty easily, Emirates transfer time, and you'll probably get an answer.

00:50:01.840 | But I know that one's instant.

00:50:02.860 | So, yes, don't transfer speculatively for an upgrade.

00:50:05.240 | Transfer at the counter.

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00:51:39.540 | Okay, what about Singapore?

00:51:41.000 | That's one that I've never actually used the points for, but I know you can transfer from almost every program.

00:51:46.200 | Yeah, they used to have a lot of sweet spots, but not anymore.

00:51:49.660 | Their award chart is just really pretty bad.

00:51:52.760 | Best use is the fact that you can't use partner miles to book Singapore first class or Singapore suites.

00:51:59.660 | And so if your heart is set on trying Singapore's first class or first class suites, then you need Singapore miles to book that.

00:52:08.660 | But even then, it's hard to find the saver level award availability for that.

00:52:14.800 | So it's not a program I appreciate.

00:52:17.880 | Plus, miles expire in three years.

00:52:20.660 | You know, there's not much you can do about it.

00:52:22.480 | And so I'm very, not a fan of that program.

00:52:26.340 | Yeah.

00:52:27.000 | Yeah, many programs have some expiration.

00:52:30.720 | When we're calling them out, Emirates and Singapore, there's not really a way to extend them, right?

00:52:35.800 | So for some programs, they might expire, but if you transferred 1,000 miles or you made a donation or you bought a magazine, you can kind of sometimes extend those things.

00:52:44.600 | But with Singapore, with Emirates, it's like, they're gone.

00:52:47.500 | They're gone.

00:52:48.360 | Yeah, exactly.

00:52:49.300 | I hate that.

00:52:50.940 | That seems to be really common with Asian airlines and, in some cases, as you pointed out, Middle Eastern.

00:52:56.660 | What about Cathay Pacific?

00:52:58.820 | It's a one-world program, which means you can use their miles to fly American Airlines, Alaska, British Airways, all those kind of different things.

00:53:08.660 | One really good sweet spot that not many people know about is when you book British Airways flights from the U.S. East.

00:53:19.900 | I'm not sure exactly where the cutoff is, but if you're flying from an eastern city to London on British Airways with Cathay Pacific miles, surcharges are very, very low.

00:53:32.060 | So I think they're less than $200, and that was exactly, actually, when I mentioned before that my wife and I booked a flight and then I had to find a way to get my son on.

00:53:40.560 | I had booked us using Cathay Pacific miles, but there were only two seats available to partners from that British Airways flight.

00:53:49.780 | So then I had to get on British Airways and find one that was available to British Airways themselves for the third seat for my son.

00:53:55.940 | Anyway, so that can be a great deal.

00:53:58.280 | Another good use is flying Cathay Pacific itself because you'll find better award availability.

00:54:04.460 | So award prices aren't amazing, but again, if they are compared to the cash rates, if you can find business or first class to fly to Hong Kong or beyond, Hong Kong is where they're based, then that can be a great deal.

00:54:19.900 | They have an interesting award chart where it's distance based, but it has a limit to how far that distance goes.

00:54:27.520 | So what happens is when you go further than the top band of the distance chart, they don't charge more.

00:54:34.140 | And the reason that's interesting is that they average the award based on what cabin you flew, how far you flew each cabin of service.

00:54:44.620 | So if you fly 50% in economy and 50% in business class, the award price will be half of what economy price would be and half of what the business class price would be.

00:54:56.940 | I know this is very complicated, but what this means is like sometimes if you fly further, the award price goes down.

00:55:03.860 | So let's say you want to fly first class from Chicago to Hong Kong.

00:55:07.300 | You're already at the top of the word chart distance band now.

00:55:09.940 | If you fly further, let's say you fly all the way to South Africa in a lower cabin, you fly in business class instead of first class or economy instead of first class, that'll bring the award price down.

00:55:21.820 | So you're still flowing that just as far in first class as the original price, but now because you're going further, the award price goes down.

00:55:29.840 | It's crazy.

00:55:30.840 | Yeah, some of these charts have these nuances where it's like when you figure them out, you did a whole episode I'll link to that's like flying further to save.

00:55:37.660 | So yeah, yeah, I'll link to that if people want to go deeper.

00:55:40.820 | The Cathay does have transfer bonuses, but they're usually 10 to 20%.

00:55:45.360 | There's not transfer bonuses there.

00:55:47.300 | So not going to outsized value waiting for them.

00:55:51.700 | But if one's happening, definitely take advantage.

00:55:54.220 | This is just not one to keep your miles in to, you know, to hoard miles into this program.

00:55:59.580 | The uses for it are too specific.

00:56:02.080 | So now the next one, pretty common, you know, Amex Capital One City is Avianca Life Miles.

00:56:09.020 | So I'll keep this in the, it has a ton of partners before we kind of go into the niche ones.

00:56:14.400 | But I think it definitely has the most transfer bonuses.

00:56:17.440 | You know, there've been years as many as 12 transfer bonuses in one year.

00:56:21.140 | How do you think about Life Mile?

00:56:23.080 | Is it a program you use a lot?

00:56:24.540 | I don't because it's kind of a pain to work with in a number of ways.

00:56:28.940 | And I don't think we should dive into all the ways it's a pain to work with.

00:56:34.100 | But let's talk about some of its advantages first.

00:56:36.440 | They don't charge fuel surcharges on any award flight.

