Frequent Miler on the Air - Our favorite Capital One Sweet Spot Awards | Ep124 | 11-13-21

Episode Date: November 13, 2021

Capital One has access to some incredible sweet spot awards, but there are also some sour spots that you would be missing if you gave up other award programs to go all-Capital One miles. We also analyze a targeted Hyatt promo, answer the question of the week, and more. 00:44 Giant Mailbag 2:14 What crazy thing did...Hyatt do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/caution-dont-accidentally-use-a-hyatt-1-7-certificate-for-a-category-4-stay/ 6:17 Mattress Running the Numbers: Who should mattress run Hyatt's targeted promo for 30K points after 10 nights? https://frequentmiler.com/targeted-hyatt-earn-5k-points-every-2-nights-12k-points-every-5-or-30k-points-every-10/ 12:12 Main Event: Our favorite Capital One Sweet Spot Awards 13:12 Vacasa https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-vacasa/ 14:49 Turkish https://frequentmiler.com/turkish-miles-smiles-complete-guide/ 17:54 Cathay Pacific https://frequentmiler.com/toward-hacking-asia-miles-the-unified-oneworld-award-chart/ 21:24 Avianca LifeMiles https://frequentmiler.com/avianca-lifemiles-sweet-spots/ 24:00 Iberia https://frequentmiler.com/avios-sweet-spots-for-award-tickets-british-airways-iberia/ 25:42 Air Canada Aeroplan https://frequentmiler.com/air-canada-aeroplan-guide/ 28:48 Air France Flying Blue https://frequentmiler.com/air-france-klm-flying-blue-sweet-spots-for-award-travel/ 31:14 Emirates Skywards 32:38 Etihad https://frequentmiler.com/etihad-guest-sweet-spots/ 34:14 Capital One Sour Spots: What's missing? 34:33 ANA 37:13 Virgin Atlantic for ANA First Class 38:25 Virgin Atlantic for Delta business class to Europe 39:08 Hyatt 39:38 Choice Privileges thanks to Citi's great transfer rate 42:28 Question of the Week: Chase Ink Business Preferred wasn't instantly approved. Should he call? Subscribe to our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Mylar on the air starts now. Today's main event, our favorite Capital One Sweet Spot Awards. That's right.

We got lots of favorites out there. We're going to play favorites today and talk about all of our favorite sweet spot awards right with everybody all excited about the new venture x card everybody's going to be accumulating lots of venture x miles capital one miles and so let's talk about what can we do with them what do you got some really really nice things that you can do with them so we will get into that. First, we do have our giant mailbag. Let's see here. Always love to see what the people have to say. So drag it out, pull up the giant mail. This comes from Apple podcast reviews. Good. I don't ever read the

Apple podcast reviews. So I always get excited when you do one of these. Right. This one is from FM fan. And so you can guess already this is probably going to be a positive i like it i like this person fm fan says best points miles podcast out there i found the fm podcast about two months ago and listened to this one along with a few others and this has been by far the best one well thank you thank you, FM fam. Oh, we're still going. Okay. Keep going. The candor they talk through about maximizing miles, MS techniques, which is manufacturing spend techniques, and moves and shakes in the market have taught me as much in the last few months as I've learned in the last few years on my own. I also appreciate that they're not afraid

to mention other sites that may have different strategies. And he gives an example of when we talked about Disney hacks and referred people to some other sites. And he says, keep the episodes coming. Greg and Nick. There you go. Well, thank you. We will. We'll keep them coming and keep listening.

So thank you very much for that. Please do. Yeah, that's great. It's always good to get that. And keep telling your friends. Yeah, tell everybody great. It's always good to get on your friends. Yeah. Tell everybody, you know, tell them all, listen, listen to Nick and Greg on Frequent Miler on the air. So great, great mail there. All right. So that brings us to what crazy thing did Hyatt do this week? Yeah. What did Hyatt do this week? Well, Hyatt didn't, or what didn't Hyatt do, I guess. They didn't take the right certificate. So if you have multiple Hyatt free night certificates in your account, like let's say you've done 60 nights this year or gotten credit for 60 nights this year in order to get

globalist status with all the milestone benefits, you'll have earned a category one to four free night when you hit 30 nights and then a category one to seven free night when you've hit 60 nights. So there's a lot of globalists in that kind of a situation. So you've got two different free night certificates in your account. Now, let's say you want to go and book yourself a category four hotel that ordinarily costs 15,000 points. Which certificate would you want to use? Of course, the category one to four, right? And that's the one you'd want to use because that's the one that caps out at category four. You'd want to save that one to seven for a higher category property. And it would be really nice if Hyatt gave you the option to pick which of those two

certificates you would like to use when you're making a reservation. But unfortunately, they don't. And they just take one of them. And it's not always the one you want them to take. So somebody reached out to let me know that he had run into this situation and he didn't realize that they took the category one to seven for his category four stay until after the stay was completed. He went to presumably use the one to seven certificate and it was just gone. So he reached out to Hyatt and said, whoa, hang on. I had a category four stay. I wanted to use

the category one to four certificate. And Hyatt said, too bad, so sad. We can give you 10,000 points, which is a pretty poor resolution. Some readers actually commented that got better resolutions on the same problem. But I mean, come on, Hyatt. I know everybody says there's no IT in Hyatt. I know it's been a running joke for years, but come on. It's time to get with the program, Hyatt. So you got to make that easier.

