Frequent Miler on the Air - Chase Ultimate Rewards points: Best ways to get great value | Ep216 | 8-19-23

Episode Date: August 19, 2023

Don't settle for mediocrity - get great value from your credit card points by utilizing some of our favorite techniques to save big on both economy and business class airfare and hotels ranging from simple to simply luxurious. 00:00 Intro 00:48 Giant Mailbag: Trouble with the Schwab debit card and a workaround 06:14 What crazy thing . . . did Bilt Rewards do this week? 14:29 Mattress running the numbers: Frontier's GoWild pass promotion 20:55 Award Talk 20:59 Nick's experience with a British Airways award via American Airlines 26:05 Greg gets the Bilt card 26:47 Alaska trick for saving miles 29:51 Southwest is adding free standby on all fares 33:32 Choice suites thanks to Radisson 34:32 Main Event: Chase Ultimate Rewards points: Best ways to get great value 34:48 Hyatt 40:00 Using Chase Ultimate Rewards points via airline programs 40:39 United Mileage Plus 43:23 Virgin Atlantic Flying Club 55:38 Air France / KLM Flying Blue 1:03:40 Air Canada Aeroplan 1:09:48 Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer 1:11:37 Avios 1:16:01 Question of the Week: Which comes first -- the chicken or the egg? Do you book the flight or hotel first to maximize value? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did Citi do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event! Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Chase Ultimate Rewards Points. Best ways to get great value. We all want to get good value, right? I mean, you're spending these cards,

you got to get good value out of the points, right? You absolutely do. Last week, we talked about the must-have chase cards, and some of them were cards that earn chase ultimate rewards points. So now that you've gotten those cards and you've met the minimum spend requirements and earned your welcome bonuses, now you have all these chase points.

What are you going to do with them? We'll talk about ways to get crazy good value from them. First, we have the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes from Aiden. And I'll admit this giant mail came in a while ago. So when he says, I'm currently enjoying my A&A round the world redemption. I don't know if he's currently enjoying it anymore. A year long, right?

I mean, it could be. Absolutely. Anyways, he says he's enjoying it. Thanks to you all. So first of all, thank you and cheers to many more years of Frequent Miler. While on this trip, I ran into an issue where the Schwab debit card would get rejected from ATMs in Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, and currently Thailand. Now, I generally don't ever carry cash, but this has been quite a learning experience for traveling abroad going forward.

Now for the tip. I experienced this by accident in Morocco, where the hotel, big shout out to Hyatt Casablanca, unbelievable service, by the way, who offered to charge my room and give me cash. I figured this was a one-time courtesy, but I decided to test this again at the Grand Hyatt Bangkok, and sure enough, they did the same. Now there were some limits, and I'm sure that that'll vary from hotel to hotel, but just a nice way to get cash and earn points when cash is required in a country. Thanks again. This was from Aiden. Yeah, I mean, that is a very good tip. I've always kind of assumed that if I were in an emergency situation, I might be able to convince the hotel to do that. I've never tried

because I've never needed to, But I thought that that would probably work before. So it's good to know that it did. And in terms of cash, I don't know about you, Greg, but I always have at least 100, but usually 200 US dollars tucked away somewhere minimum in case I run into that situation where I really need cash and I can't get any. I have lost a debit card before, had a machine eat one before. So I always have that emergency cash tucked away somewhere for a situation like that. But of course, if you're traveling for months and it happens in Morocco and then it happens again somewhere else and again, then you could be in trouble. So good tip, I think. Yeah. I'm surprised that he had so much trouble with the Schwab

debit card in those countries. But, you know, I guess it could happen and who knows what's going on there. But I'd be concerned that the hotels might be hiding the, you know, conversion fee and you might be not doing very well, but I don't have any experience with it. Well, I mean, if they're just adding it to your room, like they would be the charges, like if you charge the restaurant bill to the room, right. Cause it's getting charged in local currency and then it's your bank, hopefully, unless they're using dynamic currency conversion, you know, when you're paying your bill, which is something you got to watch out for with anything you charge to your room, whether it's this or anything else. But, uh But so that's a good tip to make sure you're not getting the dynamic currency conversion.

But as long as you're not, I guess, be the same as any other charge to your room. The Egypt thing, by the way, I also had an issue there with my ATM card. I don't I can't remember for sure if it was the three cards, three continents. I guess it must have been the three cards, three continents trip. No, I did. I did go there one other time. And my my bank debit card got declined. Also, I did get, I did go there one other time and my, my bank debit card got declined also.

I had to call the bank and get that cleared. So I wonder if it's just a fraud issue in that part of the world. Yeah. That's what I'm kind of thinking that it's not like a, you know, problem with that particular card in general, but maybe with his account at the, at that moment, because of something like that. Yeah.

That seems, that seems like reasonable. Yeah, right. That seems like pretty likely. Okay. Very good. That was interesting though. Thanks a lot, Aiden. That's a great tip. And I guess since you're paying your hotel bill with your credit card,

you will earn rewards that way. Right. I wouldn't expect to earn rewards on the hotel, like hotel points. Right. You know, that Usually hotels are smart enough not to classify things like that as charges that can earn Hyatt points or Marriott points or whatever. But who knows, maybe in some places it would work. And I wouldn't recommend doing that

with the long-term play of converting the money back into U.S. dollars, it's like an MS play. Because, oh my goodness, I ended up with a bunch of extra euros. And I had a really hard time finding a decent way to get those into U.S. dollars once I was back at home. I mean, I ended up doing it at a bank. But even still, the rate was not what it should have been. It was better than the airport currency conversion desk, but still not good. So maybe there is a good... If there's a great way to do that, by the way, let me know, because I'd just be curious to know for the future. If you end up with a whole bunch of extra foreign currency, what do you usually do with it?

But but yeah, I wouldn't want to bring that all home. Yeah, I mean, sometimes this doesn't help if what you're trying to do is manufacture spend but sometimes what i'll do is when checking out of the last hotel say here's a whole bunch of change and small bills can you apply that to my room right and it's just a way of uh basically getting rid of that yeah cash that you don't think you need anymore i brought some of them back to europe for my my next day in europe that was left over well that's another thing you could do. Absolutely. Yeah. When you go back to the same areas again and again, I like to do that as well. Great. Good. So that brings

us, we're going to skip over card talk this week. That brings us to what crazy thing. So what crazy thing did Built Rewards do this week, Greg? Yeah. Okay. The first part's not crazy. What they've done is they've made their welcome offer official. So for a long time now, it's been possible to sign up for the built card

and you would get, if you got approved, when the card came, most people would get an email saying for the next five days, you'll earn five points per dollar for all your eligible spend. And so a lot of people, when we would say there was no welcome bonus on the card, a lot of people would write in saying, yes, there is because there's this 5X thing. But Built never hadn't previously made that official. And so we couldn't really promise anyone because we didn't know if they would keep doing that for everybody. Anyway, now, if you don't have the built card and you open the built app, you'll see an ad right in there under built card for this 5X offer. It's official. They gave us a go ahead to put it on the blog as a welcome offer.

