Frequent Miler on the Air - The sky has fallen on United MileagePlus. Now what? | Ep203 | 5-20-23

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

United steeply increased the cost of award tickets this week and as a result, United miles are worth less. Fear not --- you have many great options for booking Star Alliance awards moving forward. This week, we discuss your alternatives. Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ 00:00 Intro 00:36 Giant Mailbag: Citi premier *does* have purchase protections 04:13 Award Talk 04:18: Citi adds a new transfer partner (Accor) https://frequentmiler.com/accor-live-limitless-added-as-citi-thankyou-transfer-partner/ 08:37 AA slot machine 12:23 United status challenge 17:14 What crazy thing . .  did United Mileage Plus do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/major-united-mileage-plus-devaluation-33-increase-in-award-prices-to-from-europe/ 21:33 Main Event: The sky fallen on United MileagePlus 25:20 United Good News 31:01 What do you do if you like Star Alliance? https://frequentmiler.com/dont-transfer-chase-points-to-united-but-dont-despair-yet/ 32:18 Air Canada Aeroplan 37:38 Avianca LifeMiles https://frequentmiler.com/lifemiles-manual-booking-patience-compulsory-persistence-pays-off/ https://frequentmiler.com/avianca-lifemiles-awesome-mixed-cabin-award-pricing-first-class-for-less/ 46:35 Singapore KrisFlyer 47:21 Turkish Miles & Smiles https://frequentmiler.com/turkish-miles-smiles-complete-guide/ 51:50 ANA 59:35 Will other programs follow suit? 1:15:09 How many points per year can one sustainably earn? 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 Miler on the Air starts now. Today's main event, the sky has fallen on United Mileage Plus. Now what?

We'll see. I guess I guess United had a bit of a stealthy evaluation. And so we will talk about that and what it means for everybody's future. But first, of course, we have the giant mailbag. This week's giant mail comes from

pretty much everybody. Okay. All right. I'm intrigued, but I'm not sure where we're going. Last week's show was called City's Quintessential Credit Card Quartet. And during the show, I guess we said something like City no longer offers purchase protections. I'm pretty sure Greg must have been the one that said that, right? Not me.

I can't remember who mentioned it, but either one of us, neither one stood up and said, wait, no, that's incorrect. And yet we should have, we should have. It is true that the city doesn't have travel protections anymore. And it's true that city doesn't have purchase protections on a lot of their cards but both the city premiere and the rewards plus do have uh purchase protections and they're actually pretty good so uh so everybody reached out to tell us that in various ways um mostly mostly very nice ways i have to say say. Right, right. We appreciate that.

We definitely appreciate that. It's a wea culpa. Yeah, yeah. So what they have is purchase protection where you get damage and theft protection for 90 days after purchase for up to $1,000. uh they also have pretty fantastic extended warranty so they'll extend warranties up they'll not up to they'll extend them for 24 months so beyond the uh manufacturers so that's actually you know much better than any of the ones that that double the manufacturer's warranty because usually doubling is limited to a year. So you're getting a whole next year with these, which is really good.

Double cash does not have any of that. So if you're using our idea of like, use a double cash as your base card for almost all your spend, but then use the other cards when the category bonus is bigger, you might want to rethink that if you need or you think you might need the damage or theft protection

or the extended warranty. Yep, yep, I agreed. The one thing I'm going to mention there is about the extended warranty, which is really nice. Like you said, it's an extra two years on top of the manufacturer's warranty. I think if I think there's a qualification, the warranty has to be two years or less, the original manufacturer's warranty. And I'm sure there's some limitations. Oh, I'm sure. If I, there's my thing about the extended warranty is it always sounds nice. How many warranty claims have you ever made, Greg? Like, I'm not even talking extended. I mean, just warranty claims or.

Yeah, probably two. Two. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm going to say maybe I've done two, but I don't even remember. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's pretty rare. Nice. Nice when you have it. But I always feel like those things break like right after you're out of warranty, no matter what. So which I guess is the whole idea of the extended, but they do seem planned for that. Yeah. Anyway. All right. So yes, we were mistaken on that. So there you go. Purchase protections.

You're good to go to buy stuff probably on not the double cash card, but, but you know, otherwise travel protections certainly absent. OK, so that was our giant mailbag. I think that brings us next then to. I think we're up to award talk. Oh, word talk. What's up with awards? Yeah. So some news in the award world.

Citi added a new transfer partner. It's a new hotel transfer partner. So that sounds pretty exciting because the two they had so far were pretty good. You had one-to-one to Wyndham, which we've talked forever about how useful Wyndham can be, especially if it costs a vacation rentals. And even better, they have one to two transfers to choice. so you could do some amazing things there so now they added a core live limitless um or is it a core live limitless yeah i don't know live live they're spelled the same either way so say it the way you want and don't do the transfer because i mean it's not going to hurt you but it the way so the way it works is

two city points gets you one a a core I think it's not a right right right branding problems you're not doing one of those points one of those live live limitless points and those points are worth two euro cents each so they aren't very limitless in fact they're quite limited so that there's no real way to make you know get outsized value from your points you know they're fixed value they're basically giving you a you can basically pay at checkout for your hotel by redeeming some points and taking that amount off your bill. And, you know, as long as the U.S. dollar and the euro are anywhere close to one to one, you're just not going to be getting much above one cent per point value from your city points. And so I wouldn't even really think about bothering with this because it just seems like even if you're going to be staying at one of these properties,

it just seems like it's going to be a bunch of work for such a tiny payoff. I can't even imagine. No, I totally agree. Such a tiny payoff. I mean't even imagine. No, I totally agree. Such a tiny payoff. I mean, you're going to end up with limited limitless points that are, that have a limit. And, and yeah, like you said, I think the key point there is that not only are you not going to get much more than one cent per point in value, but then you're giving up the chance where you could just be paying for that hotel on a card that either has a travel bonus category or where you're working on a welcome bonus. I mean, you're just giving up or maybe where you're able to go through a shopping portal by instead using the point. I guess you may still be able to go through a shopping portal maybe and use your limitless points to check out.

I don't know, but I think there's just you could use your money and get the same result and just cash out your thank you points at one cent each. And you probably end up coming out a little bit ahead with a decent category bonus so yeah right right and plus when you're using your card you're getting your your points you're earning points for that too yeah yeah so if you're using like your city premier card for example you're getting three x points at the hotel and that's probably outweighing any. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. The category currency. Right. Right. Exactly. And then you're also earning limitless points that you can continue to not use. Or you can top them off. You can top them off with, I don't know. I know that there are some Accor fans out there because every now and then we get an email from somebody who's

like, why doesn't anybody ever talk about Accor? And it's not that I don't have any against Accor hotels. I haven't really stayed in many, any of them. I have stayed in a couple once or twice. And I know that they do have some nice brands. It's just that it's hard to get excited about points that are worth. I mean, we kind of like we talked down on Hilton and Marriott enough for having points that are not even Marriott, really Hilton for having points that are pretty close to just like half a cent all the time. Right. Or at least I shouldn't say we talk down on them all the time, but we typically don't get excited about opportunities during those points because there aren't many chances to get outsized value. And here there's no chances to get outsized value. It's just the fixed value. So we're not going to get more excited about that than any

other hotel currency. Less excited. For sure. All right All right. So I saw this news and I was like, okay, all right. The city's going to city. So, all right. So that was our first piece of award talk. What was up next? We had what, what the AA slot machine you said. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so, you know, we've been playing the slot machine for a while now, not really realizing it. And it's just something I want to point out, because news sort of broke in the blogosphere last week that and I'm saying sort of very intentionally that that, oh, look, American Airlines is pricing round-trip awards cheaper than two one-ways. And, well, I saw articles about that three years ago. I mean, there's nothing new about that. But it is actually very helpful to remind people that when you're searching, we typically tend to search for one ways, try to find the best awards in each direction separately. But it is worth, when you're on