Right, right. So Rita wrote in with a good tip, right? That you can just book a stay for as far out as you can see to use your Category 127 certificate and plan on canceling that later to get the certificate back. And that'll prevent Hyatt from accidentally using your Category 124. The risk there is you might forget all about it. So set yourself some kind of reminder so that you might forget all about it. So set yourself some kind of reminder so that you don't forget about that. And you actually use it before it

expires. The other similar problem when you mentioned before it expires is that you might have a certificate from credit card spend and a certificate from the 39 milestone, and they may have different expiration dates. And once again, you would think that Hyatt would naturally take the one that's expiring soonest first, but of course you would think wrong because yeah, reader reached out to say the same thing that Hyatt took the one that was expiring sometime in 2022 and left them with the one that's expiring this month in their accounts. So yeah. You know, I just assumed when you, when you told the story about the category one to seven So, yeah. I was concerned that it was going to take my one to seven. So I proactively, before I made the reservation, reached out to the concierge on Twitter, the Hyatt concierge.

We've talked about the Hyatt concierge on Twitter lots of times and how good they are, how they're able to take care of things and handle things. And so I explained I didn't want the one to seven taken away. And they said, just go ahead and make the reservation, give them the confirmation number, and they'd make sure that it was done right. And of course I did. And they confirmed that Hyatt.com did indeed take my category one to seven, but they were able to replace it with one of my one to fours because

I did that before this day, right after making the reservation. So you can get that fixed. You could proactively reach out to Hyatt, but probably the easiest solution would be just to make a category seven reservation far out with your one to seven. That's not going to help you though, with those multiple expiration dates on various category one to four certs. So in that case, you'd probably have to either call or, or send a message to the concierge on Twitter. Yep. Yep. All right. Good tip. Crazy Hyatt stuff. So then let's talk about mattress running the numbers and get ourselves right back into Hyatt. So Greg, what's going on from address running the numbers this week? Yeah. Yeah. And we're still with Hyatt. So Hyatt sent out some targeted offers that no one in my family got, but we're going to talk about one of them because it would just be painful to try to

talk through all three. But one of them is you're targeted to get 30,000 bonus points for staying 10 nights, or I should say for every 10 nights you stay up through January 14th. So you can max out the 30,000 points for 10 nights? That averages to 3,000 points per night if you do exactly 10. No, but close. No, I mean, not just for the points, but that's pretty good. I mean, if you get 3,000 points per night back, then your category one nights, which are 5,000 points per night are suddenly quite a bit cheaper. And then if you happen to pick like one of those new Hyatt's where you get 500 points or 500 points a night, I think for staying at one of those, then it, it could start to become kind of interesting, right? I mean, it gets pretty darn close. You're getting 3,500 back each night. I

mean, that seems awfully darn good in terms of a rebate. If you have category one nights that you need to spend or, or if you're hunting for status, right. Right. Right. Uh, and so I think that's exactly it. If you are, you know, at let's say 20 nights and you're trying to get to globalist with 30 nights this year, normally it's 60, but this year it's, it's 30. Um, I think it would make a ton of sense to do those 10 nights. Then you're not only getting globalists, you're also getting the third, um, 30 night milestone perks. So the category one to four free night certificate, uh, for example, and, um, and you get globalist status for, you know, that'll carry you through all of next year and through,

I think, February of the year after that. So that would be a good deal. And most of the points back. So that 10 nights, if you were to spend them at a category one, would cost you 50,000 points. And you get 30,000 points back, a category one to four certificate in globalist status. I mean, if you're at 20 nights and you got targeted for that, happy holidays to you. That was a nice little gift from Hyatt, right? Right, right. Now people at, and so like at each level of how many nights you've, you've already done, you know, you could do the math and say, well, what would I get by doing these extra 10? And it'd be awkward if you're at like, you know, if you're at like 25, cause then