So that's all great. Now for the crazy part. So crazy part is understanding it. So the thing is, what you get is five points per dollar for all spend for five days, but up to a total of 50,000 bonus points earned. So at first blush, that sounds like, okay, I can spend up to $10,000 because I'm getting five points per dollar and that would equal fifty thousand points. But but no, you know, it would drive me crazy if they did it that way, though, because that's what we've got complained about the world of Hyatt bonus that they try to claim it all as bonus points, including the money that

you spend. But you already would have earned one X on all of that spend, Greg. So if that were if the way Greg just described it were true, you would have always gotten at least 10,000 points out of 10,000 spend. So really, that would only be 40,000 bonus points, right, Greg? That's right. That's exactly it. And that's why this gets confusing, because that's right. If you spend $10,000 in categories that don't normally earn a bonus with a built card, then you'll have only earned 40,000 bonus points. That means you still have 10,000 more points to earn. And so if you're going to spend everything in non-bonus categories, then you can spend $12,500 and get 50,000 bonus points in those five days. On top of the 12,500 points minimum that you would earn at 1X on whatever your transactions

are, right? So you'd end up with a total of 62,500 points, but built as accurately referring to just the bonus points as bonus, which I like. Thank you for that. I like that too. Yeah. It's so frustrating when companies call the base earnings part of the bonus. Okay. Yes. All right. So where things get really confusing now is when you spend within

categories that earn bonuses normally with BILT. So travel earns 2X with the built card and dining earns 3x. So if you spent the $12,500, I'm going to regret using that. Yeah, you are. If you spend it on travel, then you will have earned 25,000 base miles. Regular points. Regular points. And the extra required to get you up to 5X is three times the 12.5. So Nick will do the math for that. 36 would be 12. And so five times, I don't know what it's more than that. Don't worry about it. Pull out a calculator, do the math.

37,500. Okay. There you go. The point is you would still have extra spend you could do because you did all your spend at 2x base plus 3x bonus. So, and it's worse if you, worse, better, I don't know which way you want to think about it. But let's say you spend everything on dining, which earns 3x with the built card. You could then spend $25,000. I mean, you'd have to be quite the eater, but I'll correct you on that in a second. Go ahead.

Or so you haven't spent 25 and then what would you end up with? If you spent $25,000, you would, you would get a total. Well, you'd get 50,000 points as your standard amount that you'd get from the 25,000, but you'd get- No, you'd get 75,000. I'm sorry, 75,000.

Yeah, 75,000 points standard because three times the points spent plus your 50,000 bonus points, so a total 125,000. So I had a hard time kind like kind of wrap my mind around. How do you know how much left you could spend? You know, it's not easy. It isn't. It isn't. But I'm going to tell you, you don't necessarily have to be a big eater. You need to be planning a wedding. And if you are and you're or an event like that, and if your caterer codes as a restaurant, which is something you might want to test, I guess, on day one and see what happens, then you could potentially max that all out. Weddings really vary in terms of how much people spend, but some people surely spend $25,000 on the catering for an event like that.

And so if you had enough credit limit to be able to do that, which again, I don't know what the chances of all of those things lining up are, but if they all lined up, you could potentially get 125,000 points paying the catering bill. I mean, that's not bad. Right, right, right. You could alternatively, of course, open a few cards and use that spend to meet welcome bonuses on a few different cards, et cetera. There's other ways you could play that. Right, right. That's the thing. So on the blog, someone commented about how this isn't a great welcome bonus. And I wrote back saying, yeah, no one said this was a great welcome bonus, just that it is a welcome bonus. Right. If you have the ability to do lots of spend quickly within the five days, then you can earn a lot of built points. But absolutely, if you're looking at other currencies, you could do much better.

And it makes me miss the days when the Platinum card had a 15x dining bonus on top of 150,000 points as part of their welcome offer. My uncle did exactly what you're talking about. He had a wedding. He paid for a wedding for his son with that card. And so I think he had something like 500,000 points when he was done just with that one welcome offer. So yeah, that would be much better. So this pales in comparison. And so let's be clear about that. But for some people, if you're considering the card anyway, and you've got like a high tax bill to pay or you have something along those lines, I mean, don't go out to the mall and be like, oh, my goodness, I need to find a way to spend twelve thousand five hundred dollars in the next five days. Like if that's your situation, then, yeah, don't max this out. Obviously, you know, this is, you know, we're only talking about the maximum possibility for somebody who actually is able to max it.

But even if you only spend a few thousand or whatever it might be, a hundred, whatever it might be, you know, now that there is a bonus of some sort, you'll earn something more in those first five days after you get the card and activated. Is that right, Craig? Yes, I believe so. Although someone wrote in saying he was able to get it with a virtual card. So you get a virtual card right away, as soon as you're approved. You have access to your card number and can start using it. But typically, the 5X doesn't start until you get the physical card. Okay, interesting. You might be able to change that if you need to with a call to their support or somehow contacting their support.

All right. So that's crazy. All right. Mattress running the numbers. This week's mattress running the numbers. We have something wild. We've got the Frontier Go Wild. All you can fly wild pass or all you can fly past the Go Wild. All you can fly past. There we go. I said it right that time. So Frontier is running a promo now where you can pay zero dollars for the first month as long as you pay the forty nine dollar enrollment fee and and you get the go wild monthly pass. All right. So zero dollars, zero dollars. If you pay forty nine dollars, forty nine dollar enrollment fee that it costs zero dollars. I don't understand that. The most that. Shouldn't this have been our crazy thing segment?

Explain this to me. I wish I could have a screenshot here so you can see $0 for the first month. Just $49. Whatever marketing person not only came up with that, but pushed it through the levels of approval. Well done.

That's a salesperson. Okay. Anyway, anyway, so free, it's free. It's free. You pay after the $49.

So you can go wild. And now this is a monthly pass. You can go wild with an unlimited number of flights, right? For the, so for the first month and an unlimited number of flights for $0 after the $49 enrollment fee, and you get access to the frontiers, domestic and international destinations.

You can fly all over the place, right? Get confirmed bookings. But you know what? Let me back up with that. Let me back up and not get to that part yet. So so far, how does it sound to you, Craig? Let's let's just start there. I mean, giving you all the details. How does it sound and what questions do you have? It actually sounds awesome. I mean, $49 and I can fly all I want for free. And I can go international. So, you know, I can fly to Paris or wherever Frontier goes, which I don't think is Paris. Probably not Paris. No, I mean, I'd probably fly some Caribbean places. Yeah. I mean, that would be one of my questions. Where do they fly? But what else would I ask?

Well, I know enough to ask, do you have to pay fees on top of those free flights? Of course you do. Of course you do. You still have to pay the taxes and everything, Greg. I mean, taxes aren't free. It's one of those short things in life. So you still got to pay the taxes on all the frontier flights. So there's not necessarily a fee to book necessarily, but but you do pay whatever the taxes are. But your bigger question that you're hinting at and getting towards you're getting warmer is how much do you get for free? Because how much of the cost of a frontier flight

is not the taxes? And so that's going to vary, of course, you know, depend what the fares are. But I noticed in the comments that Dr. Credit, a few people mentioning that very frequently on the flights, they book the fare, the base fare is like one cent or something ridiculous like that. So you're going to get a lot of free pennies is lesson number one. Lesson number two is how far in advance do you have to book these, Greg? Oh, boy. So they did that go wild thing like last summer where you couldn't actually confirm it till something like the day before.

That's it. Is this like that? That's it. So you can confirm booking the day before flight departure for domestic or 10 days before for international travel. So you can book at least a week and a half in advance for international, but domestic. Yeah, it's the day before when you can book it. You get the base fare for free, but you still pay the taxes, which in a lot of cases is a significant portion of the cost of the ticket, especially if you're going international, then majority of the ticket is probably taxes on most of Frontier's flights. Of course,

again, 10 days before departure. I don't know. It might vary a little bit, but that's something to consider anyway, that you're probably not going to do that great on a lot of those different fairs. You're not going to have much flexibility, because you'll have to, or you have to have a lot of flexibility, I guess, rather in order to be able to take advantage of that. So it's really limited. And then of course, obviously, you pay seat selection and bags and all those fun things that you know, you get to pay anytime you'd fly Frontier. So so yeah, it's and then and then the final kicker that I almost forgot is that it automatically renews at one hundred and forty nine dollars a month. So if you don't, this is a monthly fee. Monthly. Yeah.

Monthly. Yeah. And so when it renews for one forty nine, you're not getting those free flights anymore. Is that right? Well, no, you pay one hundred and forty nine to get your free flights. OK, you do. You do. Yeah your free flights. Okay, you do. Yeah, yeah. So every month you get free and close flights. First month costs you $0 plus the $49 enrollment fee, and then it automatically renews at $149 a month after that, Greg. Are you sure it's not $100 plus free plus the $49 re-enrollment fee? I'm not exactly sure how they're working that out. But yeah.