AA.com, try doing roundtrip award search because, yeah, sometimes you're going to find a much better deal that way. That also is exactly true with Delta as well and has been for years. But there's more going on than just that. American Airlines is seemingly randomly pricing awards. So, right, Nick? I mean, we've been doing some award searches recently where we're we're like telling each other, Oh, I found 75 K first class from here to there. And then, then like Nick was like, Oh no, I don't see that anywhere. It's a hundred and whatever. 165 K like 15 minutes later, it was 165 K. And I was like, Oh man, 165 K. Well, within less than an hour, it was back down to like 82 K. And so like, it's just like in the space of one

hour, it went from like 75 to like 165 to like 82 or something along those lines anyway. Right. Right. And then the other way you could play the slot game is, is by picking different destinations. So, you know, suppose you want to go to a, uh, a hub like Miami or New York or Dallas, you could pick other cities beyond there and they'll often price much, much cheaper to those other places and you could get off. You have to be careful about how you do that and know what you're doing if you do that sort of thing. But anyway, it's just worth pointing out that American Airlines, I mean, you could win big with their slot machine, but you could also lose if you just trust the first results you find. Right. Well, I think that's really the key that that specific example Greg is mentioning is a situation where if I had seen the hundred and

sixty five K on the first search, I wouldn't have searched again. Right. I've been like, oh, there's nothing available. It's done. It It's over. But luckily I saw the 75 the first time and I was like, oh man, no, it's got to come back. It's got to come back. And, you know, and just like, just like sitting in it, it was so funny when Greg put in the, uh, in the show notes, uh, oh, you know, the AA slot machine. I was like, oh, that's perfect because that's exactly what it feels like. Right. I mean, I was sitting there exactly like a degenerate gambler searching again and again, like, no, the big one's coming. It's coming. And finally it did, you know? So yeah, you need to sometimes play AA.com just like it's a slot machine. Right. Nice thing is you don't have to put any chips into the machine.

I mean, your time, I guess your time is your chips, right? Yeah, I suppose. I was sitting on a plane, like, you know, I just kept searching, searching, searching, and you know, sure enough, it finally went through. So. So. All right. So check the slot machine now and then and obsessively check it because you never know

when it's going to change. And I've seen that, by the way, that was an example Greg mentioned. But I've actually noticed that since on other routes also. So it definitely continues to happen. So check that out. All right. Then a piece for me that is we're filing it under a word talk. It's a word adjacent.

It's not really about an award, but close enough anyway. Good way to describe it. Yeah. So I have to fly to San Francisco soon, because if you've been following along, you know that our frequent miler team challenge is going to be starting soon and we're starting in San Francisco. So I have to get there. And so I was searching for flights. And the short version of the story is that a United flight suddenly became the best option. It was like the perfect time,

the perfect itinerary. I was like, OK, you know what? This is the flight I have to book. And I was a little disappointed because I have American Airlines platinum status from playing the loyalty game. But the American Airlines flights were too expensive and crazy itineraries that didn't make sense. And so I was finally like resigned to the fact that, okay, I'm going to have to fly United. I don't have any status. So I'm probably going to get to pick my seat. I'm going to fly basic economy or something like that. And I, you know, I'm going to not get any check bags, not that I need one, but, and no chance at an upgrade. Like I like to at least have the shot at an upgrade, but I was like, no shot at an upgrade that kind of stinks. Right. So I thought to myself, Oh, I wonder if United does a status challenge and sure enough, they do. So it's a challenge where you get status for 120

days. And then if you meet the requirements, then you keep the status. And so my American Airlines platinum status, according to their chart would match to United gold. So I thought, Oh, that's not bad. Cause I'll get United Gold, which gives you premium economy seat selection at the time of booking. So that would be pretty awesome if I were able to get that right off the bat and some other small benefits. But that was the one that mattered to me the most anyway. However, the status challenge page said that it takes seven to 14 business days to complete the match. So then I was a little bummed because I needed to book the flight right away and I was hoping to be able to pick the premium economy, but still, I figured it would go through in time. So I submitted it. And much to my surprise,

as soon as I hit the submit button, it said, congratulations, your match has been approved right away. And that was it. So I went back to the United homepage, didn't even log out and back in. And sure enough, it said I was United Gold. Wow. Yeah. That's awesome. I'm actually most surprised by the fact that you didn't have to log out and in. That's really surprising. Didn't even have to log out and in. It was just right there.

It was United Gold right away, literally. I mean, I was surprised when the page said, congratulations, it's been approved. I was like, oh, I thought it was going to take 7 to 14 business days. And I should mention, you can pick the day you want the challenge to begin because you get status for 120 days. So you don't have to go with the first day you submitted. I could have picked a day a week out or two weeks out or three or whatever. But I picked right away, hoping that it would go through sooner rather than later, specifically so I could get premium economy because I'm going to be on a Transcon flight on a 777 that has real premium economy. So I wanted it to go through as quick as

possible. So I used that calendar day and sure enough, right away it went through. So I don't know if it's I did submit the the picture of my American Airlines card that they give you in the app on the website. I couldn't find an actual card, but in the app it gives you an actual advantage card like picture with a barcode. And so I exported that to my camera and that's the file that I used. But anyway, so that worked out. I was able to, at the time of booking, pick true premium economy, not just preferred seating. It looks nice. So yeah, I was happy with that. That was a nice little score. That's sweet. Do you happen to remember if it said how often you can do these challenges? I didn't look for that because honestly i don't usually chase status the thought did come to mind am i not going to be able to do

this again but then i was like yeah but i don't usually try and chase elite status so uh so no i don't know how often you can do it i'm not sure yeah i mean mainly asking because i did it in 2019 in order to have starlines gold stats i I matched from Delta Diamond to, they actually gave me United Platinum. Oh, yes. Or, yeah. Good about, yeah, Platinum's the highest they do, yep. And so that was very helpful for the challenge back in 2019 where I was flying Economy everywhere,

Star Alliance on almost all the flights. I was able to get into lounges and, you know, priority check-in and things like that, which was actually, I'd never really think much about that benefit, but in at least one of the airports, it was actually really helpful. There was a long, long line for regular check-in and I was able to go right up there. Yeah. I take that for granted too, priority check-in, because I mostly fly in business class awards internationally. So I don't usually think about the priority check-in, but yeah, it's super helpful when there's a long line. So yeah, I don't know what Tim and, or I'm sorry, what Tim, what Carrie and Steven are planning in

Asia, but if they plan any flights in Asia where we're not in business class, I'll see you guys later. Cause I'm heading to the Star Alliance lounge. That's great great teamwork there you go we'll see may i bring you a little muffin from the lounge all right so that was a ward talk let's talk next about let's see i just moved it again uh about what crazy thing right is that our next piece what crazy thing did united airlines do this week well Well, yeah. What did United do this week? You know, Greg mentioned a stealthy devaluation. And while it's stealthy in the sense that they didn't tell anybody about it, there's not much stealth going on. If you've searched any awards the last couple of days, because my goodness, our price is way up on partner awards specifically, but also on United Metal for awards to and from Europe is where we've seen it the worst, but it has also affected other parts of the world.