10 nights is more than you need. And so I'm not really sure it would pay for itself. But let's just imagine everybody's at an even 10 nights. Once you hit 60 nights with Hyatt, every 10 nights gives you the option of 10,000 points or what a suite upgrade i think it is yes all right um and so would you well let's just go with the 10,000 points so it would be worth uh spending 10 nights to get a total of 40,000 points back i mean no if you could not if you'd be spending 50,000 points to get 40 so i mean unless you value the room if you value if you want to do like a little staycation and you got a very one nearby, then you want to use the pool or the gym or whatever it is, then yeah, it's a decent little rebate, but no, not just for the points

for the suite upgrade on the other hand. Yeah, it could be, I mean, you know, cause you'd look at, you'd be paying 50,000 points for a category one and getting 30,000 back. So you'd essentially be paying 20,000 points for a suite upgrade. Now, if you're going to use that on a one night suite upgrade, it may put you a little bit ahead at a top tier property, but it's not going to put you far ahead. So for a one night stay, not great. But remember, those suite upgrades can be used for a stay of up to seven nights. So if you're going to stay seven nights at a category six Hyatt that ordinarily costs 25,000 points per night. So a standard suite is somewhere in the thirties. I can't remember how much the standard suite is.

Do you remember? And the 25K, I'm thinking it's 42 or something like that, but I'm not sure that could be, that could be the case. No, that's for 30,000 point nights. I don't know about 50% more. So that's why it's like, I don't know. I can't remember, but it's going to be in the thirties. So let's say it's going to cost you even an extra 6,000 points per night times seven nights. That

means, you know, you're going to save 42,000 points at least. And it's probably more than that. Cause I'm just doing quick math here and, and, and a guesstimate as far as how much the suite would cost you. Yeah. It's worth a net 20,000 points to get that suite upgrade for seven nights. It just depends on where you're going to use it. If you're going to use it, how much you value a suite. I mean, I really do value a suite quite strongly now traveling with two kids. I want the extra space if I can get it. So I would definitely, I think, I think I would definitely do that one 20,000 points for a suite upgrade. It'd be cool with me. Yeah. So, so what it comes down to is for most people, the answer is no, I wouldn't mattress run this, but there are definitely people in situations like being close to global status, like being, you

know, close to the next milestone reward where it could definitely be worth it. Oddly enough, though, if you're at 30 nights already, it wouldn't make sense, right? Because 40 nights, the 40 night milestone benefit isn't very good. If you're, yeah, I can't remember what it is, but I remember that fact that it's not very good. Yeah, it's either 5,000 points or $100 Hyatt gift card. So it wouldn't add enough on top of what you're getting from the rebate. If you're at 20 nights, totally makes sense to go to 30. If you're at 40 nights, totally makes sense to go to 50 and get yourself two suite upgrade awards. If you're at 50 nights, absolutely. Because you'll end up getting a category one to seven and two more suite upgrades. It's just, if you're at 39,

you don't want to do this promotion. If you're targeted. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Anyway. All right.

So then that brings us to the main event, main event time, our favorite capital one sweet spot awards. We're going to alternate, but you know, I'm, I'm going to go first and then Nick's going to go second. And then you could guess who's going to go third and go through our favorites. And then we're going to talk about

what's missing. What are the other transferable currencies have that where we really like sweet spots there, Capital One doesn't provide it. When you said we're going to talk about what's missing, I was thinking you were going to say my Capital One points. Yes, those are totally missing. For Greg, for Greg, they are. Yeah. Yeah. So this this whole conversation is all academic to me.

Right, right. This is talking about his favorite Capital One sweet spots. My favorite theoretical Capital One sweet spots and my my top favorite theoretical Capital One sweet spots. It's my favorite theoretical capital one sweet spots. And my top favorite theoretical capital one sweet spot is transferring one-to-one to Wyndham so that you can book Vacasa vacation rentals. We've talked a lot about Vacasa vacation rentals and about how you can get a one-bedroom vacation rental for 15,000 points per night or less. If you also have a Wyndham earner card and, um, some of these properties that are advertised as one bedroom actually have, uh, are actually huge. Like they're like houses with lofts that have

separate beds in the law. Sometimes they have multiple bathrooms and everything. And you could get seriously nice places with that award. And that's one nobody else, none of the other transferable currencies support transfers to Wyndham, I believe. So that's a really unique sweet spot for Capital One. It sure is. It sure is. A great sweet spot it is. So yeah, that's totally worthwhile. I agree with you. And by the way, it's worth mentioning for anybody who hasn't been following along on that, we did get a comment from a reader who booked a four-bedroom Wyndham property.