Wow. OK. So that sounds that sounds great. Sign me up. Not, you know, in the comments. So Dr. Credit posted about this. And in the comments to my favorites, one was go mild. Who cares?

Instead of go wild. Right. And and then, you know, of course, somebody else mentioned that tickets become available for booking the day before a flight departure for domestic travel. Ten days before a flight departure for international travel. That doesn't go wild. That's go insane. I'd never booked that way. Now, I say that. That was a comment I was reading. I do book short shortly before departure with some frequency, but not enough frequency to make this make sense. But if you're not going to carry anything on and you got a bunch of travel to do over the next month, I mean, hey, if you're

interviewing for jobs or like, you know, graduate student positions or something, I guess I could see the scenario where, you know, you maybe could. But if you're interviewing, you can't. No, you can't. I mean, the flight might fill up. Right, right. Yeah. No, that's crazy. I don't know. I don't know what the use case is for this, but it's not mine.

That's for sure. So. Yeah. Yeah. Thumbs down. There's probably some people out there. It makes some sense, but. Limited.

Limited sense. Limited. Yes. All right. All right. So there you go. So that's I was going to say, that's what crazy thing. But no, that was mattress running the numbers. So our decision there is no, not worth it for all but the slimmest of niche segments. All right. So that brings us to a word talk. What do you got for a word talk this week, Greg? Yeah, let's start with you, Nick. I think you just flew British Airways. Tell us about that experience and why'd you book

in and how? I did. And maybe this story is going to make it sound like I should buy the Frontier Go Wild Pass because I booked it like two days before departure. So I guess that's my style. So what happened was I was in Brussels and needed to get to Vancouver for a cruise because we're doing one of those awesome little free cruises that we've written about. So I'll be just about done with that. I guess, you know, when this publishes, we'll be just about finished with our cruise. So so anyway, we had to fly from Brussels to Vancouver. And so a couple of days before departure, a bunch of seats opened up on British Airways. So I booked Brussels to London, Heathrow, and then from London, Gatwick to Vancouver with an overnight layover in London. And one thing that jumped out at me there is that I booked through American Airlines for fifty seven thousand five hundred miles one way and three hundred and forty dollars in taxes and fees.

That's per passenger, of course. Now, that was actually lower than what I would normally expect the taxes and fees to be on a British Airways award booked through American Airlines. You'll often see several hundred dollars more in taxes and fees. I think part of it is because we switched airports from Heathrow to Gatwick. But I also think maybe Brussels, it must be like a Belgium thing in terms of the limitation there. I don't think that's it. So I've seen that before. And in fact, I booked it before, but had to cancel. If you're flying from anywhere but England to North America on British Airways, the fuel surcharges are a lot lower than if you're flying from England to North America.

Now, the opposite isn't true as far as I've seen. So if you're going from North America past London to Europe, you still pay these outrageous fees for that first leg. But yeah, it's great. It's actually a reasonable way to go is to book an award going through England to North America on British Airways. Yeah. Yeah. So, and it worked out well. I actually now have flown British Airways business class on their 777 a couple of times and I really like it. Honestly, the food. So, I have this image in my mind of British food not being good, mostly because I don't like fish. And I like a picture of fish and chips, right? And haggis. And like, I don't know what else there

is, but I'm not particularly attuned to British food. So I have this image in my mind that, you know, goes along with the rainy weather that the food isn't good, right? And I don't know if that's true or not in a broad sense, because I haven't spent enough time in the UK to say, but I've got to say, it was funny. I mentioned it because the day before we were talking about the flight, and we specifically, my wife and I talked about the food, and I was like, I don't have high hopes for the food. And then sure enough, the food was really good. And that happened the last time we flew British Airways to the catering was good.

The wine was good. The service was good. And the seat is great. It's a nice little enclosed suite. I find it to be very comfortable. The padding is really nice. The door closes. So that's great for the kids to kind of keep them contained in a box.

And so so, yeah, I thought it was a great flight and certainly one that I would take again. The problem with British Airways for me is the surcharges in most cases. Now, Cathay Pacific Asia miles can be a way to get around that, though they are increasing the rate on that award on their award chart with their partners pretty soon. So it has been a pretty good deal from Europe. It's going to go up some, but if you've got any plans to make, they could be a good option for booking to and from Europe on British Airways. But yeah, I was very, very happy. Nine and a half hour flight from London to Vancouver during the daytime. So it was perfect again with kids that that works out pretty well. Overnight is hit or miss, dicey sometimes. Daytime

flight, this worked out really nicely. So I would would totally do it again i thought it was a pretty good deal i cancelled what i had originally planned because that seemed much more pleasant yeah yeah i have to say one thing about your your uh essay about the food uh which is one time i i asked a british couple um what they thought of when they thought of uh food, like what what sprang to mind. And and I thought they were going to say something like fish and chips or like or like tea and, you know, high tea or something like that. No, they said curry. Yeah. Curry is so popular in England.

Right. uh yeah curry is so popular in england right and uh everywhere you go there are uh indian restaurants and and uh great curry and so um well that's exactly what i had i had like an interesting like a curry dish basically and and there's a restaurant in london that we were really talked about trying to stay in downtown london just to get like delivery from Dishoom. I love it. Oh, my goodness. They're crazy. So so anyway, I like that. I was going to possibly get that. So that's funny because you're right. That does seem to be so popular in the UK. And sure enough, that's what I ordered on the flight. It was really tasty. It was good. So yeah, that's great. Let's do it again. All right. Next up on award talk, I'm just going to mention that I did finally get the built credit card.

And that's why we're talking about the welcome offer earlier. On an earlier show, we were talking about the insane transfer bonus they had. That was up to 250%, I think it was, transfer bonus they had that was up to up to 250 i think it was um transfer bonus to virgin and i couldn't stand anymore i said on the show that's it i'm gonna sign up and i did i got the card and um i already have over 60 000 points thanks to that welcome offer so um i'm going going well with that very Very good. All right. Next up, an award talk. Tell us about Alaska. There's there's a trick, right, to potentially bring down the mixed cabin pricing. We're going further sometimes makes an award cheaper. This is not the same as that, but I guess cut from a similar thread in the sense that Alaska has no more award chart. Exactly. It's all these prices from that are murky. But what we

found anyway, is that since they devalued some things earlier this year, Japan Airlines business class between Japan and anything east of the West Coast, essentially, in the United States is 80,000 miles one way. So if you want to fly Japan to Chicago or New York or I think Dallas also or D.C., you're looking at 80,000 miles one way in business class. But the West Coast, like San Francisco, L.A., Seattle, is still 60,000 miles one way between Japan and the West Coast in business class. So a reader actually found this and put it in our Frequent Miler Insiders group. So hat tip to Jonathan, found that a flight from Tokyo to Chicago costs 80,000 in business class.