So, okay, hold on just a second. I need to interject with a post-recording interjection. So we recorded this week's episode after the initial United devaluation, but before United walked it back a bit. So you're going to hear us talk about how United is now charging 102,400 miles one way for partner business class to and from Europe, or 107,100 miles close in. But since we recorded the episode, they've walked that back a bit, and it seems that now partner awards are pricing from 88,000 miles one way in business class between Europe and the U.S. Now, that doesn't really change the meat and

potatoes of the rest of the discussion, because frankly, that's still not a super competitive price. You've got better options for booking your Star Alliance awards, as you'll hear us talk about. But I wanted to add a note, because you will hear us reference that price, 102,400 miles, and that's not what you're going to see on united.com right now, probably. But here's the thing. You've got to prepare yourself because clearly United has shown us that they want to charge us 102,400 miles one way for partner business class space. And for some reason, they've walked it back for now, but nobody knows how long for now is. So I wanted to add this note so that you knew that we knew

that the prices did change. But unfortunately, that happened after we recorded. So here you go, listen to the rest of the episode. I'll send you back to Nick and Greg right now. Just keep in mind that United has walked back some of this pricing. To and from Europe, prices increased quite a bit, particularly, like I said, on partners. And really, the crazy thing here is, again, that there was no notice, no notification, which seems to be a trend amongst programs these days, that these devaluations come without warning. And that's no doubt, unfortunately, a side effect of eliminating award charts that now they can devalue whenever they want.

And there's nothing, there's no need to notify anybody because you didn't change anything, but the price and you don't have to stick to an award chart. What are you going to tell people? We're now charging more when they didn't have a price before. There's nothing really to say that that doesn't prove how

you know uh insincere this the you know the lack of award chart is because they do in fact have something like an award chart underneath the covers right i mean prices are not random um but they and they're not and they're not luckily uh they're not tied to paid prices. At least their partner awards are not, and their saver awards on their own metal are not. So that's good. But the lack of public award chart means that when they do raise prices, there's nothing to say about it other than, you know, for us to say, ouch. Yeah, there really isn't. And, you know, I give them a hard time over no notice and no notification because I feel like those are, to me, those are the most egregious things when prices increase all the time. They always increase. And I can accept that. It stinks

to not know in advance that your miles are about to become far less valuable than they were before. But like Greg said, what kind of a press release do you release? What do you say? I mean, there is nothing to say. That's the beauty of, you know, if you're an airline executive, that's the beauty of eliminating the award chart that you don't have to worry about it because there's nothing to say here. So, you know, non-news as far as they're concerned. I mean, I've got no chart. There no guarantee what what an award is going to cost so but like greg said there obviously is a chart so let's talk about it let's let's get into the main event main event time what uh what oh yeah the sky has fallen on united mileage plus now what yeah so right So let's talk about the bad news. The bad news. We mentioned

that awards devalued massively. And so how bad is massively? It's really bad. So on partner economy class to and from Europe used to be 30,000 miles each way. And now it's what, 42,900 miles. So it went up by darn near half, like 46 percent if you want to get technical, but darn near half. I mean, that's a huge, huge increase in the number of miles. And in fact, it's like less than 2000 miles or about 2000 miles less than what Turkish charges for business class to and from Europe to fly. So that that kind of hurts on Star Alliance Economy Awards and Business Class Awards didn't fare much better because those went from being 77,000 miles on partners to now costing 102,400 on most partners. So, wow, that's that's just obscene. It is. That is. That's a lot of miles for a one way business class award.

And if you want to book it close in, close to departure, it's going to cost you 107,100 miles. So even more. You know, I guess, wow, this is a stretch here what I'm about to say, but I guess to United's credit, someone who's used to Delta award pricing is still going to be looking at that and saying,

that is so, so cheap. Right, right, right, exactly. Well, you know, and here's the thing, you know, we could probably talk about this more in the good news section, but, you know, at the end of the day, it's not Delta. And that's, you know, that's what I keep reminding myself that, like Greg said, it's not like close in awards became like any astronomical figure. It's not like you just have to pull a number out of the hat and you have no idea what to expect. You know, if there's a partner award available, it's going to be one hundred and seven one close in or one hundred and two one or whatever it was. One hundred and two four, I think, is actually what it is if you buy it more than a couple of weeks in advance.

So you do have somewhat of an expectation. But of course, that expectation could change without notice or notification again. And, you know, we don't know when that's going to happen, but it seems like United at this point anyway is still following some sort of a chart. So that went way up. Awards on United Metal increased also by about a third. So they went from 60,000 miles each way in business to 80,000 each way in business. But but that really seemed to have mostly or only affected business class on United Metal. Economy class on United Metal still prices at various rates. You don't know what it's going to be day to day. But I've seen it as low as in the 20,000s, like 24,000, 25,000.

So that's not really a big change. It already was variable because you never knew which flights they were going to release as saverspace anyway. So it didn't change much in economy on United Metal, but it changed significantly in business on United and significantly both partner economy and business. First class, by the way, didn't change. So if you find Lipton's first class award availability,

you're still going to want to book it via Avianca, but you could book it with 121 000 united miles if you want yeah yeah that was already like way higher price than uh the competing programs that you could book with but um but now it's like if you are going to be using united miles and and and you're going to be booking to europe like right and and in some miracle, you could find first class award availability. It's such a small difference. Right. Right.

Above business class that you might as well book first class. Right. Right. Might as well book first. So that's the bad news. The good news. Let's talk about some good news. So the first piece of good news that I want to share about this one is is one that somebody gave me a tip on, and that's that premium economy may now be a sweet spot with United on United Metal.

So United on United Metal is charging on not all days, but on many days, more days than I would have expected. Forty five thousand miles each way in premium economy. Now, before you laugh, I know Turkish charges that in business. And so it's not amazing. But compared to one hundred and two thousand each way in business, the premium economy might not be a bad option, particularly for people flying from Europe to the US. Those are usually daytime flights, premium economy. A true premium economy looks almost like a domestic first, not quite as nice, but it's a seat that reclines sort of like that with a footrest. So the nice thing is that they seem to have it decently widely available. I found it many days in June anyway. And so what's interesting though, is that it seems to be that

on days where they have it for 45,000 on a nonstop for 45,000 miles, it seems to be that anywhere you can connect from the end of that one or from the end of that nonstop flight will also price at 45. So here, for instance, I saw London to Boston today. And so 45,000 points one way from London to Boston. Now you're going to pay London surcharges, you know, leaving the UK. So this isn't a fantastic example for a great deal, but it'll give you the idea how it works. So that was pricing at 45K. So also anything connecting onward from Boston was. So for instance, London to Boston to Houston was still 45K or London to Boston to Chicago is still 45K. But not only that, stuff that connected beyond those connection points was also 45K, like London to Boston to Chicago to Fargo was still pricing at 45K.