00:56:39.840 | That's also true, by the way, with Air Canada Aeroplane.

00:56:42.380 | I forgot to mention earlier.

00:56:43.440 | And so that's great.

00:56:45.480 | They have some great pricing, but it's kind of all over the place in that sometimes there's like incredible deals to a particular city.

00:56:56.200 | Like they don't have a consistent award price.

00:56:59.640 | They seem to like, it seems like, you know, most awards to Europe cost this much, but then you might find a particular city where, oh, it's even less if you go there.

00:57:07.920 | So that's great if you can find it, if it works for you, but it's, it's inconsistent.

00:57:13.580 | High change fees.

00:57:14.920 | I hate that, that unless you subscribe.

00:57:19.480 | So unless you pay monthly into their program for like extra benefits, you have to pay very high change fees and cancellation fees.

00:57:27.420 | That's probably my number one thing that kind of keeps me away from investing too much in this program is that like, well, all right, they're difficult to work with.

00:57:36.180 | And unless I really buy into them, which I don't want to do on a program that's difficult to work with, you have these high change fees.

00:57:43.280 | So for me, it's just too common for me to want to change, you know, a flight to want to deal with that.

00:57:51.400 | Yep.

00:57:51.800 | I made a, well, TBD, if it's a mistake yet, but there was a hundred percent transfer bonus with built.

00:57:58.700 | I moved over a hundred thousand or 150,000 points.

00:58:02.380 | So I have about 300,000 life miles right now and I haven't been able to use them.

00:58:07.560 | And not because I haven't tried, but there's been a trip and it was like, oh, well, it's not a bad deal with life miles,

00:58:12.800 | but we're not a hundred percent sure we're going to take it.

00:58:15.040 | If we cancel, it's going to cost us hundreds and hundreds of dollars or we subscribe to this thing for six months and we just spend hundreds of dollars.

00:58:23.620 | And you want to make that decision in advance because it also gets you a discount on the flight.

00:58:29.060 | And it just felt like there were enough gotchas that we didn't end up using it.

00:58:33.620 | Now, I will find a way to use it because, you know, 300,000 life miles is not worth nothing.

00:58:38.220 | Oh, no, no, definitely not.

00:58:41.100 | And I know your co-host, Nick, has used life miles a ton and you can get value out of them.

00:58:46.200 | But I would say there are reasons to find it a pain that have prevented me from getting value.

00:58:53.480 | Yeah.

00:58:54.480 | Yeah.

00:58:54.920 | And, you know, with a hundred percent transfer bonus, I mean, that's a great deal.

00:58:59.580 | And you can keep miles alive by, you know, if they're about to expire after, I forget what their policy is, 12 months or 18 months or something.

00:59:08.020 | They're pretty low timeframe.

00:59:10.280 | But if you just transfer another thousand miles in from any of the programs that support it, you can reset the clock on that.

00:59:17.260 | So you don't have to use them right away.

00:59:19.300 | You could wait for the ideal situation.

00:59:21.660 | And there are really great prices under certain circumstances.

00:59:25.660 | And most of the time I have booked with them.

00:59:28.080 | But most of the time when I look, I'm like, you know what?

00:59:31.200 | Air Canada is easy to deal with.

00:59:33.260 | And the price isn't that much better than booking with Air Canada or even United in some cases.

00:59:39.620 | So, yes, I regret doing that because months later, the opportunity was to do a hundred percent transfer bonus to Air Canada.

00:59:46.400 | But yeah, that is a story for another day.

00:59:48.760 | The only other airline that has kind of a ton of partners at often different rates, but I think it'll be a very quick answer from you, is JetBlue.

00:59:58.100 | Is that ever a program that you've transferred to?

01:00:00.940 | I haven't transferred to because I have a lot of JetBlue points from credit card bonuses and other deals that have happened along the years.

01:00:09.260 | So, yeah, JetBlue has a bunch of random partners now.

01:00:12.260 | You can book a lot of international airlines with JetBlue points.

01:00:16.800 | The pricing isn't fantastic, but it's actually not bad at all.

01:00:20.520 | And the great thing is completely free to change and cancel.

01:00:25.820 | So I would much rather transfer to JetBlue to book a flight that's also bookable with Avios because none of the Avios programs have free cancellations.

01:00:36.780 | Yeah.

01:00:37.580 | But if you're looking, as I have many times, I've been like, oh, I would love to fly JetBlue Mint to New York from San Francisco.

01:00:44.520 | Should I use my JetBlue points?

01:00:46.120 | Is there any outsized value to have?

01:00:48.160 | My experience has been if you're booking JetBlue flights with JetBlue points, it's at a fixed value that isn't that much more compelling than, you know, a travel portal booking.

01:00:58.740 | Yeah.

01:00:58.960 | And ironically, that's where their partners come in.

01:01:01.520 | Like, so it used to be a really good deal to use Qatar Avios to book JetBlue, including JetBlue Mint.

01:01:08.040 | But recently, JetBlue has stopped releasing award space to those partners.

01:01:14.020 | So unless that changes back, it's not great.

01:01:17.300 | But what to keep an eye on is whether the United and JetBlue partnership will result in good uses of United miles to fly JetBlue Mint.

01:01:25.260 | So we'll see.

01:01:26.700 | I'm optimistic.