And it was like $1,700 a night was the cash rate. And they were able to book the four-bedroom for 15,000 points per bedroom. They had the Wyndham earner cards. It was actually 13,500 points per bedroom. They had the window burner card. So it was actually 13,500 points per bedroom. But the nice thing there is it confirmed the fact that our 350 ish dollar cap is a per bedroom cap. So that means you could book some pretty nice places for not that many points. You sure can. Yeah. Yeah. I know we always talk about the one bedroom example, but there's certainly multi bedroom examples where you could get incredible value with that as well. There you go. All right. So obviously, if I am

going to talk about Capital One sweet spots, the first sweet spot I got to talk about is Turkish Miles and Smiles, because booking United flights with Turkish Miles and Smiles is an incredible value, particularly to the Aloha State, my favorite place to go if I have the time and chance. Hawaii, because it's only 7,500 miles one way in economy class or 12.5 if you find the Unicorn Business class, United Business First space to Hawaii from anywhere in the United States on United. Obviously, you've got to be able to find United's saver availability that's available to partners. You've got to deal with a lot of headaches booking with Turkish because you can no longer book on the website. They're just missing the checkout button. And if you call, there's no telling what availability a phone agent is going

to find. They may find the flights you want. They may not. They may see what you see online. They may not. You're really just going to have to call again and again or send an email to a whole bunch of ticket offices and hope that somebody is able to get it booked for you. So there's difficulty in booking it, but if you can get it booked, it is really hard to beat 7,500 miles each way anywhere in the United States, Alaska, Hawaii, small airports in the middle of nowhere. If United flies there, you might be able to get yourself a great deal. Right. Right. And Citi also supports one-to-one transfers to Turkish. They're the only other one that does one-to-one to Turkish. But Citi's transfers are not instant. I think Capital One is. They are. Am I remembering that right? Yes.

So that's a big advantage. Yeah. A huge advantage. That makes it much easier. You can put awards on hold with Turkish and then call in to ticket it once you have the miles transferred. But having them instantly is really nice. I should also mention that the bonus on the Venture X, the 100,000 plus the points you'll get for the spend, because you got to spend $10,000 in order to get the welcome bonus, you'll end up with 120,000 points. That's enough for 10. Listen to that again, 10 round trip economy class tickets in the United States, even to Hawaii. That is incredible. So I think that's really worth getting excited about. That's definitely my top Capital One Sweet Spot Award. So I'm just going to question your math there. So the

around- That's not enough for 10. That's not even enough for nine. In fact, it won't even get you eight. I did the math and totally multiplied 15 times 10 and got 115,000 instead of 150,000. Nice. Oh my goodness. Gosh darn it. All right. Greg, how many would it get you? So you could get something less than 10.

Something less than 10. Darn it. Oh my goodness. FM fan has just left the show listening to somebody else's miles and points show. Oh, my gosh. Sorry about that. Less than 10.

Fifteen thousand. You're a bit closer to 10. Eight. Eight. Picasso one night stays. If you also have a Windermere card, but you're still not at 10. Not quite there. Eight round trip economy class, which is still amazing.

It's still incredible. Oh, it is. Forgive my math mistake for a moment there. You're talking amazing value on that welcome bonus. Very good. All right. Okay. Take it away. All right. Talk about something else. Yeah. Let's, let's get into, um, Cathay Pacific Asia miles. They have all kinds of, uh, cool uses. And, um, so one that, that we've talked about before is that they have a distance-based award chart and it caps out at a certain distance. So if you're going really far, it doesn't get more expensive going, you know, so for example, going from Chicago to Hong Kong, it's not more expensive to go from Chicago to Hong Kong to South Africa or to Australia. So that's a heck of a lot further, but because of the distance band is already capped out, it's not costing more. So that's one piece of it, but it gets better. They average the cost

based on what cabin you're in. So if going to South Africa through Hong Kong, you could fly first class to Hong Kong from Chicago, business class to South Africa, and the total cost will be less than the cost to fly just the first class to Hong Kong segment. That's incredible. That's crazy. You're going to pay even less to fly to Hong Kong in first class. Now for shorter trips, there's also tricks you can do because they seem to measure the distance based on where you started and where you ended. So you could get a shorter distance. So a cheaper award flight by booking, you know, from just a simple example, and this doesn't really get you a lot of savings, but a simple example, let's say you're going from New York to LA and, and, um, uh, you, um, you have an onward flight to, I don't know, somewhere closer than LA,

let's say, um, Salt Lake city or something like that. Um, the, that flight will, will be, will calculate at a smaller distance than just the New York to L.A. flight. And so you could imagine what you could do with that. Let me leave it at that. Yes. Yes. I mean, that that is pretty fantastic. And for those people out there who are perhaps newer to the game and you're asking yourself, well, yeah, but why would I want to go to South Africa via Hong Kong? That's like the long way to go. Why would I fly from Chicago all the way to Hong Kong in order to get to South Africa? Because Cathay Pacific first class is pretty nice. It's one of those things where you're not going to get that with your money, with your cash. And it's going to be

a fantastic experience, most likely, that again, is going to be priced in cash out of most of our price ranges. So it's something you probably never have access to otherwise be a really enjoyable experience. So if you like that, if you like, you know, good food and good wine and good service, you want it to last as long as you can. Yeah. Yeah. Also, whether you're going to South Africa or Australia, somewhere like that, getting more direct award flights can be really tricky. And often awards through Asia that are not quite on the way are still much easier to get, and especially these premium cabin awards. True story. Yeah.