And I found the same to hold true on a bunch of other routes on the days where it's 45K. It seemed to be 45 the plane on the way. So although I think that nonstop priced at 45 K anyway, so that might be a bit of a sweet spot from United that that came out. It seems pretty decently. Yeah, I could see that being really handy for a few reasons. One is also like, you know, when you're planning a trip and you don't have a lot of flexibility finding a business class award of ill-being on the exact day you want to be really tough. But remember, one of United's strengths is free changes and cancellations. So what I would totally do in probably many cases is when I

first start searching, if all I could find is that premium economy, just go ahead and book it, assuming you already have the United miles. I'm not sure I would transfer to United for this, but go ahead and book it, but then keep doing searches right up until your trip to try to find a flight you like better and book with other miles and cancel the premium economy. I would find that like a really nice option if available. Hey, quick question for you, Nick. Those connecting flights, so the domestic legs, are those booked into first class, regional first class or are they? They were economy. They were almost all mixed cabin. So it was premium economy on the way in

and then economy class from there. Because most United flights don't actually have a premium economy cabin. So there's a difference between their economy extra legroom seating. I can't remember what they call it. And economy plus is actually their name, I think, for premium economy. And only the long haul wide-Buddy jets have economy plus. So, yeah. Yeah. It's just some airlines sort of equate premium economy for international with domestic first class. And so that'll continue on.

Sounds like United's not doing that. That's too bad. Yeah, unfortunately. And the other unfortunate piece is that I didn't find any of that premium economy space listed with seat spy. And I was curious if I would in part because, A, it would show that United is marking that as saver and B, because I thought, is there any Star Alliance airline that offers a premium economy award chart? And I know Air Canada has premium economy awards on their own metal. I wasn't sure if perhaps they do on United. And then so then maybe we could search for some sort of a star Alliance sweet spot so far though. I've searched

some of the dates that were available on united.com on air Canada, and none of them come up through air Canada yet. So I don't know as though there's a way at least yet to book this via partners, but I'd keep an eye out for that in the future. Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. Um, one thing I should mention too, another potential bright spot, I'm not sure it's on your list, is that I stumbled across a 60K one-way business class award from Europe to the US just like the day before we're recording, which is well after the devaluation was known. And this was on United Metal. So it sounds like, I'm just guessing here,

that they're reserving some right to price things somewhat randomly on their own metal. Right, right. Which chance of getting good deals there. Yeah, you never know. And I searched quite a lot of routes, and I didn't find that on anything yesterday, but or this week after the devaluation. But at the same time, the fact that it existed one time means it might exist again. So certainly worth keeping an eye

out for that. I wouldn't count on it, but you never know. So all right. That was some bad news, some good news. But let's talk about what do you do? So if you really like Star Alliance, which there's a lot of good reasons to like Star Alliance, you got tons of airline partners out there, you could fly and nice ones at that. So if you're into Star Alliance, and suddenly now you're like, oh, man, United has just, you know, slaughtered the award chart, so to speak. What do I do now? So what are your best alternatives if you were somebody who liked to redeem United mileage plus miles in the past, which by by the way, should start by saying if you've got a ton of United miles, unfortunately, I don't have good news for you at this point. You know, use them for domestic economy or use them up as you can, because I doubt awards are going to get a lot cheaper. We may get lucky with a flash sale, but I'd use them up while you can before the next evaluation, I guess. But moving forward, it should be easier to use them up now that the prices are higher. Well, yeah, you're true.

You'll use them much faster than you would have otherwise. So that's a great point. So but if you were somebody who transferred, like you had Chase Ultimate Rewards points or built rewards points and you were transferring them to United to book awards. Now, what do you do? So, yeah, well, that's me. I'm sitting on hundreds of thousands of those United, a little bit less valuable miles. Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, yeah. Hope for better times and sunnier days. So, all right. If you were transferring to United in the

past, you're transferring from those major transferable currencies. I think probably the first option I would look at is Air Canada Aeroplan. So we've got a number of different strengths of Air Canada Aeroplan. First of all, from the East Coast to Europe, awards are reasonably priced, even more so now that United has kind of obliterated their chart, because you can pay as few as 60,000 miles one way in business class. Some of the shorter routes from Europe to Newark and Boston, you'll be able to get for 60,000 points. I know Zurich and Geneva, I'm pretty sure to Newark price or to JFK price at 60,000 if I remember correctly, but Frankfurt is just far enough to price at 70,000 one way, but still 70,000 one way to much of Western Europe is still a pretty good deal. So that's, yeah, yeah, that's number one. Number two, you can add a stopover for 5,000 miles on a

one way. So that's nice too, because then it means you could see potentially two European cities for like 30% fewer miles than what United is going to charge you or maybe more to see one. So that's, I think another good deal. Of course, remember with Air Canada Aeroplan, you're not going to charge you or maybe more to see one. So that's, I think, another good deal. Of course, remember, with Air Canada Aeroplan, you're not going to pay any surcharges. And the reason I'm starting with Air Canada Aeroplan, if it wasn't clear, is because Chase and Built are the programs that transfer to United. And so instead of transferring those to United, Chase and Built both transfer to Air Canada Aeroplan and also Amex and Capital One transfer to Air Canada Aeroplan, and also Amex and Capital One transfer to Air Canada Aeroplan. So you get a bunch of options to transfer to Air Canada Aeroplan. So they have reasonably priced

awards, much cheaper than United, at a stopover, and they also offer flexible awards. So if you liked the fact that United offered the chance to book and cancel for free, like Greg said, and you don't have United miles now, so you would transfer into United for that flexibility. Well, you could transfer to Air Canada instead for that flexibility and pay a little bit more. So for instance, an award that would cost 60,000 miles in business class will cost 74,000 as a flexible award, or one that would cost 70,000 in business class as a lowest reward will cost 85,000 for a flexible award. And so those flexible awards can be canceled without penalty. On the flip side, if you want to pay the cheapest number of miles,

the cancellation fee isn't outlandish. It's $150 Canadian dollars, which at the time of our recording, this is about $111 US dollars for a cancellation and redeposit. Or the change fee is about $75 US dollars. So not unreasonable to change or cancel an Air Canada award, not cheap. And if you're traveling with a family, that $111 starts to add up. But I wrote a post this week arguing that it might be worth paying that fee now and then when you have to, overbooking the flexible awards, depending on how often you're going to be canceling your awards and they offer greater availability on their own flights. So that means you may be able to connect via Canada when you're booking through Air Canada. And it may not be an option if you were booking through United to do that.

So it may cost you a few more miles, but it may open up some additional possibilities for getting to and from Europe. Yeah, yeah. Sounds good. I think probably the main disadvantage of this one, as well as all the other alternatives, is that if the connectors to get to the major US airport that has the bigger flight that you're trying to get to, if the connectors are United itself, United doesn't necessarily release a lot of award space to partners. And so you might not be able to book those flights. So you might have to use other ways of getting to the international gateway airport that you want to get to. I'm very glad you mentioned that because that's important.