01:01:27.220 | Or maybe JetBlue miles will result in good uses for flying United flights.

01:01:31.500 | That's possible too.

01:01:32.540 | Yeah.

01:01:32.880 | Yeah.

01:01:33.160 | So those are the airlines that if you have, you know, one major currency, you can probably hit most of them.

01:01:39.320 | There's a couple small exceptions there.

01:01:41.020 | I didn't call them all out.

01:01:42.440 | Singapore can't go from built.

01:01:44.360 | Cathay can't go from Chase.

01:01:46.180 | Avianca can't go from Chase and built.

01:01:48.280 | JetBlue not from built.

01:01:49.460 | Now we're going to move quickly into some of these more obscure programs that have a couple transfer partners, but not all of them.

01:01:56.300 | And some of them will be really fast.

01:01:58.760 | So we can do some of them really quick.

01:02:00.540 | So I'll even take a stab unless things change with some of these future partnerships.

01:02:04.900 | Southwest points, you could transfer from Chase and built.

01:02:08.280 | You're going to get a fixed value.

01:02:09.920 | It's kind of like what you'd get booking in a portal, maybe slightly better than, you know, an Amex or a city portal.

01:02:16.360 | But unless these Icelandair partnership or future kind of agreements take any footing, I don't see any reason personally to be transferring points to Southwest.

01:02:24.800 | Yeah.

01:02:25.740 | Although things change a little bit recently because they've changed their model for how they price the points on awards just recently.

01:02:33.700 | Right.

01:02:34.200 | And now the idea is that on the, you know, less full flights, you might get better award value.

01:02:42.800 | Like when Nick looked at it, he was saying, gosh, I want to say up to 1.8 cents per point value, maybe.

01:02:50.160 | Like that was really rare, but it can happen that you get more in the higher range where it could make sense to transfer when you see that opportunity.

01:02:59.360 | But my God, do not transfer just hoping that that'll happen because, you know, the whole reason they have this variable pricing structure is because most people are going to get actually worse pricing than before.

01:03:11.180 | They're not better.

01:03:12.560 | Yeah.

01:03:12.720 | Every time I've used my Southwest points, I've just been like, well, it's going to be 1.3, 1.4 cents per point.

01:03:18.140 | I already have them from earning points.

01:03:20.540 | Keep in mind one other important thing.

01:03:22.420 | If you're comparing things to booking in a travel portal, you will actually usually earn points on the flights you book in the travel portal.

01:03:29.700 | So if you look at something and you're like, well, it's about break even, you know, yes, there is some hassle of booking in a travel portal that might result in, you know, tricky things to change flights.

01:03:39.880 | But you will usually earn points.

01:03:41.640 | You will usually earn kind of status qualifying, you know, credits, whatever the airline has booking in a portal versus if you're booking with points on Southwest, you're not earning points at all.

01:03:52.180 | Right.

01:03:52.780 | So obviously, if you just have them in your Southwest program, you've got to use them.

01:03:56.640 | But transferring, I feel like there's so many other places that you might get better value.

01:04:01.960 | Okay.

01:04:02.360 | A few others.

01:04:03.460 | I'll hit on some that I think are going to be quick ones.

01:04:05.700 | Etihad.

01:04:07.160 | So Etihad often looks like it has good award pricing on short partner flights, like short American Airlines flights, for example.

01:04:14.480 | Don't.

01:04:15.680 | Don't do it.

01:04:16.220 | There's too many downsides to using Etihad miles.

01:04:19.440 | No reason for us to get into all the details right now.

01:04:22.420 | Just save yourself the headache and don't do that.

01:04:24.800 | The one use, the one place where I'd be tempted to move miles to Etihad is Etihad first class apartments is one of the most amazing ways to fly.

01:04:34.880 | You can get much better award availability to fly Etihad first apartments with Etihad's own miles.

01:04:40.480 | So if you have a special trip in mind and you don't mind spending like 200,000 points one way per person, you can probably find the exact flight you want.

01:04:50.900 | So I would do it for that as long as you're confident you're going to actually fly.

01:04:54.600 | Yeah, they have terrible cancellation policies.

01:04:57.400 | Exactly.

01:04:57.960 | Exactly.

01:04:58.540 | What about Aeromexico?

01:04:59.880 | I know you could transfer from Amex, Gap1, and Citi, but I've never heard of anyone doing it.

01:05:04.380 | We've randomly seen some good deals, but 99.9% of the time, it's a waste of time to even look.

01:05:10.440 | Qantas.

01:05:11.380 | You mentioned Qantas for Emirates earlier.

01:05:13.880 | Any other uses for Qantas?

01:05:15.560 | I know they're Amex, Gap1, and Citi partners.

01:05:17.720 | Yeah.

01:05:18.660 | So they have a distance-based award chart for their partners and all their one-world partners as well.

01:05:23.460 | Under the right circumstances, the pricing can be better than other airlines.

01:05:28.160 | So it's just one to, I guess, keep an eye on.

01:05:31.880 | They're not like amazing prices, but there's certain situations where the distance thing works out in your favor compared to alternatives.

01:05:40.380 | Okay.

01:05:40.820 | Turkish.

01:05:41.740 | Turkish used to be great, but not so much anymore.

01:05:45.160 | They're a pain to work with.

01:05:47.140 | But if you want to fly across a big country, like the United States is a big country, you can do so in economy for only 10,000 points one way.