All right. What do you got next? I got Avianca Life Miles up next. So Avianca Life Miles is maybe my favorite Star Alliance partner that isn't Turkish Airlines. So I like Star Alliance Airlines being based in New York state, flying out of New York city. There's just so many Star Alliance Airlines. So Avianca Life Miles really appeals to me because they have some incredible sweet spots in their award chart. First, just within the United States domestically, if you can't go all the way to Florida, but 7,500 points each way within that zone zone to reaches from Florida all the way up to like North Dakota. And so if

you're anywhere within the, in the middle of the U S again, 7,500 points each way in economy, 10 each way in business. Uh, and, and so that's a pretty good sweet spot, but then Avianca does the same kind of thing that Greg was talking about with their mixed cabin awards. So if you fly one segment in business or first class and another segment in a lower class, they're going to average out the distance you flew in each cabin and price it even less. So, for instance, a business class award ticket to Europe officially by their award chart costs 63,000 miles one way. However, if you fly something like, let's say, New York to Dublin in business class, and then you fly from Dublin, let's say, to Istanbul in economy class, whether or not you make that second flight, it's going to cost you less. It'll cost you like just under 50,000 miles, potentially, one way in business class to do something of that sort. So there are some great opportunities there for hacking the

system, so to speak, with mixed cabin awards. And there are also some weird pricing anomalies that just don't make any sense. And we don't know why they price differently than the award chart suggests they should. But as a, for instance, one of the New York airports to Lisbon, Portugal costs 35,000 miles one way in business class. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It won't price out differently. If you try to do a mixed cabin thing, it's just, I can't remember if it's JFK or New York. I always have to search and check, but one of those two to Lisbon's 35 K or an economy class 16,500, which is less than the award chart price from New York to Zurich. Again, no idea why there's not really a good reason for it, but there are some odd routes like that. So we've written

posts about the secret lifeMiles award chart. Do they play favorites? Because they've got lots of different pricing anomalies like that, not only to Europe, but in other parts of the world too. Yeah, no, that's a great one. That's a great one. All right. I'm going off to another cheap way to get to Europe in business class, which is Iberia. Now, Iberia is not a

Capital One transfer partner, strangely, but British Airways is. So in this case, what you need to do is transfer from Capital One to British Airways and then connect your British Airways account to your Iberia account. Make sure all of your personal details are exactly the same or this won't work. Then you can move your British Airways Avios, which is what they call their points, to Iberia Avios. And then you could book Iberia itself, fly Iberia to Europe in business class for as little as 34,000 points one way. That's for off-peak, and then it goes up for peak. And it also depends where you're flying from as to what the starting price is.

But they have just amazing prices for their own flights. Right. And much more reasonable fuel surcharges. So it's not like British Airways. You pay a little bit more than you would with some programs, but far less than British Airways. You're talking about, I don't know, 250, 300 bucks round trip on a business class award to Europe. So much more reasonable there. Right. British Airways, if you're talking round trip business class, actually flying on British Airways, regardless of what miles you're using to book it, you're talking probably over $1,000

in surcharges that you have to pay. And so suddenly this free trip doesn't feel even close to free. Right. So you want to move those over to Iberia first and fly Iberia. All right. Air Canada is up next.

Air Canada Aeroplan, another great transfer partner and something that now partners with both Amex and Chase also. So there are other ways to gather these points. So if you're looking to be able to put together an award, you're not only limited to Capital One on this one. Of course, the sweet spot is not only limited to Capital One. But why is Aeroplan such a good deal? Aeroplan did change their award chart a lot. So the pricing in many instances has gone up pretty significantly from where it used to. However, they have these huge award zones. So you can fly now on a business class award from anywhere in the United States to as far as like India or Africa for a maximum of 100,000 miles in business class one way and do a stopover on the

way for 5,000 miles more. Now, you may be able to fly just to Europe for as low as 60,000 miles in business class, like New York to most of Western Europe, actually west of Italy or so, is going to be about 60,000 miles one way in business class. But like I said, that Atlantic zone that Europe is part of, it stretches all the way to India and all the way down through South Africa. So you could plan a trip to some far flung place in that zone and stop over in Europe on your way because lots of Star Alliance carriers fly via Europe, no fuel surcharges on Air Canada anymore or on any of their partners on their on their award tickets. So you won't pay fuel surcharges, even if you fly Lufthansa or whatever else. So you got lots of connectivity. So for 5,000 miles, adding a stopover is a great deal. Also lap infants are only 2,500 miles on an award