But if you fly Tokyo to Chicago to San Francisco with that Chicago to San Francisco lag on Alaska, even an economy class, it prices at 60,000 miles instead of the 80,000 miles. So you could potentially save 20,000 miles per passenger on that business class flight to Chicago by tacking on an economy class leg to the West Coast. Yeah, and that makes sense because you're going to the West Coast. So that makes sense to me. Can you take advantage of Alaska's free stopover on a one-way? And so basically, if your destination is Chicago, in that example, stay there and then later get a better than free flight to San Francisco when you actually want to go there? Yeah, that's a great question. I don't think so, because I tried to do something like that once before with a Cathay Pacific Award that I booked through Alaska, and they told me that I

couldn't do that, that I could stop over in Hong Kong or there were a couple other places that I could stop over, but I wasn't able to do a stopover within the United States on that. I don't know for sure is the short answer. You can get on the phone with Alaska and try. I don't know for sure, but I think they don't do that. But like I said, it's worth a shot because if yes, then yeah, not only is it a free one way, it's a one way that saved you 20,000 miles. So that would be a fantastic trick if it works. But at the very least, you can save a bunch of money on business class or a bunch of miles rather on business class. And then, you know, it's up to you whether you actually want to go to San Francisco or not. Obviously, if you keep skipping legs like that

frequently, then the airline may not enjoy that very much and may decide they don't like you much anymore. But if it happened once, I don't know if you missed your flight, it probably wouldn't be a big deal. Anyway, so that's a nice little Alaska trick. Now, Southwest Airlines had some news this week. They added free standby or are adding soon. We don't know what soon means, but I assume pretty soon they're going to add free standby on all fares. So if you've booked even the cheapest want to get away fares, those are the only ones right the cheapest want to get away fares, those are the only ones right now that don't qualify for a free same day change. Now you'll be able to do free same day standby. So you won't get a confirmed change on another flight, but you

could stand by for a seat on a different flight. So that's a nice little addition. You know, a reader wrote in and asked, so how does standby even work? Because for those of us that have never really had meaningful airline elite status, I've never flown standby. So and then here I am, somebody who travels a fair bit. So how does that work? Can you just briefly describe how that works, Greg? Sure. Basically, you the idea is you've you've booked a flight for a particular day, but you want to take the same flight, go to the same destination at a different time of the day. So let me be a little more concrete. Let's say you're flying to Florida. The cheapest flight was a 10 p.m. flight.

That's really inconvenient. You don't want to get in that late um and there's a flight that you'd much rather take that's at noon let's say um what you do is you uh whatever the mechanism is to get on the standby list you do that i mean and that varies by airline so you know i can't say whether they'll allow you to do that online or not, but you get on the standby list and you show up, you go to the airport and you'll be on a standby list that will, as it gets closer and closer to boarding, they'll start to clear that list. They'll call up your name when you clear and say, you now have a boarding pass for this flight and you're good to go. So there's a trick to play around like you don't want to do this on a flight that is full. You certainly don't want to do it on a flight that's oversold.

A full flight, you could still sometimes make it work, actually, because not everyone shows up for full flights. Some people do same day standby to a different one. So it can work, but if it's already oversold, the chance of you getting on is very slim. But if it's not, if they're still selling lots of seats, when you go to get on standby, you have a really good chance of getting on. And so, you know, I think what you could do is like, you know, when you're about to get on the standby lesson before you go to the airport is just check. Are they still selling like, you know, nine seats for this flight? If they are, then you're almost certainly going to, it's certainly going to work.

Or you could, you know, then lower the number. Are they selling five seats? Try to figure it out how many they're selling for that flight. And then you'll get an idea of how likely it is you get on there. Yep. Yep. So the downside is you still have to go to the airport and you have to go to the airport for the earlier flight that it is that you want to get on. So you got to be willing to spend some extra time at the airport in order to take advantage of free same day.

Right. That's that's why I think it's a good idea to have to first have a good idea of how likely it is to, because I would hate to go to the airport and sit around and knock it on. That would be unfortunate. Right, right, right. Yeah, but if you've got a whole basketball team that books tickets and they all cancel at the last minute, you never know. You could get on. So anyway, there's a free standby for Southwest Airlines nowadays, or coming soon, rather, to all fares. That'll be a nice little change for people in certain circumstances. All right. Last piece of what we're talking, we got to get into this main event here, is Choice Hotels has some new sweet spots. What's sweet now about Choice privileges, Greg? Yeah. So, you know, Choice, did we talk about this last week? Choice brought on Radisson. They bought the Radisson Hotels Americas. And it happens that when you're using choice points to book these hotels,

often suites cost the same point price as regular rooms. And we're seeing lots and lots of Radisson properties that have that trait to it. And so it might just be a temporary thing, but what we're pointing out this week is that Stephen put together a list of sweet spots that he found where this is available. So I think we did mention it last week, but now we have a resource you can go to and see where someone else has poked around and found a lot of good opportunities to get nice sweets. Yep. Very good. All right. I think that brings us to the main event. Are you ready for the main event? Chase Ultimate Rewards points. What are the

best ways to get great value? Yeah. So we got to talk about a few different things, but I think we should probably start with hotels because this is really the easiest of the various ways to get good value if it fits your stay needs. And of course, I'm talking about Hyatt. So why is Hyatt such a good transfer partner? We talk about Hyatt a lot, right? We both seem to like Hyatt a lot. But what makes them a good use of ultimate a lot, right? We both seem to like Hyatt a lot, but what makes them a good use of ultimate rewards points, Greg? Yeah. I mean, just straight up when looking at using points to book free nights with Hyatt, I've been seeing over two cents per point value on average without

doing any kind of cherry picking of like the best properties or anything like that. And, and you could often see much better value than that. And of course, sometimes you'll see worse, but the point is, uh, just getting over 2 cents per point value from your points is fantastic right there. And so that is, that is great. Um, I think it's worth pointing out that, um, you can also do things. Hyatt lets you book suites in multiple different ways with points. So for example, you can pay more points for a standard suite or double points for a premium suite at participating properties. And often, if you look at the cash rates, it depends on the hotel, but often a premium suite is not double the cash price. It's often four, five, six, 10 times more depending on the suite. And so it's fixed with Hyatt. It's just going to be double for that premium suite.

So you could get incredible value that way. You could also get incredible value by when the cash rates for standard rooms are low, paying just 6,000 points extra 9,000 points a night for a premium suite. And again, incredible value is possible. So there's just so many ways you can get just way outsized value just by transferring to Hyatt. And as long as there's a Hyatt or a participating small luxury hotel of the world property where you're going, there's a good chance you're going to be able to get great value from your chase points there. You know, and the thing about Hyatt, particularly on top of all of the things that Greg has already said, which are all great points, is that you can get that solid value top to bottom, right? It's not only at the like high end, like, you know, it's not only if you want to go to the Maldives kind of a thing that you can get

incredible value or only if you want to stay at the Park Hyatt in New York. It's not that way at all. Many of the even category one Hyatts that cost five thousand points per night standard or thirty five hundred off peak or sixty five hundred peak. You can often get well over two cents per point. It's not at all uncommon to be able to book those category ones that would normally cost one hundred and fifty dollars, two hundred dollars a night for, you know, 5,000 points or 6,500 points a night. So I think that can be, I think that makes the program particularly appealing because wherever you are in the spectrum of you want to stay at super high luxury places, or you want to stay at more reasonable spots, it gives you options and often comparatively at a huge advantage. I

mean, so I just completed a stay at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver and cash rates were like $470 a night, I think. And it was 18,000 points per night. And it's not like that was the only property in town costing like 470 bucks a night. A lot of places were in that range, but cost way more points with Hilton or Marriott or other programs. So it's a much better comparative value with the other options that are around. Yeah, for sure. Okay. And, you know, if you stop there, if that's all you use your chase points for, you're probably doing pretty well.