01:05:59.140 | That means you could fly all the way from Hawaii to Maine for 10,000 points one way.

01:06:04.640 | Now that's flying, in that example, that's flying United, but still, that's an amazing deal.

01:06:09.920 | The other place you can get decent award prices is, at times, flying Turkish itself with Turkish miles can be a fine deal.

01:06:19.440 | But all the other good stuff they used to have is gone.

01:06:23.520 | Is Turkish the one where it's, like, kind of tricky that if you haven't booked before, it's hard to book for other people, and, like, sometimes the app lets you do things the website doesn't?

01:06:32.260 | Yes.

01:06:32.900 | Yes.

01:06:33.620 | Okay.

01:06:34.060 | Yeah.

01:06:35.460 | There's a lot of nuance there that I'd say before you're getting ready to go deep on Turkish, you might need to do some searching and kind of read up on all the gotchas.

01:06:44.780 | But, yeah, and unless you're lucky, like, the one time I used Turkish miles, I was able to book a United flight, no problem.

01:06:51.320 | But many people have to email a booking office and wait for responses and things like that to get these kind of partner awards to go through.

01:07:00.500 | So it can be a big headache.

01:07:01.900 | Yep.

01:07:02.600 | Okay, so now we're on to a couple of the more rare ones.

01:07:05.160 | But United is a partner of Chase & Built.

01:07:07.060 | We talked about how they have free cancellations.

01:07:09.960 | I found that they're decent with fuel surcharges for some partners.

01:07:14.400 | They have never had a transfer bonus from a credit card program.

01:07:18.120 | Do you use United as a transfer partner ever?

01:07:20.500 | I have, yeah, absolutely.

01:07:22.200 | Their prices have crept up over time.

01:07:24.700 | So pre-pandemic, they were, I think, business class of Europe was around 70,000 miles, if I remember correctly.

01:07:33.480 | And I remember specifically, we had a big trip with a lot of people.

01:07:37.780 | I wanted to book with, I think it was 63,000 Avianca life miles, but I couldn't get the award to show up on Avianca's website.

01:07:45.460 | So I transferred to United instead and booked that way.

01:07:49.440 | It wasn't that much more expensive.

01:07:50.740 | As things stand right now, as you mentioned, Chris, a lot of times United's miles are the only way to book United itself.

01:07:59.100 | So it's good for that longer distance flights.

01:08:04.460 | So when you compare Air Canada prices to book Star Alliance flights to United, Air Canada is usually better.

01:08:11.600 | But as you get longer distance, United has spots where it's better.

01:08:17.780 | So, for example, when I've looked Detroit to the Middle East, Air Canada jumps into the 90,000 point one way zone for business class.

01:08:26.140 | United's at 80,000.

01:08:27.780 | So there are definitely situations like that where United is maybe not the best as far as pricing, because maybe life miles would have been cheaper in that case.

01:08:38.240 | I don't know.

01:08:39.000 | But United is very easy to use their miles.

01:08:42.600 | You can cancel last minute and get all your miles back.

01:08:45.500 | I think United might be the one airline where you can even cancel after you miss the flight.

01:08:51.500 | Maybe.

01:08:52.680 | Pay $150 and get your miles back.

01:08:55.820 | So I thought that was like one of the most generous tricks.

01:08:58.560 | But that free cancellation is really a valuable thing.

01:09:02.880 | It really is.

01:09:04.120 | And I've used that a lot.

01:09:05.560 | And I mentioned booking before the pandemic, a whole bunch of people.

01:09:08.860 | So I have this huge stash of United miles because that trip never happened.

01:09:12.800 | You know, I got all those miles back and I use them.

01:09:16.620 | They're so valuable as a placeholder for what we talked about before.

01:09:21.220 | I always have enough United miles to book that good enough flight to wherever I'm going so that I can wait until a better deal shows up.

01:09:32.180 | And I find that really valuable to have that placeholder until I find a better deal.

01:09:36.260 | And someday, maybe I won't find a better deal and I'll actually use those miles.

01:09:40.420 | But in the meantime, I like having that slush fund of United miles.

01:09:44.240 | The last one I'll mention is EVA or EVA Air.

01:09:48.180 | I have flown them in the past, but never using their own miles, which I understand, you know, you get a lot more inventory with their miles.

01:09:56.320 | They only transfer from Citi and Capital One.

01:09:58.360 | They've never had a transfer bonus.

01:10:00.340 | Have you ever taken advantage of, you know, booking their flights with their own inventory?

01:10:04.920 | Never.

01:10:05.900 | So I've actually never flown them at all either.

01:10:08.620 | But yeah, I mean, that's a great opportunity, especially because flights to Asia, award flights to Asia have become so difficult lately to find.

01:10:18.960 | And so having a program that has pretty wide open availability just about any time to its own members at good award prices is really nice.

01:10:30.320 | Unfortunately, when you transfer from Citi, it can take a couple of days for the transfer to happen.

01:10:34.740 | Also, their website is horrible.

01:10:38.280 | And so understanding whether an award is available or not, figuring out how to book family members is just absurdly complicated.

01:10:47.960 | So Tim wrote a nice post about how all that works.

01:10:51.380 | So if you're interested in doing that, check out Tim's post on Frequent Miler about this topic.

01:10:58.120 | But that is one where I think an award tool might not show that availability.

01:11:02.180 | Right.