I saw a comment in Frequent Miler Insiders from someone who said, the problem with Air Canada is they always want to route me via Canada and I have to travel farther to get to where I want to go. I think somebody was giving a specific example of San Francisco to Mexico City. And they said they had to go all the way to Toronto in order to get to Mexico City or something ridiculous. That is out of the way. Yeah. And it's way out of the way. But the reason for that is because United doesn't release a lot of partner availability. So you got to get to wherever it is in Canada. They're going to release availability in that case. But that specific example now thrown out,

what I'm going to say is if you're trying to get to Europe from San Francisco, maybe you can find availability from Chicago or New York and you just need to book a separate flight to Chicago or New York. Forget about the itinerary that connects eight times in Canada to get you to Europe and look at just booking two separate flights. Because if you're paying 60 or 70,000 miles one way from Chicago or New York, if you pay another 100 or 200 or 250 US dollars to get from wherever you are to that connecting gateway, the international gateway, you're still paying a net less than what United is going to charge you one way. So it's worth looking at that. We're also looking at using United miles separately to book a separate economy class award on United when they're

reasonable anyway. So it still, again, may cost you far less than booking via United. All right. That's Air Canada. What's our next alternative? What do we want to try? Oh, I guess Avianca Life Miles. Yeah. Yeah. So Avianca Life Miles. I like Avianca Life Miles. Now, they aren't partners with either Chase or Built. So this is an option if you're looking to build up other types of points. So if you got Amex points, Capital One points, or City points, or if you go get some of those points anyway, then you can transfer to Avianca Life Miles. I love Avianca Life Miles for a few reasons.

Reasonable awards to Europe. So 63,000 miles each way to most of Europe, 60,000 to Northern Europe from the United States. That's anywhere in the United States. Again, like Greg said, same problem with if you are counting on a United connection within the United States, it's going to be tough. So you may have to look from the gateways where the international partners fly from. But again, 60 or 63,000 each way. The website can be tough to use. So that's something to keep in mind.

It doesn't always show availability the way you want it to. So if you do a search from point A to point B, it defaults to what they call a smart search, which is not always that smart. So that's not smart at all. Right. Right. You would think that it's smart enough to know what you want, right? Well, you'd think it'd be smart enough to show you what's available you know which is the whole point of when you do a search you want to get results but yeah yeah i can disagree with you greg that's right that's right maybe it's so smart it's like i i know you're not going to enjoy that flight i'm not i'm just not gonna show you that one unless unless you're smart enough to

outsmart the smart search. And so in the very first step where you enter your city pairs, there's a little drop-down box that you may not have even ever noticed right above those that says smart search. And out of that drop-down box, you can pick Star Alliance or you can pick an individual airline. And sometimes you'll see different results with all three searches. So if you're not seeing the flight you want, it's worth choosing first Star Alliance and then whichever specific airline is going to be the main carrier. Cause it's not only going to search that airline. I promise you that. But there's no telling whether Star Alliance or, you know, Lufthansa is going to be your better bet if you're, you know, you're going to be mostly flying Lufthansa. So it'll still show results with more than one carrier potentially. So yeah.

Anyway, try those different things out on the website. When all else fails, you can try a manual booking. I've written about this a few times. If you just go to frequentmiler.com and look for LifeMiles manual booking or see the link in the show notes, then I'll have a link to that because you can email. If their connection is longer than four hours, they won't show it on the website, but you can email and ask them to put it together if you can find the two pieces individually available on the website. And that has worked for me multiple times in the last year, so it does work. Obviously, if you're dealing with availability that's likely to disappear,

it's really stressful and tough because it takes like a week to get it done, but it can be done. It's hackable. Now, you've written a lot about how hackable Avianca's life or Avianca Life Miles awards are. So how, so how can you use this to your advantage? Yeah, they do a very strange thing, which is, which is they, they have a award chart, uh, unpublished, I think at this point but but um fixed fixed pricing based on like going from u.s to europe for example um for the most part there are certain routes that are priced differently but for the most part it's fixed pricing um and what's super interesting is that if you mix cabins, meaning like if part of your flight is international first class and part of it is, let's say, economy, what they do is they average the pricing between the two based on the distance flown. So, for example, if you flew from L.A. to Newark in economy on United, let's say, and then onward on Lufthansa first class to Europe, instead of paying the first class price of something like $87,000, which you'd normally be charged if you just started

in Newark, then because of that long leg in economy, it's going to actually come out to be significantly less than that for the overall itinerary. You're going to pay a lot less because you went further. And so there's a lot of things that can be done also at the other end. So when you arrive in Frankfurt or Munich, if you have another leg in economy or even business class is cheaper and you go onward from there, but still within Europe, it's going to reduce the price further. So there's a lot of things you could do around that. Yeah, definitely. And so that could be a really useful hack there because the war chart is hackable. I've shown examples before where you could fly your long haul flight between the

intercontinental flight between Europe and the US in business class, but have economy on one end of the other and pay less than 50,000 miles one way. Now, that requires a pretty long economy flight to end up paying less than 50,000. But even still, you can certainly get under 60 anyway with the right economy class connection. So it's hackable. That's one reason to like it. Another reason to like it is what Greg said, and that's some routes just cost less. And we don't really know why. But JFK to Lisbon is one that's been written about many times. It costs 35,000 miles one way from JFK to Lisbon. It's not true in the opposite direction, but it is true JFK to Lisbon. And it's not only on Tap Air Portugal. If you find

Brussels Airlines business class space from JFK to Brussels to Lisbon, that also prices at 35,000 miles one way. Again, no idea why, because other business class awards cost 63,000 miles. So for some reason, those are less. So that's a tip to keep in mind there with specific routes. So that's one, that's the one we always talk about. I'm not aware of another one off the top of my head to Europe, but one exists. Maybe there's something else in there that somebody hasn't found previously. So always worth taking a look anyway for those things. So that's another reason to like Life Miles. I didn't actually put this in our outline, but transfer bonuses is another reason to like Life Miles. Right now, I think there's still a 15% transfer bonus from Amex, or really, I think

from any of the credit card points to like, I can't remember. You'll have to check the link that I put in the notes as to what the transfer bonus deal is. But there is a transfer bonus anyway, at least from Amex to Avianca LifeMiles, 15% right now. So that reduces the cost of awards even more. But there's a couple of gotchas. First gotcha is that there are high change fees. So you're looking at $150, $200 usually to change or cancel, and really just to cancel because actually changing probably requires a small miracle. So you're looking at $150, $200 to cancel the ticket. And the reason I say it'll take a small miracle is because don't expect customer service out of Avianca Life Miles. If you're somebody who often has to call customer service or you rely on customer service or your

blood pressure increases significantly when you call customer service, Avianca Life Miles is just not the program for you because you're not going to get good service out of them. Or at least if you do, it's going to be like one of those really lucky situations where you happen to find the magical representative that's able to help. Otherwise, canceling, to my knowledge, is one of those things that takes a couple of calls because you have to pay the fee and the department that takes the fee isn't the same as the department that takes the calls. And then you have to wait. It's not instant. It takes a while for the miles to come back. So it's a totally different experience than a lot of other programs. So that's hard. And also the miles expire after 12 months of inactivity. So that's really short compared to

most other programs. You can extend them by just transferring some more miles over. But the 12-month thing has bitten me before. So you got to watch out for that. Yeah. And the last thing to watch out for is that when you do a search for awards, the results don't show all of the taxes and fees that are going to be imposed. And so if you don't have enough miles, there's no easy way on their website to see what it's totally going to cost. And so then if you transfer the

miles over, you might be surprised by how expensive it is. So that's just something to keep in mind. Yeah, the solution to that is to look on united.com or aircanada.com at what the taxes and fees are. And it's going to be that plus the $25 Avianca LifeMiles booking fee. So it should be exactly the same in terms of the taxes plus the $25 partner booking fee on Avianca. So if you see $150 in taxes and fees on united.com, actually, you should look at United, not Air Canada, now that I think about it. You want to look at united.com. And if you see it costs $150 in taxes and fees, add another $25 and that's what