ticket. So, and I believe that that counts round trip or one way it'll be 2,500. So if you book a round trip, I think you'll even save a little bit more. That's a terrific deal. A lot of programs charge 10% of the adult revenue fare. So only paying 2500 miles for a lap infant ticket is a terrific deal if you've got young kids. But so Air Canada, again, love the fact that there's no more fuel surcharges love the 5000 mile stop over makes for some awesome awards. And also Air Canada, by the way, partners with Etihad now too. So you can get some great options there flying long haul business class potentially. Yeah. Yeah. Also, even though Air Canada's prices might be a bit more than American Airlines, who's another partner of Etihad, it's so much easier to book Etihad with Air Canada miles. First of all, Air Canada lets you mix partners. So you could fly,

let's say, United to get to the airport that Etihad flies from, that you're then going to take Etihad to where you're going, which you couldn't do with American Airlines. But you also can book it online. And American Airlines, for whatever reason, at least flights from or to America are not bookable online. And not all agents, even foreign agents, when you call different offices are able to book them or even see those awards anyway. So it's a huge hassle. So, yeah, I like Air Canada a lot for that. Okay. My next favorite is Air France. So Air France is in common with all the big transferable currencies. Everyone loves Air France and lets you transfer one-to-one to them. And that's a good thing because they've got some nice sweet

spots for one. Business class ward flights to Europe are reasonable. So they often come in around 55,000 points one way with fuel surcharges, but they're usually not horrible. Um, and, uh, Israel now is back in Europe. So for years, for years, uh, we, and, and other blogs, um, other blogs way before we did, uh, have talked about how, uh, Air France priced Israel as if it was part of Europe. And so it was much cheaper than flying elsewhere in the middle east and um the uh that went away briefly or it seemed to go away briefly so a lot of people reported that but nick recently found that israel's back in europe back in europe and it's i mean it's in writing they have it on the website that that's part of the definition

of europe israel and morocco it's some definition of Europe that's not even theirs. They're following some airline, you know, international standard for Europe, I guess. But that's a great deal because it means, A, it costs less than flying to most other places in the Middle East, and B, it costs less to get to Israel than it does with basically any other program because every other program classifies that as a different region from Europe. So it costs more miles usually. So great deal if you're looking to do that. Right, right, right. And then Air France also has their monthly promo rewards where if you're lucky, there'll be a discount on award flights from where you want to fly from and to. And sometimes those are amazing. Like we've seen economy to Europe for around like 10,000 points and it's often less than what's advertised. So the promo rewards website might say, you know, that it's discounted to, let's say 16,000 miles one way

between Europe and the US. But when you go to actually book it, depending on what your origin and destination is, it could be cheaper and we often see it cheaper. So that's pretty cool right there. Great. All right. And then I'm going to combine two actually for my last one. So Emirates and Etihad. I'm going to put both of them in here. Emirates for flights to Europe, because 90,000 miles round trip in business class is a terrific price for business class to Europe, particularly if you're able to fly

on the Emirates A380, which they have flown at various points, I think to both Milan and to Athens. So these are both from New York, one's from JFK and the other one's from Newark. I think it's Newark to Athens and JFK to Milan, if I remember correctly. So 90,000 miles round trip in business class. Like I said, on the A380 is nice because then you get the bar in the back. So you can hang out and have a drink, eat some food in a more normal world. Of course, obviously, I don't know what the situation is like exactly during the pandemic, but a fun way to fly to Europe. And again, great price. Emirates eliminated most of their fuel surcharges. So it does still cost a little bit, but it's not, it's like $96 round trip or something like that. It's totally reasonable for what you get. And then actually first class also was a

good deal. And I can't remember off the top of my head and I meant to look it up and I forgot, but first class is also a very reasonable deal round trip, much better than what most other airlines will charge you. And you get the blingy Emirates first class experience to Europe. So it's more miles. If you want to go to other places, it starts to get become less of a value depending on how far you want to travel on Emirates. But from New York to Europe, great deal there. Also, and I said I'm going to package a second one in here because we didn't put Etihad on the list. And we should have because Etihad is another great strength for Capital One here. And what I also was thinking of when you were talking a second ago is that we should have kicked this all off by saying Capital One transfers to all these one-to-one now.

We reported that a while back, and you might have ignored it because you were like, oh, Capital One, I don't care about Capital One. But now you should because they transfer one-to-one to all of the airline programs except for EVA. So everything we've talked about today, it's all one-to-one transfers from Capital One. And Etihad, 44,000 miles one way from the US to Casablanca. So if you want to fly Royal Air Morocco, it'll cost you 44,000 miles one way. Royal Air Morocco flies from New York, Washington, DC, Miami,

and I think Boston to Casablanca. So that's a great deal in business class. Same price for Brussels Airlines from New York to Brussels. So again, 44,000 miles one way in business class, potentially great deals. There's some other sweet spots using Etihad miles to fly American Airlines for fewer miles than American Airlines will charge you. So great sweet spot to have there too. Capital One is just full of awesome sweet spots now, aren't they? Right, right. And if I remember right, I think Etihad is more unique to them, whereas Emirates, all the transferable currencies transfer to Emirates, just like they do to Air France.