01:11:03.180 | And so if you're heart set on going to Asia and you're trying to find a deal and you have Capital One or Citi points, go find Tim's post and you might find some inventory you couldn't have found otherwise.

01:11:13.160 | Yeah.

01:11:14.340 | Yeah, totally.

01:11:15.080 | Now, Capital One doesn't transfer one-to-one, but it's probably still, if you're just out of luck finding, you know, those flights, then that still could be worth it because they can't do it.

01:11:26.980 | The few other airlines, I don't want to spend a lot of time.

01:11:29.160 | We'll skip Delta.

01:11:30.280 | We kind of talked about the Delta experience.

01:11:32.480 | You can get to Delta from Amex, but hard to get outsized value.

01:11:35.500 | Never had a transfer bonus.

01:11:36.840 | I mentioned ANA.

01:11:38.560 | I know it takes a while to transfer there.

01:11:41.020 | So my experience has always been I'm scared because award availability changes so frequently that if I initiate a transfer and have to wait a few days to book something, you know, I won't have it.

01:11:53.720 | They lost their round the world awards, which was something that people loved them for.

01:11:58.640 | Do you see a lot of use for ANA going forward?

01:12:02.020 | They still have very good award pricing.

01:12:05.640 | They now allow one-way awards now or soon.

01:12:09.680 | I can't remember if it's taken effect yet.

01:12:12.040 | So if you want to book Star Alliance for a good price, you can.

01:12:17.420 | Unfortunately, they pass along surcharges.

01:12:20.040 | So unless you're flying an airline that doesn't impose surcharges, it's not likely to be a good deal.

01:12:26.060 | So that was all a way of saying there are situations where you could get a great, a very good deal with ANA, but I would not.

01:12:34.160 | Yeah, that's for experts only, I think, because because exactly as you said, the award space might go away.

01:12:40.520 | And there's no way you should move points to ANA speculatively.

01:12:45.500 | Those points expire with no recourse.

01:12:49.060 | Yeah.

01:12:49.840 | And it takes a while.

01:12:51.140 | So that's the nerve wracking thing, right?

01:12:52.700 | If the award's gone by the time it gets there, now you've got these expiring miles, I would say.

01:12:57.820 | Only if you are just very flexible and confident you'll use them is it not a scary proposition.

01:13:03.180 | So what about Tap Air Portugal?

01:13:05.540 | I know it's a Cap One partner.

01:13:07.240 | I have zero experience.

01:13:08.740 | Not a lot of transfer bonuses.

01:13:10.640 | I have zero experience, too.

01:13:12.500 | I'm not aware of any good uses of Tap Air miles that are current right now.

01:13:18.320 | I think there used to be a deal with using them to fly Emirates, maybe.

01:13:21.940 | But I don't think that's available anymore.

01:13:24.360 | Yeah.

01:13:25.160 | The other one that I saw as Tai Air is kind of the one partner Citi has that no one else has.

01:13:30.160 | But I have not found anyone in my exhaustive research that has had any use for Tai Air points.

01:13:35.740 | And I'm not an exception to that finding.

01:13:40.240 | Okay, the one I skipped, which is a built-only transfer partner, at least by the time this episode airs, is Alaska.

01:13:49.380 | You know, up until the end of June, you could get there through Hawaiian.

01:13:53.760 | If you have built points, you know, I think Alaska is a great partner.

01:13:57.480 | And, you know, I transferred a ton of Amex points through Hawaiian.

01:14:00.480 | I don't want to get people too excited because built points are among the hardest points to accumulate.

01:14:05.720 | Obviously, if you pay rent, fantastic way to accumulate built points up to $100,000 a year.

01:14:11.660 | And, you know, you still get a card with, you know, three eggs on dining, two eggs on travel, but it's just really tough to accumulate them because there's no sign-up bonus.

01:14:20.940 | There's only one card.

01:14:22.080 | But if you have them, I'm a big fan of Alaska.

01:14:26.000 | I am a huge fan of Alaska, Miles.

01:14:29.960 | I've found so many great uses of them from flying American Airlines for as few as 4,500 points.

01:14:37.400 | 4,500.

01:14:38.340 | And these are often, like, really expensive flights.

01:14:41.060 | Like, you know, I've seen them, like, around the holidays for a $500 flight being available for 4,500 Alaska miles.

01:14:50.340 | It's just insane.

01:14:52.020 | I just booked multiple flights to London on American Airlines using Alaska miles, 45,000 miles to go Detroit to Chicago to London.

01:15:03.000 | It's just ridiculous how good of a value that is.

01:15:07.040 | The irony with that example is that you get much better value from the East Coast U.S., even though that's a West Coast-based airline, because of the way their distance-based award chart works.

01:15:20.020 | I won't dwell more because I am a fan.

01:15:22.180 | Obviously, there are the Alaska cards.

01:15:24.300 | Maybe by the time this comes out, their premium card that comes out in the summer that they've talked about is out.

01:15:29.980 | You know, Hawaiian cards will probably, my guess is, be closed for new applications.

01:15:33.720 | But I would say if you can get access to points that transfer to Alaska or you can get Alaska points themselves, I'm a fan.

01:15:42.120 | But it's going to be harder and harder with losing Amex going to Hawaiian.

01:15:46.340 | So good luck.

01:15:49.720 | So we didn't talk much about hotels.