Avianca should come out to be. So, there you have it. Alright, so Air Canada, Avianca, those are your best options. Singapore is an option you might consider. They partner with, I think, everybody but Bill, but I say you might because the award prices are usually high. They're less than what United is charging now, but they're usually

pretty high and they have a hard expiration policy. So, I'm not super excited about that, but they do partner with like all the major transfer partner programs. So you can book Star Alliance Awards through Singapore. And if you're somebody who counts on customer service, you have a better shot at good customer service with Singapore than you do with Avianca. So if that matters enough to you to pay a little bit more than Singapore might be the option for you. In fact, out of the options here, I think you're likely to get probably the best service out of Singapore, at least out of the ones we've talked about so far. You might get good service out of Air Canada, but Singapore, you're more likely probably. All right. So Air Canada, Avianca, Singapore, Turkish. Turkish is your next option. If you're

a Star Alliance person, they partner with Capital One, Citi, and Built. So if you were somebody transferring your built points over to United, in order to book awards, Turkish is a great option to keep in mind. And I say great option. I'll put an asterisk there. A potentially great option, maybe we should say.

They have great award prices, 45,000 miles each way, and business class to and from Europe. So, I mean, that's less than half, less than half of what United is charging for a business class award these days. I mean, that's a huge difference, right? It sure is. It's, yeah, it's mind boggling. Yeah. So, 45,000 each way in business class.

Oh, and I should say also, and good prices beyond Europe, too. I mean, you can get to Middle East for 47, 49K, something like that. You can get all the way to Central Asia, which is India and Nepal and stuff like that for 52,500 miles one way. So I mean, you're still less than half of what United would charge you just to get to Europe. You can go all the way on to India, and you can do it with a stopover for 5000 additional miles. We're basically half of what United is charging just to Europe. Yeah, yeah. Or you could say all these prices are around the same as what premium economy costs for United. Right. On a good day with United. Yeah. Yeah.

So much, much better prices on the awards. However, they do pass along surcharges. So if you're going to try and fly on Lufthansa or Swiss or Austrian or Brussels, probably you're going to get hit with fuel surcharges or I'm not even going to say fuel carrier imposed surcharges of hundreds of dollars. So that might make those awards unattractive. But if you can find availability on United, which you could find through Seat Spy or on Tap Air Portugal or on Lot Polish or on SAS, you're going to pay either no fuel surcharges or carrier imposed surcharges are very low on Lot Polish. So those can all be good options. Turkish is like getting it kind of expensive, but not as expensive as Lufthansa surcharges. So you got some options anyway, and some of those awards can be booked online relatively easily. Cancellation fee is reasonable, $70 to cancel and get your points put back in your account. The cancellation process isn't necessarily reasonable, but the fee

is reasonable. The process can take a while. Sometimes it's really easy over the phone in just a few minutes. And sometimes people have waited weeks and weeks to get there, months, even I think to get their miles back. So there's a little bit of a gamble there. And they do also have a hard expiration. And really the key point, the key point reason for the asterisk was because of customer service. I mean, customer service is almost totally non-existent with Turkish. So if you have a problem with your flight, if there's a significant schedule change, a flight cancellation, et cetera, you're in for a major headache. So you only want to get into Turkish if you also have other points that you can use as a backup if things go wrong.

Yeah. And one big advantage of Turkish is that they have a massive route network themselves. True. And they open more award space to their own members than to partners. So there's a lot of flights that with Turkish miles, you may be able to book to fly Turkish that you wouldn't be able to book even at all with United miles, for example. So so that's really nice, but yeah, their customer service doesn't exactly rival Singapore's and their website does not exactly rival United. So yeah, yeah, those are the things, you know, I've said before, I'll say again, email is the easiest way. If you're the award you want doesn't show up online,

then email is your best option with Turkish and just, you know, scattershot an email out to a bunch of ticket offices in order to try to to book the award if it's not available on the website so that's turkish i mean the mixed bag but far better pricing than united which might make it worth the headache for some i mean certainly for me i would still book via turkish so that's turkish go ahead i think i think people that are really into the game find it fun to score big. Turkish adds a challenge on top of the normal challenges. And so if you get it found and booked and fly the award successfully, you won. And that should be a lot of fun.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I agree. Perfect. Good way to explain that. Sort of like a slot machine, I guess it's the, you know, it appeals to the gamblers in us. So, uh, so that's Turkish. Your other option for Star Alliance awards to consider now is ANA, which we've talked about before, Amex Transfer Partner. You've done some ANA booking as of, well, at least as of the Three Cards, Three Continents challenge, right? cards three continents challenge right yeah um so ana is is wonderful in in their their award pricing

both for flying ana itself as well as for flying star alliance partners um but it's not i don't think of it as a general purpose program for Star Alliance awards, because it has a few really big limitations. One is that you have to book round trip. So if you're mixing and matching, as I think most of us normally do when booking awards, we might find that the best outbound award is on Star Alliance, but the best return is a One World Carrier, for example. If you're doing that, you just can't use your ANA miles or you can't use them effectively. AMX is the only program that transfers to them,

and it takes days usually to complete the transfer. So you find a word availability, initiate the transfer, may or may not be there when you have the points. And then like Singapore, miles just hard expire after about three years. And so it doesn't matter if you have activity in your account, you're not keeping those points alive. So if you don't use them all up, you're dead. So yeah, ANA is, it's really amazing what can be done with it, like going around the world in business class for 125,000 points-ish. So give or take a little bit, cause it depends on what distance you actually go. But, um, that's amazing to do that in business class on star Alliance, but, um,

yeah, uh, there, there's sort of too many limitations, I think, to, to make, to make me say you should consider this as like, in general, as your Star Alliance backup. Think of it more as like, when the stars align and you see, oh, yeah, I'm going to go around the world, or I'm going to take advantage of 104k round trip to South Africa. You know, they just have some unbelievable award pricing. So if you find the awards availability, and it matches everything you need, then it's great. But yeah, the limitations are too strong. So my thought on ANA is that it is good for somebody who is flexible and travels a lot.