Right, right, right, right. I mean, it's certainly better than you would with other programs. So, you know, I personally tend to look, and I think Greg, this is probably true for you too. I tend to look at my chase points as my hotel points stash and very specifically as my Hyatt hotel points stash, of course, but because this is the best way to book hotels with points, any other point system. I mean, don't get me wrong. Greg and I have Marriott points and we have Hilton points and we have IHG points and we use those points from time to time. Uh, but by and large, best way to get great value out of points for hotel stays tends to be Hyatt. So that's the easy one. Easy one out of the way. Look at Hyatt. And if you haven't looked

at them in a while and you're like, oh, but their footprint is too limited, it's worth taking another look because those small luxury hotels of the world properties have helped expand the footprint. Obviously, there's more all-inclusives now that have expanded the footprint. They added the Dreams properties recently and the Lindner properties recently. So they keep adding to it. It's getting better. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. And it's great. I mean, they're also one of the few that still has an award chart with like fixed prices for further hotels, which is really good because as prices have been skyrocketing, the Hyatt prices have not. So, you know, there you go. Great point. All right. So hotels, Hyatt is your best option. How about airlines? What are the best ways to transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards points? Now I should back up and say we're talking about the best ways to get good value out of your Chase Ultimate Rewards

points. And I guess we assumed the knowledge that it's not, you know, getting gift cards when they're on sale or, you know, things like that. So if you're, if you're new to award travel altogether, what we're talking about here is transferring your Chase Ultimate Rewards points to transfer partners, the airline and hotel programs that they partner with, because that is hands down the best way to get great value. So Hyatt is one you can transfer to one-to-one. Now airlines, out of the airline programs, which are the easiest? What do you think, Greg? Where do you want to start? Well, I mean, the easiest I'd say hands down is United. Chase points transfer one-to-one to United. And what's great about United is that all awards are free to change and cancel.

There's no fees to do that. You'll get back all your points and any fees you paid for booking the award as well. You'll get back. The downside is that their award pricing is meh. Sometimes it's okay, right? Right. Not horrible, but rarely is there an award where you're like, oh my goodness, that's an awesome deal through United Mileage Plus, right?

It's not going to be the best option in many cases, but it can be an acceptable option. It can totally be an acceptable option. Sometimes it can be the only option if you're actually flying United as opposed to a United partner, that that flight might not be available to any other airline miles to book. So from that point of view, obviously, it's good. And yeah, and then they have some tricks that you could do if you get really into it, like this United Excursionist perk, which can let you do add a free segment basically to a round trip international award. So check out our posts about that if you're interested in learning how to take advantage of that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. We'll have that link in the show notes because that's a great point. The excursionist park is a cool thing to be able to take advantage of.

So that's good. And also premium economy, by the way. I didn't put this when I was creating notes about what might be good about United. But premium economy, actually, their awards are when you're booking United awards through United, they're much more widely available and they're decently priced. So Europe in premium economy is forty five thousand miles on United. And then, you know, you pay, what, five dollars and sixty cents in taxes when you're departing the United States. And now if you're comparing that to the best sweet spots, then you're going to say, well, that's not a great deal because there are some

opportunities to get to Europe for that many miles in business class. However, what you have to consider is that United Premium Economy is much more likely to be available, particularly for multiple passengers than some business class awards. So if it's available, then obviously it's better than those sweet spots that aren't available. And sometimes I wrote not that long ago about how I saw the price for premium economy was actually less than the price for economy, because, of course, the algorithms for pricing are sometimes weird. So I ran into some situations like that, too. So that's one to keep an eye on as another possibility. Yeah, no, great point. Yeah. All right. So Virgin Atlantic, we got to talk about Virgin Atlantic because that's probably, I would say, the second easiest and most widely useful for the average person, I guess, is how I would say this, because Virgin Atlantic has a few different things going for it. thousand miles one way for Delta business class to Europe and no additional surcharges or anything. So again, departing the United States, you'll pay like five dollars and sixty cents in taxes.

Departing Europe, you pay more depending on the country you depart from, but you won't pay any surcharges. So that's a great deal for Delta business class and Delta one. And in the cases where you have the full Delta one suite is a fantastic business class product. So, I mean, that's hands down a great use, right? It really is an incredible use of those points. Now, we can't talk about it without mentioning that Delta hardly ever these days releases that availability. You can use a tool called seats.arrow. The free version even gives you full access to their Delta One Finder, which is a fast way of finding that there's no award space on Delta business class to Europe.

Might as well save yourself some time and use that tool to figure that out. That is the problem. Hopefully that'll change. Hopefully. I mean, these things do change from time to time. It used to be not that hard to find this. And then at times it would like come and go, you know, we'd not be able to find it. And then all of a sudden there'd be a lot, but it's been a while now. Unfortunately, it has. So

it's a great sweet spot if you can find it. But yeah, of course, that's the, that's the big challenge. So, so, all right, but that's not the only thing. They're not resting just on that. So what else do we have that's decent for regional leg miles? So once you're in Europe, you can fly around Europe super cheap on Air France and or KLM. So it's as little as 4,500 miles one way for short flights. And I think it's as low as 8,000 in business class. And a nice thing about that, that's cheaper than most programs charge even for economy around Europe or roughly the same. And the great thing is not so much that the business class is so wonderful,

but the great thing is that often the business class awards are more widely available than the economy awards for some reason. And so if you're having trouble finding award space to where you want to go, try checking business class and just pay a little bit more and fly that way, which is cool. Yeah. And if you got bags to check, then business class may come in handy for the additional weight or additional pieces. It may be worth paying a few thousand miles extra. Excuse me for that. And obviously, of course, then you get priority check-in

and some airports, priority security. So there's a number of different small benefits that could very well be worth the extra 3,500 miles per person. So it's certainly worth looking for that, I think. But even for economy, again, could be a very good deal in the right instances. All right, so what about using Virgin Points

to get to Europe in economy class? I mean, I think that's probably another good one, right? It's actually a great deal. Yeah. So Virgin charges, depending on whether you're flying Virgin Atlantic itself or Air France or KLM, economy flights to Europe can be as low as 10,000 points or 12,000 points from the East Coast and as little as 15,000 points from the West Coast. In fact, my friend Maisie did that just a few months ago where she flew the exact flight she wanted from LA to Amsterdam on KLM for only 15,000 points. It was just such an incredible deal. I mean, it's just absurd. She didn't want to fly economy, but at the same time, when you pay that few number of points, it was irresistible to do that. And she did that. She said the flight was better than she expected to. So that's good. That's great. Yeah. I mean, that could be a fantastic deal for somebody looking to

get to Europe in economy class. And if you're looking again for multiple passengers, that can often be a much easier way to get there in the sense that you'll have a much easier time finding availability. If you've got a family of four or five or six people, then good luck finding enough business class seats or instances where you might, but it's finding enough business class seats. There are instances where you might, but it's going to be tough. Whereas you may find four or five or six or seven or eight seats in economy class. And if you could fly the whole family for like, you know, 50, 60,000 miles or whatever, that's a pretty good deal. It's really good. And I should add just for completeness that Virgin Atlantic has standard dates and peak dates where these prices that we mentioned are just for standard dates.

So it goes up, I think, as high as maybe 30,000 points during peak time for that one way flight. Yeah. All right. Pretty good. Also, by the same token and sense of getting to Europe, you could fly Air France in premium economy, perhaps, and get a good deal. I say perhaps because we haven't seen availability in quite a while now. But I think if I remember correctly, correct me if I'm wrong, Greg, I didn't look this one up. I think it was what, 22,500 miles in premium economy was the low end? Sounds right to me. I haven't looked at that for a while either, but that sounds about right. Yeah, really great rate. Whereas when we first discovered that, Air France premium economy was wide open to partner bookings like this, but we haven't seen that in a long time. On the flip side, just the other day, I was looking up through Air France miles and saw that you could pay a little bit more. So 30K and it was like wide open like any day that I looked at. So, you know, might be worth paying a little bit more and using Air France miles instead. There you go. Especially if you find a transfer bonus, which

is worth mentioning. We do see transfer bonuses to Virgin Atlantic, I think probably at least once a year from Chase, right? So I think if I remember correctly, I'd have to look at our, I'll link our current point transfer bonuses resource

because we track all the old ones. There's a current section and then there's also an expired section. So you can go back and look and see what past transfer bonuses have been. But then, of course, all of these become even cheaper if you're able to hit a transfer bonus. So so let me just throw in that the reason you might want to do that is, let's say you're you're thinking about booking something and but you're not really in a hurry. So you're