01:15:52.680 | And that's a little bit on purpose because for the most part, and we'll talk about the glaring exception here, which I'm sure you know, most hotel points in general are just not as valuable as airline miles.

01:16:06.520 | And so I looked, you guys do a reasonable redemption value, and it seems like almost every airline mile has a redemption value of greater than one cent.

01:16:16.580 | Hyatt is the one exception, and they're a chase and built transfer partner.

01:16:28.640 | So I definitely want to highlight why Hyatt can be such an excellent value.

01:16:34.540 | And then maybe we run through really briefly on whether there is any value to be had transferring points to any of the other programs, but not dwell on them too much.

01:16:44.100 | Because if you want hotel points often, you're better off accumulating them with hotel cards and hotel signup bonuses than as transfer partners.

01:16:52.380 | And obviously staying in the chains, but let's start with Hyatt.

01:16:55.700 | Well, I mean, Hyatt just has great value for their own hotels, middling value for their Mr. and Mrs. Smith partnership.

01:17:03.920 | So I wouldn't, I wouldn't get excited about transferring to Hyatt for that.

01:17:08.020 | But if you're going to book a Hyatt hotel, there's a very good chance that you can get a great value for your points.

01:17:15.340 | So definitely check that out.

01:17:17.340 | Yep.

01:17:18.000 | I know a lot of people who kind of consider their chase points, Hyatt points, and don't really even consider United, for example, as a transfer partner, because they'd rather use Air Canada because all the points go to Air Canada.

01:17:33.600 | Even if United's a better deal, because using chase points for United means losing points that could go to Hyatt.

01:17:39.960 | Right, right.

01:17:41.340 | And that's because you can't transfer from like Amex to United, where people tend to have a lot of points.

01:17:47.460 | So they use their Amex points and transfer to Air Canada.

01:17:50.080 | Right.

01:17:50.660 | Yeah.

01:17:51.220 | No, that's a totally sound thing.

01:17:53.460 | And it's, you know, 90% my approach as well.

01:17:56.820 | I mentioned earlier, I have transferred to United.

01:17:58.880 | That was quite a while ago now.

01:18:00.280 | I haven't done anything but Hyatt since then.

01:18:02.360 | Yeah.

01:18:03.120 | Yeah.

01:18:03.400 | So in my mind, chase points are pretty much just Hyatt points.

01:18:06.320 | I love that you can book suites with points.

01:18:08.520 | And if you earn status on Hyatt, you know, the upgrade awards that let you confirm suites and upgrade them are fantastic.

01:18:16.260 | I'm a big fan of Hyatt.

01:18:17.560 | I should spend more time on them another episode.

01:18:19.740 | But you will never find a transfer bonus.

01:18:22.020 | I don't think there's ever been one in the history of this game.

01:18:25.180 | We'll do a quick run through.

01:18:27.200 | So Wyndham seems like with Vacasa as a partnership going from Cap 1 or City to Wyndham could make sense.

01:18:34.480 | Yep.

01:18:35.100 | Yep.

01:18:35.560 | You can get decent value booking vacation rentals with Wyndham points.

01:18:39.740 | But it seems like not great value booking Wyndham's with Wyndham points.

01:18:44.140 | It varies.

01:18:44.980 | Yeah.

01:18:45.380 | I mean, sometimes you can get decent value.

01:18:47.140 | But yeah, on average, it doesn't look good.

01:18:49.560 | Yeah.

01:18:50.120 | Yeah.

01:18:50.500 | They've had one to two transfer bonuses a year around that 20% mark.

01:18:54.760 | IHG, I know there's a lot of Chase card holders who might now have IHG status.

01:18:59.660 | Independent of IHG, the program on its own, but as a transfer partner, from my perspective, it's one-to-one from Chase and Bilt.

01:19:07.820 | It just holds nothing to Hyatt as an alternative.

01:19:11.420 | I can't see a reason to transfer ever.

01:19:13.240 | I agree, especially since IHG often has a sale on their points for half a cent each.

01:19:21.500 | And so if you wanted to transfer, let's say, your Chase points to IHG, you can just redeem your Chase points for pennies and then get 100% transfer bonus by buying IHG points for half a cent each when they're on sale.

01:19:36.160 | Yeah.

01:19:36.740 | So you can have 100% transfer bonus much more often than Chase will ever offer even a 70% transfer bonus, which we've seen, I think.

01:19:44.440 | Now, I'd make a similar case that Hilton points are about the same value and about the same frequency of being able to buy them for half a cent.

01:19:52.560 | But the transfer rate from Amex is one-to-two, and they often do a transfer bonus a couple times a year, 25%, 40%.

01:20:01.000 | I don't usually think of transferring Amex points to Hilton, but I remember there were a few people I knew who got Amex shutdowns, and they were like, well, I think I'm just going to move everything to Hilton.

01:20:10.400 | And so what do you think about, as Amex, you don't have access to Hyatt.

01:20:14.960 | Is Hilton a good transfer partner for Amex as a way to use your points?

01:20:19.480 | Yeah, I think especially when there's a transfer bonus, I think it's a really reasonable way to go.

01:20:24.120 | Hilton, especially now that they've partnered with Small Luxury Hotels of the World, SLH, they've opened them up to really good value, meaning you can often get one cent per point value or more from your Hilton points, which is really important to understand that Hilton points are more often worth about half a cent each.