So if you're a remote worker and you're the type of person who's going to travel pretty often and you know you're going to travel pretty often no matter what, then ANA suddenly becomes, I think, really attractive. I mean, I think that Greg's almost downplaying it too much, because you're talking 88,000 round trip to Europe, 75,000 round trip in low season from the US to Japan on ANA or 90,000 on partners round trip, those prices are I mean, United will charge you that one way. And ANA will charge you that round trip. Same thing with South Africa and the round the world chart, which I know we've talked about before, but like 125, 145K, you can fly to eight different cities with 12 segments in business class. Now, you're not going to be able, like Greg said, you're not going to be able to search that out

today and see, oh, wow, I found all these available flights. I'm going to transfer today and be able to book it because some of those flights will be gone by the time the miles transfer over no matter what. So you have to be a gambler here and that you have to be willing to transfer to ANA and hope that you're going to be able to use the miles, which is hard because of the hard expiration. Unless, like I said, you're somebody with a fair amount of flexibility, like a remote worker type that you're like, OK, well, I travel plenty internationally and I can definitely find a use for these. Then I think they become really intriguing, but yeah, they're not

like a replacement for United. They're just a supplement. Yeah. You know, I'm going to mention a trick though. If you're stuck wanting to use ANA miles and you can't book round trip, there are some things you could do. So for example, you can book US to Japan and then let's say in first class or business class, and then your return can be an economy. And you could just throw away that return. By having the return economy, it makes the price of the round trip even less than what the all business class or all first class return would be. But you can also make it even cheaper by returning to Hawaii instead of the US mainland because they have a lower award price for returning to Hawaii, but they still count it as round

trip that way. So, you know, fly first class to Japan and then return economy to Hawaii and either throw that away or just decide, oh, hey, Hawaii would be a good stop anyway. I'll go there. And now, whereas before I may have been like, is it worth the throwaway? But now it might be because that price will be probably less than what United is going to charge you for one way, even with a throwaway leg on the way back. And I wouldn't throw away the leg to Hawaii, personally. I'd go. Right. Also, I had mentioned before that Turkish, one advantage was that flying Turkish itself. Same here, ANA. ANA releases more award space to their own members as well. And so the reason I once actually booked ANA with that return to Hawaii that I was going to leave alone was I was booking all three of us

and my family first class to Japan. We ended up changing our plan, so that didn't work out. But the point is that I couldn't find three first-class tickets through any partners, but on ANA itself, I found them. And so there are, I guess, with all of these programs, advantages when you're flying that airline itself. Yeah, for sure. For sure. All right. And also nice with ANA, no change fee. And I think it's a 3000 mile fee to cancel. So it's very reasonable in that in terms of those. That's really good. Oh, yeah. But so ANA, I would say is an intermediate advanced play. It's not a replacement for United Mileage Plus, but it was worth mentioning because they do have some really good Star Alliance values out there. So if you're willing to hunt around and play a little bit, that could be a good option to go along with it. But in terms of replacing United Mileage Plus, Air Canada, I think is probably going to be the best option for most people. And I'm not talking from an elite status program perspective. I'm talking from an award booking program perspective. Air Canada is probably going to be your best choice for most people. Avianca Life Miles, I think is a really good potential alternative if you're willing to deal with their headaches.

Turkish is probably your third best bet. Singapore may be ahead or behind them, depending on how much you value customer service. And then ANA is going to be like an all-sell play that will go along with one of those. So you have some options for booking awards for far fewer miles than you would with United. So the moral of the story to me is don't transfer. I wouldn't transfer Chase or or built points to United at this point for most awards. Domestic economy class awards, they may still be your best bet because domestically they don't release very many flights to partners. And when they do, it's usually the least desirable routings. So, you know, if you want to fly domestically and use your miles, then transferring to United may

still make sense. But for international business and first class, for sure, and probably economy class on partners, you'll want to take a look at some of those other programs that we mentioned. But now with an eye towards the future, Greg, will other programs follow suit? Delta did this. American kind of got rid of their award charts, at least for their own flights and, and have, you know, started pricing things more dynamically. Now United seems to be moving in that direction. Alaska for sure throughout their award chart. What's next? Are they all going to do that? Is this just the way of the future? Boy, I hope not. I do think it's worth clarifying again. We mentioned this at the beginning of the program,

but that when you say Delta did this, like Delta has moved much past this. So yeah, when they originally dropped award charts, they did this. They charged more, but it was still sort of a somewhat predictable pricing. But then they started moving more and more towards just tagging the price of awards to the cost of a ticket. And one after another, the little loopholes and avenues for getting past that have dropped away.

There's still a few. But anyway, the point is, I think what Delta has done is substantively different. And I'm sure hoping and praying that United doesn't complete that transition, right? As things stand right now, as we said earlier in the program, the pricing is still predictable. It's just a new level of what to look for, a new higher level, which is unfortunate, but not as bad as what Delta did. American, as we talked about also earlier in the program, is totally unpredictable, but often that's in a good way. So, you know, their prices are up and down and everywhere. For their own metal, for partners, they've kept the reward chart which is great so that's the one i'd be most scared of i guess is is for american to look over at united and say

um you know hey united's getting away with higher award higher partner award pricing maybe we can we should do that too yeah well i mean alaska is getting away with it, right? And now United. So, I mean, American is it now when you're talking about a partner award chart, right? So, yeah, that's a little scary. And I won't, frankly, I won't be surprised if and when American does do away with it, because what reason do they have at this point to stick with that partner award chart? Not much because everybody else is getting away with it. They probably can too. So that would be, I think the next thing, I mean, they probably can if, if they're smart though. I mean, I think there, there's so much, uh, of a, uh, you know, a glow around their program that, that happens when somebody books something like Cutter Q suites for only 70,000 American Airlines miles or 75,000 go all the way to, let's say South Africa. And if they were smart, I think they would say, you know what? Yeah, this might be costing us more, or we might be able to sort of get more

from our members by charging more for these partner awards. But I just, I don't, I don't think they would have as loyal members if they did that. And, and I think that would be a big mistake on their part. So I just want to put that in there for any American Airlines executives are listening. I mean, it's true. It's true. The moment that American does this too, their program will lose basically all of its luster to me because right now that is the advantage of advantage is the ability to book those partner programs at predictably good levels. Once that becomes dynamic, similar to United. I mean, United is largely dead to me at this point. Domestic flights, it's interesting because I usually fly Southwest domestically. So I mostly use Southwest miles for domestic flights. But when it comes to the other airline programs,

I don't often redeem miles for domestic flights. I usually pay cash for them if I'm going to fly domestically. So if you're somebody who flies a lot domestically, then perhaps you still want to use lots of miles for your domestic flights. But for me, these programs like Delta and United are basically dead to me, you know, because I'm not going to use them really like those redemption rates. I'm just going to seek out some other program for my international awards. And when it comes to domestic, I'm just going to buy the cheapest ticket. So I'm not generally going to be very interested in those programs. So American, this is your chance to keep somebody loyal to the program. Okay. You've been warned. You've been warned. What about the foreign partners, Greg?

I mean, like I've mentioned here that I think Air Canada is your best bet. Avianca is a good bet. Are those good bets? So are they likely to do the same thing? Do you see this happening with them too? I mean, this kind of thing is always a risk. It's always been a risk in the past. I don't see United's move as really moving the needle on these other programs. You have ANA that's had some parts of their award chart fixed for about 462 and it's it's been pretty surprising right uh year after year that it stayed the way it has and and yet it's continued so everyone who's you know everyone who predicts that it's that they're going to devalue eventually it's sort of like uh you know the the world is coming to an end type of predictions. Eventually it'll happen.