thinking about transferring your points to, let's say, Virgin Atlantic. You might wonder how likely is it? You know, maybe there's not a transfer bonus going on right now, but how likely is it? Will there be one sometime in the rest of the year? And you could go look at what's happened in the past and see if you see a pattern there and that it's no, you know, it's not proof that it'll happen or not happen, but it could give you some indication of how likely it is. Yeah. And at the very least, if you see that there was a transfer bonus last month and you know,

well, it's not likely there's going to be one this month or next month. So it can, it can help you at least for that, if nothing else. So, all right. So that's a,

that's how, and also still on Virgin Atlantic here, they're good for ANA, right? If you want to fly ANA and business class to and from Japan, that can be a pretty good deal. I think 47,500 each way from the East Coast, if I remember correctly. I hope I had that right, which coast it is. There's a slight difference in price, I think, between East and West Coast. So around there anyway, less than 50,000 miles per business class to and from Japan. And that's a pretty good deal. The trouble is that they add surcharges and ANA surcharges really vary. Sometimes they're pretty low, but lately for the last year, or maybe a little bit more than that now, they've actually gotten pretty high. So it's a little bit

less attractive. And if you have other types of points that you can transfer to ANA, then you can pay even fewer miles than what Virgin Atlantic will charge. But if Chase is your jam, if this is your points and you don't have Amex points to transfer to ANA, then this becomes a very reasonable deal at $47,500 for business class to Asia. I mean, those are long flights. And I think first it runs in like 85,000. Yeah. First it's like 85,000, right? So again, not amazing at 85,000. $ 47.5 in business is very good asia 85k first is good maybe not incredible when you consider the surcharges but not bad and ana of course has a first class that is much better than not bad so it's uh sure it's quite nice so it's it makes for a good splurge so could could be good for ANA.

If ANA releases space to partners, you'll want to search through united.com to see flights that are available to book with United miles on ANA. And if you see ANA flights that are bookable with United miles, they should be available to Virgin Atlantic, but you have to call Virgin Atlantic to book those. You won't see those on the Virgin Atlantic website, unlike Delta and Air France. So we talked about already. Those do show up on VirginAtlantic.com. ANA does not. So that requires a little bit more effort.

Yeah, that's a really good point. All right. And you like using Virgin Atlantic for lap infants, which you don't have anymore. But when you did. When I did, it was a great deal because they just charge a few thousand miles for lap infants. I think it's, if I remember correctly, twenty five hundred points each way in economy, five thousand each way in business and seven thousand each way. And first, you want to double verify that, though, by searching like Virgin Atlantic partner award charts and looking at the specific airline you want to fly in case there's any variance between partners. I'm not aware of any off the top of my head, but that's very reasonable for a lap infant ticket. A lot of programs will charge you 10% of the adult revenue fare or some that will say, oh, it's a good deal because you can pay 10% of the adult mileage fare.

But Virgin Atlantic is even better in the award rates that they charge for lap infants by keeping it those just standard prices. uh so yeah that's a very good deal for lap infants if you're traveling with a lap infant good program for that and then finally cruises there's deals for crips sometimes right yeah yeah yeah there are uh so virgin has their their cruises uh and and they regularly come out with these deals so i said said regularly, I don't know that it's predictable, but they have come out with these deals where you can book a full cruise, like anywhere from, I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like five to as many as maybe 11 days or something like that. I can't remember. And the prices range from only about 80,000 points to 100,000 points.

That's for the whole cruise. All taxes and fees and gratuities are included in that. And that's for two people. And so that's plan a year ahead. But for those who have some flexibility and can jump on a deal when it's there, great use of Chase Points. Transfer Virgin and book one of these. It really is. And I've written a lot about cruising for free over free in quotation marks over the last year. But all the free in quotation marks cruises that I've taken, I've still paid

on most of them. I've paid some sort of taxes or gratuities. And that adds up to not nothing. And in some cases, it's added up to hundreds of dollars. But potentially this 80 or 100K is an even better deal in some cases anyway than the quote unquote free cruises in the sense that, again, you don't pay taxes, you don't pay any gratuity. So it's worth emphasizing that it's a really good deal. They're adults only. So keep that in mind. But supposed to be pretty nice. I haven't been on one myself, but from the sounds of it, they're pretty nice.

Yeah, yeah. I would definitely be interested in checking that out, even though I'm not all that interested in cruises in general. I've heard great things about it. Yeah, there you go. All right. So next up, another transfer partner, and I mentioned them briefly before,

is Air France KLM's Flying Blue program. You know, just like Virgin Atlantic, can transfer one-to-one to them. And just like Virgin Atlantic, they can be used both to fly those airlines. You could use those points to fly Air France or Flying Blue, but you could also use the points to fly partners like Delta, like just all the SkyTeam partners. And also Air France has a number of non-SkyTeam partners as well, and you can use your points for them. A really cool thing with them is they have these monthly promo rewards where if you're flying from or to certain cities, they often have fantastic pricing on those routes. So that's very dependent on that you are traveling to or from those places, but you can get just smoking good deals at times. Usually those promo rewards are for economy flights and you see things like from 11,000-ish points to fly to Europe, for example, in economy. But sometimes they have

business class deals as well. And you might see like from 25,000 or something like that. Another cool thing is Flying Blue is randomly competitive with their business class pricing. So you'll often see approximately 55K award pricing to fly to Europe. But other times you'll see twice that. Or five times that. It's very unpredictable. It's also unpredictable in that it's very origin and destination dependent. So, for example, I was looking up flights for a friend just yesterday, I think it was, and he wanted to fly from D.C. to Paris.

And they wanted to charge 140,000 points for a business class. But if he wanted to go past Paris to Istanbul, it was 55,000 points. So it's the same exact first flight, but by tacking on the flight to Istanbul, it dropped it less than half, or dropped it by more than half. Right. However you want to talk about that. Right. So you can get really good deals.

Yeah, you can. And I don't know whether this is possible. Maybe you're going to tell me that you do because maybe this is what you ended up doing. But now Air France KLM allows a stopover on one-way awards. And I don't know how they figure out pricing when you have a stopover in there. That example is a good one, where if you stopped over in Paris and continued on to Istanbul, would it be $55,000 still? Does it depend on the day? I mean, would it be $100,000?

Who knows? I don't know. But it's worth a call. I don't know. I don't know either. I don't know how they would figure that out, because it's not like that flight to Istanbul was $55,000 every day. So how would they? I don't know either. I don't know how they would figure that out because it's not like that flight to Istanbul was fifty five thousand every day. Right. So how would they. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. That's a great question. That's something that we I guess we got to dig into figuring out how that'll work with stopovers, because I feel like that's such an intriguing potential thing.

If you're able to like be able to do that with a stopover, if you really wanted to go to Paris, then that's much more useful. So anyway, that's, I think, interesting, but we don't know the answer. And you'll have to call, I think, still to book a stopover on Air France Metal or KLM Metal. So I think you'll- Right, right. And I'll also just mention personally, I've been using Air France Miles a lot more lately than I had in the past because it's not always the cheapest award rates possible, but I've been able to find exactly what I've wanted. So for a flight that's coming up for me, it was literally like the best itinerary possible. Like if I was looking for just cash rates and I didn't care how much it costs, uh, to Europe, uh,

to a particular city. Um, this was the flight I would pick and it was 70,000 points one way in business class. Yeah. So, you know, reasonable. Yes.

You could fly to, to, to Europe cheaper than 70,000 points in business class, but can you do it on exactly the flight you want? Usually not. Right. So I was very, very happy with that.