Etihad, I can't remember who else has Etihad. Amex and Citi, I think both have Etihad. Chase does not. They do. Okay. So Chase is the one that doesn't. Got it. Yep. But still, very good to have that transfer capability. So, so I mean, it just, I think it shows, I think today's discussion shows that Capital One is a strong program, right? I mean, there's a heck of a lot of sweet spots in there. There sure are. So, but enough fawning over Capital One. So what's missing? What are we missing? Let's now talk about what are the sweet spots that, you know, if all we had was Capital One

points, what would we be missing? What would we- Should we call these the sweet spots that if all we had was capital one points, what would we be missing? What would we call these? The sour spots. Sour spots. Yes. Let's get into the sour spots. So my number one sour spot is ANA. So American, oh, sorry. American Express has transfers one-to-one to ANA and they have a number of great sweet spots, but I'm going to touch on one in particular, which is round the world awards and business class for a very reasonable amount. I mean, it's possible to book them for as few as 115,000 miles. And I was about to say round trip, but round the world. Around the world. Eight stops, right?

I mean, eight cities you could visit. Business class. It's amazing. Yep. And more realistically, you're probably going to be paying about $145,000 or $170,000 something. But regardless of all that, most programs would charge that much for like a round trip to Europe, except some of these sweet spots we mentioned before. And you're talking about going around the world and all kinds of carriers and all that. It's, it's incredible. I'm going

to mention one more ANA thing, just because Nick was talking before about how you could use Air Canada to go 100, with 100,000 miles to go one way to South Africa, as an example, and add 5,000 points to get a stopover. Well, with ANA, you could go to South Africa round trip in business class for 104,000 miles and include a stopover and that round trip award for free. So for 1,000 fewer points, you've got round trip and still do the stopover in one direction. So it's pretty amazing. It does not. So where Air Canada has the advantage and also Avianca has the advantage

is they do not pass along fuel surcharges imposed by carriers. And a does, and that can, that can bite you if you're not careful. Like I was looking up some awards the other day and, and, uh, I think it was like Egypt air was showing up as available, which I wouldn't want to fly anyway, based on recent reviews I've read. But the point is it was, it was causing like over a1,000 in fuel surcharges to the trip. This wasn't even around the world or anything like that. So that's the downside.

But still, it's an incredible value from ANA. It really is. And there's a whole bunch of ANA values. I mean, from 75,000 miles round trip business class to Tokyo or to Japan in general, 88,000 round trip to Europe. I mean, there's so many great sweet spots. ANA is an awesome Amex transfer partner. Speaking of ANA, another sour spot for Capital One is that they're missing Virgin Atlantic. Everybody else transfers to Virgin Atlantic. I don't understand why Capital One doesn't. I'm kind of surprised that they haven't worked that out yet. At the same time, they keep adding things here and there.

So I keep being hopeful that one of these days we're going to get an email from them. I absolutely predict that's coming soon. I'd be very surprised if it's not. Yeah. What's your favorite? What's your favorite

Virgin Atlantic sweet spot? Well, you know, I think that whether or not it's my favorite, the best Virgin Atlantic sweet spot is ANA First Class because you can fly first class. And we're talking like a $10,000 ticket from the East coast of the United States to Japan for 60,000 miles in first class one way from the West coast. It's only 55,000. And again, these are tickets ANA charges eight, nine, $10,000 each way for. So this is an amazing value.

Yes. Yes. Same pricing, by the way, from London to Japan for those who are not going from or to the U.S., $60,000 one way. Incredible. Incredible. Crazy. Unbelievable.

So terrific values to be had there. So, boo, bummer that we don't have Virgin Atlantic. But that's not the only thing that's missing with the lack of Virgin Atlantic, right? Right. Right. One of the things I really love that, that they have is, uh, nonstop flights on Delta to Europe, 50,000, um, miles one way in Delta one. Um, so, you know, that's, that's just a really sweet award. They, they also have other, some good, um, business class prices for flying Air France or KLM as well. But those become more expensive as you leave from the West Coast of the U.S., whereas the Delta one is just flat 50,000 points, period. Yeah, and that's a great deal.

Awesome to be able to have that. So bummer that they're missing that. Of course, Capital One is missing Chase's key strength, which is Hyatt. You don't have access to Hyatt. And so that's a big bummer because as we've talked about today and lots of other times, Hyatt's got some fantastic values in their award chart. They still have an award chart, unlike most other programs, soon anyway. So they have an award chart, great deals on the Hyatt award chart, awesome deal with Chase Ultimate Rewards points. And unfortunately, Capital One does not transfer to Hyatt

and probably never will. That's right. That's right. It's very unlikely that'll ever happen. Finally, my last favorite, and it's a new favorite, is that Citi allows transfers to choice privileges one to two. You get twice as many choice points as the thank you points you started with. And that leads to some incredible values. And I've written about values, booking preferred hotels with choice.