01:20:41.620 | So when you see one cent, that's like double value, or another way of putting it is if you transferred from Amex one to two, which is the normal transfer rate, then you're getting like two cents per Amex point or more value in those situations, or better if you did during a transfer bonus, right?

01:21:00.160 | That's a good use if you're into luxury hotels.

01:21:04.460 | At the sort of more medium, lower end, you're going to find fewer opportunities.

01:21:08.880 | There are opportunities, but there's going to be fewer to use Hilton.

01:21:11.580 | Yeah, they have done some recent devaluations on that high end, but they also do have fifth night free.

01:21:18.200 | So keep that in mind when you're thinking about this.

01:21:21.080 | If it's a five night stay at a high end hotel during a transfer bonus, it could be a good use.

01:21:25.960 | If it's a one night stay, no transfer bonus might be a little trickier.

01:21:30.160 | I spent a lot of years staying at Marriott Properties.

01:21:34.160 | I still have never transferred points because again, like IHG, it's a one to one.

01:21:39.080 | Their points are worth less than a cent.

01:21:40.800 | You know, they do have some transfer bonuses and fifth night free, but it just seems like the math has never worked out.

01:21:46.980 | Yeah, yeah.

01:21:48.480 | And you'll sometimes see good value from your Marriott points, but it's just not predictable enough to want to even consider transferring one to one.

01:21:56.680 | Yeah, I wouldn't do it.

01:21:58.240 | Now, the last one is one that I think the first time I've ever opened up a credit card just for transfer partners was that I'd never held city points.

01:22:06.300 | There weren't any kind of unique things that city had on the airline front except a better ratio to Eva Air.

01:22:13.140 | But it's not easy to accumulate, you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of city points.

01:22:17.300 | But they do have Leaders Club and Preferred Hotels as two partners for hotels that seem like there might be some value.

01:22:25.060 | Have you gotten value?

01:22:26.540 | I know you have city cards.

01:22:29.020 | Yeah, yeah.

01:22:29.600 | And of course, there's also the one to two transfer rate to Choice, which can also be used to book preferred hotels.

01:22:36.800 | And so there are two different ways to book preferred hotels with city points.

01:22:41.920 | One is to transfer to Choice, one to two, and then book from there.

01:22:46.400 | The other is to transfer to iPrefer, which is preferred hotels' own program at a one to four rate, which is pretty amazing.

01:22:52.980 | So, yes, there are amazing deals to be had with that preferred hotels transfer.

01:22:59.260 | There are good deals to be had with that Choice transfer.

01:23:03.760 | The problem with the preferred hotels transfer is that preferred hotels, their rewards program is not ready for primetime.

01:23:12.800 | That's being generous.

01:23:14.100 | I mean, it's been really bad.

01:23:16.300 | It's getting better.

01:23:17.060 | Often, like, the searches don't for, you know, free nights just don't work correctly.

01:23:22.640 | If you get past that and get to where you can actually book a hotel, you may encounter issues where the hotel tries to charge you, again, that cash rate.

01:23:32.200 | That happened to me.

01:23:33.340 | I worked through it.

01:23:34.700 | But the point is, like, it's as far from friction-free as it can get.

01:23:40.040 | And so, if you're chasing value, there is value to be had, some amazing value, but be ready for some frustration.

01:23:46.200 | Leaders' club is easier.

01:23:47.880 | So, leaders' club is kind of a fixed value in a way.

01:23:50.900 | From city to leaders' club, the transfer ratio is five to one, which sounds terrible.

01:23:56.840 | Like, you end up with 20% leaders' club points that you started with and city points.

01:24:00.500 | But each leaders' club point is worth around $0.08.

01:24:03.680 | So, it actually works out.

01:24:05.360 | Math works out to getting, like, I forget what it is exactly, like, $1.65 maybe per point from your city points, which is not amazing, but it's good.

01:24:15.180 | My experience, I've only booked one, but my experience with booking a leaders' club, leading hotel of the world hotel, using leaders' club points, was very good.

01:24:25.200 | You join their leaders' club, and that automatically gives you benefits, like breakfast and upgrade and things like that.

01:24:30.960 | And I actually got all of those things and used my city points to book.

01:24:35.340 | So, I had a very good experience.

01:24:37.520 | The number of properties available to book with points isn't huge.

01:24:40.840 | So, you really have to, you know, look at what's available and see if it'll work for you.

01:24:45.600 | But the possibilities are good.

01:24:47.400 | Yeah.

01:24:48.240 | Yeah.

01:24:48.560 | For some reason, I skipped over choice.

01:24:50.020 | So, we mentioned that choice for preferred hotels can be interesting.

01:24:53.120 | But if you're sitting on Amex or CapOne points, and you can go one-to-one to choice, just like a lot of the other hotel programs, don't do it, not worth it.

01:25:01.540 | Right.

01:25:02.180 | I think they had one transfer bonus ever.

01:25:04.020 | And even then, choice points, you know, are not worth that one-to-one ratio.

01:25:10.160 | Yeah.

01:25:10.320 | You can sometimes find choice-as-own hotels.

01:25:13.080 | You might be getting as much as a penny per point value, sometimes a little bit more.

01:25:17.920 | But, you know, that's not great value for your transferable points.

01:25:22.240 | But if you're transferring one to two, then it becomes interesting.

01:25:25.260 | And that you can do from Citibank or Wells Fargo.