Yeah. That's great. Yeah. And they can be particularly good for that. And like we said, varies based on destination. So if you're open to different destinations, it might be worth checking a few different destinations because of course you can also get around Europe relatively cheaply. So even if it's not available on your perfect itinerary, like in Greg's instance, if you're willing to buy a cheap positioning flight within Europe, then you may find that you can save a bunch of miles by flying to Istanbul or wherever it may be. It doesn't always necessarily have to be as far as Istanbul in order to drop the price

significantly. Speaking of dropping the price significantly, one of the things that I like about Air France KLM Flying Blue is that they have a discount for kids age two to 11. They pay 25% less on long haul itineraries. So that helps quite a bit because that can be a discount for kids age two to 11. They pay 25% less on long haul itineraries. So that helps quite a bit because that can be a big difference. If you're talking about something like if it's 70,000 miles one way for an adult and figure whatever 25% off of that is, I'm not that good with the math to be able to do it right away, but it's quite a bit less. So yeah, more than 17, five off, I think. There you go. See's C. Greg's guy. I figured I'd give him a second. Maybe he'd come up with it. Yeah, so it can make a difference if you're flying with a family anyway.

So that's one of the things I like. And of course, we mentioned before in the Virgin Atlantic segment, Greg mentioned rather that premium economy was pretty wide available for 30K each way to Europe. And that, I think, is really notable because premium economy is probably decent. And certainly on a daytime flight on the way back from Europe, that could be something well worth looking at, I think, if you're especially having a hard time finding it. Yeah. And if you think about how much airlines are charging for cash rates these days, so if you're thinking of paying in cash for a trip to

Europe in premium economy, paying only 30,000 points one way, that's a deal. Now, I have to say that was one example of where I was looking for a particular city pair. And so whether or not that would be available widely in other destinations, I can't say that at this point. Right. But that's a good program. Also, potentially a good program for bouncing around Europe, although bouncing around Europe on Air France and KLM is probably going to be cheaper with Virgin Atlantic miles if Virgin Atlantic has access to the availability anyway. You know what? That's even a good if you if you have Delta miles, this is one of the places where I've found often it's cheaper to use Delta miles than Air France miles to hop around Europe on Air

France KLM. Very good. So not as cheap as Virgin Atlantic would be, but it could be a good use of your Delta miles where if you're struggling to figure out how to use them. There you go. All right. Excellent. Oh, and also, I guess I should also mention, boy, I'm going to mention it and only halfway mention, I'm going to link to the post I wrote because I should also mention that it could be useful for some random flights to different parts of the world too. There was a reader who pointed out that business class flights to Vietnam, I think, were coming in at a ridiculously low price via Air France KLM when you went through Europe and ended up on Vietnam Airlines. So there are potential for other random finds like that where they could be useful. So that's another one where it's like,

there's quite a few different potential uses for people to make it worthwhile. There really are. And I'm going to back way up to when we talked about United, since we're talking about hopping around Europe, United also has a very good fair, very good award pricing for economy flights within Europe and can often be as low as six thousand points one way. So that's another one to look at when hopping around Europe. True story. True. In fact, I just booked one with them recently. So that's a great point. All right. So that was Air France Calum flying blue. Air Canada is another one that can be really interesting if you get into this stuff anyway, I think. They have a number of different things that I like about their awards. Their award chart is weird. So if you're new to booking awards, this is probably not the best

program to start with. But if you have some experience, their award chart is kind of a hybrid between a region-based chart and a distance-based chart. So you look at the two regions you're connecting, and then there's distance spans within those region connections. So the short story is that sometimes their pricing can be pretty good. Like, for instance, the shortest flights from the US to Europe can be 60,000 miles one way in business class, which is good. It's not the best price for business class to Europe, but it's better than what, say, United would charge for business class to Europe. But I think actually some of the longest bands are more exciting. I think Asia, if I remember correctly now, the longest distance band, if you're going to the Far East Asia or

Australia and New Zealand, is 115,000 miles one way in business class. So that could be interesting because they allow a stopover for 5,000 miles one way. So in either of those instances, if you're able to stop over and then continue on, you could potentially see two destinations for 5,000 miles more. Yeah. And Air Canada has so many partners, just such a huge number of partners that they're probably the single best program for just finding awards at all because there's so many possibilities. So wherever you're going, there's probably some partners that fly, probably multiple partners that fly to and from that place. So they're a good choice for that place. So they're good. They're a good choice for that reason. But for you, but the nice thing is you can do your award searching ahead of time before you transfer to Air Canada. So you

don't have to do it in advance. Yep. Yep. And so that definitely, I think the multitude of partners makes that particularly exciting because you could stop over like, you know, imagine that U.S. to Asia type of a thing for 115,000 miles. And you had to stop over on a one way for 5000. So you pay 120,000 miles one way, but you could stop over almost anywhere you can imagine because they have partners all over the place. So so, you know, the sky is the limit, so to speak. Pun intended there. You have a lot of different opportunities and partnerships that you wouldn't expect because Air Canada is a Star Alliance airline. So you first picture, I'm sure, Star Alliance Airlines. But then, of course, they partner with Etihad, which seems to be bookable again on the Air Canada website.

Wasn't for a while. Oman Air. I don't know what's up there because the Oman Air flights haven't been showing up for a while. So maybe the days are limited on that. But Gulf Air is a partner. And then you've got partners like Virgin Australia. Like who would ever think of that as being a partner? But it is. And so it adds additional ways to get between places. So I think it's a really cool partner. Yeah. And you could just throw out random words like bamboo and see if they have a partner named Bamboo. And they probably do. They do have bamboo. So yeah, I mean, Air Canada has got just a wide, wide range of partners, far more than anybody else. So you have lots of different options.

And then you wrote about a neat little trick on the awards in terms of saving yourself some miles or increasing your flexibility. Yeah. So Air Canada is an interesting thing. Unlike United, most regular Air Canada awards are not freely cancelable and changeable. But what Air Canada allows you to do is pay more miles to make your award freely cancelable and changeable. And so a cool thing is if you're booking an award and you're not 100% sure you're going to fly it, and you could pay them more miles to make it flexible. And then as it gets closer to departure, maybe your plans are firmed up, you can actually change it to a standard award and get back the

extra miles you paid. And so you can sort of have your cake and eat it too in that example. So get the flexibility. And then ultimately, but don't pay for it in the end when you're actually getting closer to flying the flight. Yep. So Air Canada can be a good program for those things. Also, I didn't put this in the list, but I should have is expanded availability on Singapore Airlines. So I recently flew Singapore Airlines to Europe and there were, I think at the time I booked eight or nine seats available in business class, you know, one way between New York and Frankfurt and Singapore. It was like nobody else has access

to nine business class seats in Singapore. I don't think you hated that experience. It didn't suck. No, that was, uh, yeah, I love Singapore airlines, uh, service and cabin and everything. It just is one of my favorite ways to fly. Uh, so I was very, very happy with that at 60,000 miles from New York to Frankfurt or 70,000 actually is what I ended up paying. Cause I connected onward from there, but, uh, But yeah, it was a great deal because I was able to get the whole family. If I had booked that same ticket through Singapore, it would have cost 87,500 miles per passenger. And instead, it cost me 60 if I only wanted that one flight. But with two flights, 70, it still paid less than what Singapore would charge just for JFK to Frankfurt. So yeah, that's another one to keep in mind there. Canada seems to have more availability. And in fact, several months back, I was looking at the possibility of going

to Australia last year or next year, rather. And I was surprised near the end of the schedule to find quite a bit of availability to get to Australia. Again, this was one time when I looked, so I don't know if this will be consistent. But near the end of the schedule, I found four seats going from the United States to Australia in business class on Singapore day after day for a little stretch. So I was pretty surprised by that. I didn't end up booking it. And again, I don't know if that trend has kept up, but it's worth keeping an eye on because Air Canada seems to have access to far more Singapore business class space. Yeah, that's totally fantastic. Now, speaking of Singapore, you could transfer your chase points to Singapore as well, right? So why might you consider doing

that? Well, because number one, they have generally access to more business class and first class space on their flights than anybody else. Though, like I said, Air Canada creates somewhat of an exception. But if you want to fly first, anyway, if you want to fly Singapore Airlines first, your only option for booking out with miles is probably going to be through Singapore Airlines with very rare exception, maybe. So if you want to fly Singapore first, you're going to need Singapore miles. So you might transfer for that. You may find more availability on some Singapore flights through Singapore. Again, Air Canada will be your exception that you may want to look at and check and see.