It's heck of an ordeal trying to book those things, but it's possible. And you could get incredible value on some really, really high-end properties. Choice has their Ascend properties that can be really nice as well. And just fantastic value. Now, all that said, we've been waiting for Capital One to introduce transfers to Choice. They announced that quite a while ago. They said it would be one-to-one at the time, but that was also at the time when they said other airline transfers would be less than one-to-one. So maybe they'll eventually get it and maybe it'll be one-to-two as well. Maybe, possibly. I'm getting more and more doubtful that they're ever going to get choice because it was supposed to happen in 2021. I mean, 2021 is almost gone and they haven't gotten it yet. And I mentioned it in an email at some point and totally they just let that drop and didn't respond to that part. It wasn't like the key part of the email. I don't remember the details exactly, but I had written to their PR person and asked a question that had something to do with the choice transfers. And they totally didn't

pick up what I was putting down there at all. They didn't, didn't respond on choice. So I don't know if that was bad news, like choice isn't going to happen or just aren't ready yet or what the deal is, or maybe they were close to a deal and then city swooped in and, and, uh, gave a choice a better offer. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know i don't know something funny there so yeah so maybe they'll get it but probably not one to two we can hope we can hope so i don't know though but at the same time i kind of feel like probably capital one's best strategy at this point is to keep it simple one-to-one transfers one-to-one transfers i mean but but they still but they still have two-to-one on... Yeah, a core level of limits.

A core, yeah. A core level of limits, yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So, you know, they can balance it out with a one-to-two to choice. They could, they could. Or do you want a two-to-high hit

if you really want to make this happen? Right, right. Right, right, right. You want everybody to write about your cards all the time, Capital One. That's the way to do it. I mean, I totally would be really upset about having lost my capital one card. I bet you would. I bet you better be careful what you wish for.

Keep wishing for that, Greg. I'll take it. I'll take it. Sounds good. All right. Well, so we have a quick question, I guess. So we're going to do a quick question of the week here and then sign off for today. So question of the week, very simple, actually. So I think you'll be able to answer this quickly. Somebody in our frequent miler insiders asked a question. They said that their husband applied for the Chase Inc. business preferred.

And of course, I just lost it when I had it up here. There we go. Applied for a Chase Inc. card, has legitimate business for years. Excellent credit. Applied Monday night because there are some big expenses coming up this week that'll help him spend the $15,000. I assumed he'd get automatically approved, but he received the message that they'll be in touch. Should he call and check in? And if so, what to say? I need the card pretty quickly to pay these bills to meet the spending requirements. So what do you think? I know the conventional wisdom has

been not to call. In that situation though, what would you advise? Yeah I know the conventional wisdom has been not to call. In that situation, though, what would you advise? Yeah. So the conventional wisdom is don't call because there's still a chance of an automatic approval, just not an instant automatic approval if you wait. But if you need the card quickly, I don't really think there's danger in calling and asking for an immediate decision. And if you're lucky, you'll get an agent who is going to work to get that approved. And that is not unusual at all to happen. Right. And especially if you've got a long established business and good credit and income and all the rest of that, and you can talk about your revenue and whatever else, if that's easy for you, then there's probably not that much harm in calling in. I think most people that are of the don't call, don't call

kind of philosophy are of that philosophy because they have a new business or a very small business and they're not necessarily prepared to answer all the questions about it. And so they'd rather just wait and see if they get automatically approved. But if you're in a situation where you've got a business for 20 or 30 years and you

know your numbers and everything else, then I don't think there's much harm in calling and talking to somebody. So it's probably worth it. I mean, anecdotally, it's been a while, but last time I called in a situation like that, the agent just had the simplest little question. I can't remember what it was, but it was something like, what's your business phone number so that I can record that as your preference? And then they're like, okay, you're approved. So something like, what's your business phone number so that I can, you know, record that as your preference. And then they're like, okay, you're approved.

So, you know, it can be that easy. Right. Right. And I had a non-credit card situation sort of like that just yesterday where I got blocked for a fraud alert on something and I had to call in and verify myself. And I was wondering what they were going to ask me and blah, blah, blah. And I called in and they asked me to verify my name and my phone number. And that was it. They were like, and you made the purchase? I was like, yep. And they were like, okay, good to go. That was really easy. I didn't have to do anything. So don't be afraid of making

the call now on that. No. All right. All right. Unfortunately, we are out of time for today. So we got to let you go. I want to thank you guys very much for being out there with us today. We always enjoy having you here. If you'd like to get on our email list, so you can read more about what we're talking about in your inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on social media, join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. We'll see you on Instagram and Twitter and all those places as well. Thank you very much. And we'll be back again next week.

Bye everybody.