01:25:28.440 | Yeah.

01:25:28.980 | Yeah.

01:25:29.280 | We didn't talk about Wells Fargo much because I think they only have Virgin Atlantic, Avios, Flying Blue, Life Miles, and Choice.

01:25:36.660 | So it's a very small portfolio, none of which are kind of unique, though that one-to-two ratio is probably the only thing that kind of stands out as differentiated other than Citi.

01:25:47.780 | And then I didn't mention Accor.

01:25:50.020 | Similarly, my understanding, Accor points are kind of fixed in value.

01:25:53.220 | You've got to transfer two to one.

01:25:54.980 | You're not going to get outsized value.

01:25:56.860 | Built is one and a half to one.

01:25:59.280 | But if you're sitting on built points, I'd take Alaska Miles over Accor points every single day.

01:26:04.900 | Every day.

01:26:07.020 | Yeah.

01:26:07.400 | I totally agree.

01:26:08.540 | This was a lot.

01:26:09.960 | So if people need to go back in the timestamps and find other airlines and get excited, by all means, do that.

01:26:16.420 | The one thing that I noticed in some programs is you really want to make sure you have your program set up in advance.

01:26:23.240 | And so, for example, some airlines don't let you book right away after creating a frequent flyer account.

01:26:30.640 | Some airlines, you know, your names might not match perfectly.

01:26:34.600 | So you want to make sure that maybe you opened an account a long time ago.

01:26:38.340 | You know, for me, I sometimes, is it Christopher?

01:26:40.480 | Is it Chris?

01:26:41.260 | Like, you know, if you have a junior or a suffix, that could be a challenge.

01:26:45.040 | So the one tip, and I wonder if there's anything I'm missing, is take an hour and just open up a few accounts at the programs you might think, after listening to this episode, you'd want to transfer for, just to have them set up.

01:26:57.580 | And do that in advance.

01:27:00.260 | And if you're working with a partner and they have miles, maybe do it for both of you.

01:27:03.700 | And I think that can be important.

01:27:06.260 | And you can go in and link them to your Chase and your Amex account.

01:27:10.400 | Sometimes that check of whether the names match happens at linking so you can find out if there are issues.

01:27:16.080 | Just so that when you find that availability, you're not thinking, oh, gosh, I want to go book this flight.

01:27:21.600 | I just found it.

01:27:22.380 | Now I've got to create an Air France account.

01:27:24.280 | Oh, I linked them and the names don't match.

01:27:26.080 | Now I've got to fix it.

01:27:27.180 | And especially I'd recommend going through the multiple Avios programs, Iberia, British Airways, Qatar, Finnair, and set all those up and make sure that your name, email address, and phone number, home address, all that stuff matches exactly across all of them.

01:27:46.940 | And the reason that's so important with those is that you have to have that exact matchup in order to move your Avios around from one program to another.

01:27:54.820 | Also, Iberia in particular, you can't book awards until your account has been, I can't remember, let's say six months old.

01:28:02.840 | So the sooner you do that, the better.

01:28:05.380 | Okay, there's one last thing that I can't believe I forgot to mention.

01:28:09.260 | And I'll just ask you, even though I know the answer.

01:28:12.820 | Let's say you transfer miles from Amex to an airline or a hotel group and you decide, I didn't really want them.

01:28:19.700 | How easy is it to reverse that process?

01:28:21.620 | Well, it's easy to find out that you can't.

01:28:26.400 | You can't do it.

01:28:27.600 | It's a one-way, one-way trip.

01:28:29.640 | So that's why we keep saying, like, don't do it unless you find the award that you want to book and you're ready to do it.

01:28:34.840 | Yeah.

01:28:35.360 | Yeah.

01:28:35.760 | Many of these transfers are instant, but irreversible.

01:28:38.720 | So I think really make sure you find that availability beforehand.

01:28:42.220 | But hopefully, listening to Greg and I talk about these will open up everyone's eyes to the fact that, yes, booking in the portal might feel easy.

01:28:52.240 | You know, you could just search for a flight, find it, and book it.

01:28:54.660 | And using transfer partners might be harder.

01:28:57.160 | Go back and look at the episode we did, Running Through Travel Tools for Searching for Award Flights.

01:29:01.720 | And I think you'd be surprised that it is easier.

01:29:04.420 | But understanding the programs, I think, is the first thing to kind of make it a little easier.

01:29:09.560 | So I really appreciate you taking the time to walk through all this.

01:29:12.400 | Sure.

01:29:13.080 | Absolutely.

01:29:13.480 | It's always fun to do.

01:29:14.880 | Obviously, we're going to link to a lot of the episodes and posts that you mentioned in this.

01:29:18.460 | But if people want to go deeper on points and miles, where can they find everything you're writing and recording?

01:29:23.960 | At frequentmiler.com is the first place to go.

01:29:26.540 | And check out frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe to find the opportunity to sign up for our email.

01:29:34.160 | You'll find links to our podcast, to our Facebook group, where if you have questions that you'd like to ask, you know,

01:29:41.700 | other people who are immersed in the same kind of thing go there.

01:29:45.420 | And other resources you'll find there as well.

01:29:48.740 | Greg, as always, thank you so much for being here.

01:29:51.680 | Always fun to be here, Chris.

How to Use Transfer Partners to Get 5x More From Your Points

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