But certainly, you're not going to have access to Business and First on Singapore with your United miles or other Star Alliance miles. So it could be good for that. Also, potentially good for Hawaii, because if you can find United flights that are available to partners, and not is a question only you can answer. And you may pay even fewer miles if you fly Alaska from West Coast cities to Hawaii because they partner with Alaska Airlines also from Las Vegas and San Francisco and Los Angeles, Seattle. It may cost you fewer points to get to Hawaii if you can find, again, Alaska flights that are available to partners. So they could be good for those things in particular. I'm not immediately aware of other great sweet spots

with Singapore miles, but those are some things you could do. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Lastly, obvious, you could transfer to British Airways or to Aer Lingus or to Iberia, right? Yeah. And there are some decent sweet spots there, particularly if you find a transfer bonus. And we have seen transfer bonuses from Chase in the 25 or 30 percent range numerous times to British Airways Avios. So that's one that, if you catch a transfer bonus and you're looking to book an award at the same time, they can have a really great convergence there. Now, if you're using British Airways Avios to fly on British Airways, surcharges are really high. But there are some situations where you won't necessarily pay outrageous surcharges. For instance, if you can find Iberia Business Class, which they do release space far in advance. So

if you can find Iberia Business Class from the East Coast in low season, it's thirty four thousand miles each way. Thirty four thousand avios each way in business class, which is great. And the surcharges are pretty low. Yeah. About one hundred bucks. That's fantastic. Fifty on the way back. If I remember correctly, they're they're relatively inexpensive. Yeah. I mean, that's a great deal in business class and even peak season. I think it's fifty thousand, if I remember correctly, from the East Coast cities which is yeah which is still still very good yeah yeah no that's really nice uh and then of course um you can you can use british airways miles to book cutter um cutter business class all the way to doha from the u.s for only 70 000 points one way and uh i mean that's excellent too. You can do, you know, yes, you can do a little bit

better with like American Airlines miles because you can go further with a similar number of points, but you know, chase points are transferred to American Airlines. So this is a great, really great alternative and Qatar has some amazing flights, amazing service and business class. It's that's got to be one of the I don't know, one of the better deals out there. Yeah, really, because Cutter Q suites, particularly if you find availability on flights with Q suites, I mean, they advertise that as first in business because it feels like a first class experience and business class. So, you know, and that's the advertising is not misleading. It's definitely a really good experience. So, so if you know, if you're into that, particularly then and you want to book that, I mean, this is a great way to do it. If you if chase points are again, your primary currency or your only award currency, it's a great way to do

that. So, all right. So, I mean, that gives us quite a few ways to get very good value out of your chase points, right? Yeah, it really does. And, you know, I think it bears repeating though, that both Nick and I do the simplest thing with our chase points, which is we usually just transfer them to Hyatt, get great value just booking hotels. And, you know, so you could, you could just keep it really simple there, but all these other things we talked about are all things that, uh, we've either, uh, done at times or, or have, uh, you know, considered, considered booking, um, because, uh, there are lots of other, uh, lots of good flight deals as well. Well, and it's worth mentioning, you know, you said that, that it's not that

we don't book all of those airline deals at times. It's that we often transfer from other programs, because, for instance, Amex Membership Rewards partners with almost all of those, not with United, but otherwise, I think the rest of these, maybe if I'm remembering correctly, and some more. And so I would tend to transfer my membership rewards points to one of these programs to book one of the sweet spots we talked about today because I want to keep my ultimate rewards points for Hyatt, like Greg said. That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. Because no other currency other than built points can transfer to Hyatt. And so if you have lots of Amex points or Citi points or Capital One points, those are the programs where I'd be looking to transfer to some of these common programs like Virgin Atlantic or Air France or Avios.

You can get those points from just about anyone, but Hyatt points are so rare. You got to, you know, if you know you're going to be using your chase points that way, then probably keep them for that purpose if you can. Right. Very good. Okay, my friends, I think that brings us to this week's question of the week. This week's question of the week comes in via email. We got quite a few, actually, some really good ones in the last week. So I'm going to have to hang on to a couple of these. But Frank and Deanna, I think, write in and said,

Hey, guys, thanks for the tips and the tricks we just started playing the game in two-player mode our question which comes first the chicken or the egg okay no there's more to it craig hang on okay because he was getting nervous okay all right all right he knew it was a little bit confidence i missed mistook it there uh so which comes first the chicken or the egg aka a.k.a. when booking a trip, which do you typically book first in order to maximize the value, the flight or the hotel? Obviously, once one is booked,

it greatly limits flexibility to search for awards, adjust dates, seek upgrades, compare competitors, blah, blah, blah. Some fabulous hotels and offers may justify accepting a second, third, or worst choice in flights, itineraries, or vice versa. So from listening to the podcast, we think we can guess your answer,

but we'd love to hear you discuss. So what do you say? Which goes first, the chicken or the egg, the flight or the hotel award? You know what I love about this question besides that there's a chicken and an egg involved is that I'm not going to be wrong. Whatever I say, I'm just going to answer the truth

and you can't say I'm wrong because you don't know. It's a very 2023 way of describing things. Anyway, no. So in my case, I'm not going to speak for Nick, even though I think I could answer his question, his answer as well for him, but is that what comes first is usually whatever the best deal is. So, for example, last year I went to New Zealand. And why did I go to New Zealand? Because United was having an unbelievable award fair sale or mistake or something but uh 60 000 points one way in business class and uh so yes of course we booked that first and worried about hotels way But other times, like so the JW Marriott Masamori luxury safari camp, you know, became available for points.

I had enough points. I booked it. Worried about how to find the flights to get there as a separate activity. So, yeah. So it's usually driven by the deal or the or the plans. I mean, sometimes we have specific plans like we have a tour of Denmark coming up and so had to get to Denmark in time for that. Or Nick has a cruise that he has to go. So he has to be there for that. So so sometimes it's driven by that. So unfortunately, there's not one single answer.

And that's why he said he'd be right no matter what he answers, because there isn't a single one. But I think that I agree. Yeah, it starts with the deal, because if there's unprecedented availability and a great award price at a particular hotel, then, of course, Iing. Now, the cancellation policy can vary and how far in advance you have to cancel varies. But for the most part, it's very rare for a hotel award to be not freely cancelable. So at least until some deadline. So it's very easy to cancel that speculatively and then change it or rather book it speculatively and cancel or change later as you need to. So if I find amazing hotel availability, then I'll book that first and look for flights later. And then if I have to adjust, then hopefully I can find the award availability that I need to in order to do that. But again, like Greg said, if you see an amazing award flight, of course, I book that. And then I find, OK, well, there's hotels everywhere.

I'll find something that's there if I find the amazing flight deal. So yeah, I think we're both deal hunters by nature. So we're likely to just jump on whatever is an awesome deal. But that's a different style of travel planning than a lot of people. I think a lot of people probably start with a goal, like I want to go to Scotland and see A, B, and C. And that's just not the way i think greg and i plan a lot of our travel yeah right and but you know i do some of that and and when i do i i think the uh to some extent what comes first is the is the flights um because but because that that's often the harder part uh like like hotels usually are easy. Now there are definitely exceptions to that, but, um, usually it's easy to find nice places to stay at reasonable point

prices or reasonable cash rates. Um, not always true if you, if your heart's set on flying business or first class, which I am. So, so, so then I would concentrate first on that when there's a when when it's being driven by the destination, not by the deal. Yep. Absolutely. Totally agree. All right. That, my friends, brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you've enjoyed this episode and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler dot com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent miler dot com.com to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions all the time each day and each week. Wherever you're watching this show or listening to it, please like it, subscribe, enable notifications, leave a comment. We appreciate all of those things.

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