And yeah, you could celebrate that you were right, I guess. But in the meantime, let's just be thankful that they're still there. Yeah. So, yeah, in a way, it's possible that that the challenges around dealing with A&A Miles, challenges around booking awards with Turkish, that those things are actually helping by making it less expensive for these programs to keep sustaining these incredible award prices. Yeah. So I have a few different things here. So my first thing that I have argued now is that I think that there's very little incentive for most of these other programs to go in this direction.

So when it comes to United and American and Delta, they have obvious easy demand in the United States, right? Because everybody knows those airlines and people fly those airlines regularly for business or whatever. And so they have those airline miles and they have the credit cards that are in those airline miles. And so those are the easy programs for people to deal with. That's what they think of. And for many people, it's probably all that they think of is those domestic airline programs. So they don't have to work hard to keep demand. Demand is going to be

there no matter what. And they know it. And somebody asked me why United increased prices like this. Don't they know it's going to decrease spending on chase cards? And I thought they clearly they don't think it's going to hurt them much because they know that they have the demand, right? Or they think they have the demand, whether they're right or not. Time will tell. But I mean, I hate I hate to say this, but just look at Delta. I don't think that the demand for their credit card spend has dropped at all. And even though they keep raising their award prices to just stratospheric levels to where it's just unbelievable and people keep – I keep running into people every day who proudly whip out their Delta card and say, oh, yeah, I'm so smart because I'm spending on this. And I just cringe. Yeah, yeah.

So I think that that's absolutely true of the U.S. programs. Foreign programs, it's a very different story for them. Right. So like Air Canada, I look at specifically Canada and Canada's got a little more than 10% of the population of the United States. If every man, woman, and child in Canada got an AeroPlan credit card, they probably still wouldn't sell as many miles to TD Bank in Canada as they can to Amex or Chase or whoever else to transfer points from those programs into Air Canada. Mileage sale to banks is the major profit driver for the main U.S. program. So I have to imagine

everybody else wants a piece of that. And the only hope for them to get a piece of that is to offer something attractive to Americans, right? That people like us are going to talk about and get excited about.

And I feel like that's entirely what Air Canada's program is tailored towards. So I don't see them going in this direction because I think that they see the potential for them to earn a lot of money from airline transfers in the United States or to sell miles and their mileage sales, et cetera, because they have this better system that

keeps them more attractive. Now, will they increase prices? Probably every price of everything goes up, right? So probably the prices will increase. I doubt they'll increase anywhere near this substantially and certainly not become totally dynamic like Delta. They don't have it like that. Like their home base just isn't big enough. So. Yeah, I totally agree. I also, you know, know that the people who run the Aeroplan program are big into rewards themselves. They're mileage runners for earning status and points, and they are into the award booking themselves. They want a program that they'll

enjoy using. They want their friends, they want everybody in the Points and Miles community to be happy with the program that they built. And because they understand the rewards world so well, I think they worked hard to build one that would be both attractive to us at the same time, be sustainable for Air Canada to provide that award pricing. And yeah, they already tweaked it once when they realized some other predictions, I guess, were out of whack. I don't actually have any knowledge of what was behind that, but that's my assumption. And so yeah, I feel pretty good about that they did their homework. They built a program that basically works and you know what the pricing is not it's not like turkish or a and a level award pricing it's not like you look at

these awards and say oh my god they're so cheap they're they're they're just sort of like decent i guess um the pricing and and uh and they added an unbelievable amount of flexibility with stopovers on one ways for 5,000 points more, plus by adding an endless selection of new partners. They're introducing new partners every day. So they've got the entire Star Alliance plus incredible partners. So, yeah, I totally agree. The Aeroplan is the program that is a, it was already an excellent option overall. And with United prices going up, it makes it even more so. I have a post that I wrote a couple of years ago comparing United and Air Canada's award pricing to each other. And I was surprised when I wrote it at the time.

I found that almost every situation United for business class was cheaper or about on par with Air Canada. But first class Air Canada was better at. But now I need to redo that post because I'd be surprised if any of that holds for United. No, I mean, it shouldn't with a 33% increase on most business class awards. I doubt that it will. So yeah, I mean, I think that Air Canada, I think the number of partners is something we should have mentioned before because, yeah, they have way more partners, too, than anybody else. I mean, the most partners by a decent stretch, and they continue to add more.

And like you said, their executives use the program. They're not just people that run a program. They're people that use the program and fly on partners. So I think that that's another good point. So that's why I feel like Air Canada is a reasonably good alternative to United. Again, with the caveat that if you're primarily looking for economy or you need economy class connector legs, you're probably going to have to either book that separately with your Canada award or just look at using United miles for those domestic awards or

other miles for those domestic awards because United is just still not going to release much space. However, when I say they're not going to release much space, my other piece about this that I think is potentially good news is United was popular because they're easy to use, right? I mean, it's easy to get United miles. If you're based in the United States, either you fly United or you get a United credit card or Chase Ultimate Rewards cards or whatever the case may be. It's familiar. We've all heard of United. You can go to united.com and search for the awards. Now that the awards are so much more expensive, though, there have to be fewer people that can afford these awards. And so when you increase the price like that, hopefully it reduces the competition for the awards. So those of you who are savvy enough to learn about these foreign

programs, I think there's probably moving forward going to be a better shot at getting those because goodness knows it's been hard to book business class awards to and from Europe as of late. I mean, there hasn't been great availability, which I have to think is somewhat related to the ease of booking through certain programs. I mean, the easier it is, the more people you're competing with. Now that it's harder in the sense that you need a lot more miles, hopefully that's going to lead to a little bit more availability. I mean, that would be great. I mean, my guess is that a bigger factor in reduced award availability is just the demand. That people are buying up not just economy tickets, but even business class tickets for trips to Europe. And and as they fill up the plane, they release fewer, fewer seats. But for sure, I mean, to the extent that there's any awards available, people are snapping those up, too.

So, yeah, it's all it's all interrelated. Yeah. So we'll see. Overall, I think that the news stinks again for people who have, you know, if you had a whole bunch of United miles, that hurts because, you know, it's certainly not what, you know, what you were looking for with this week's announcement. But if you have other stuff, then, you know, the good news is it's not all gone. It's not all bad there. So yeah, well, keep, keep in mind, I mean, a lot of people are pretty darn interested in flying premium economy. So, uh, you know, we're, we're pretty jaded by always wanting to fly life flat everywhere. Uh, but if premium economy is on your radar, I mean, there's actually some really good news there about the, how much availability there is for 45,000 person points, 45,000 points per person. I think that's that's a pretty attractive find. It is, especially because I assume and I haven't yet had enough time to dive

deeply enough into it, but I assume that there's probably likely to be more seats, not only more dates, but also on dates when it's available. I'm going to bet before I do the search that it's probably easier to find multiple seats in premium economies. So, so that may also just appeal to people who are flying with a family or a group from that perspective. So, yeah. And if you want to feel really good about your United miles, like you find that 45,000 point award and then go onto Delta's website and see how much they would charge for a premium economy to the same destination. There you go. All right. All right. That brings us, I think, into this week's question of the week. And so this week's question of the week came in via the giant mailbag.

That's mailbag at frequent miler dot com. If you've got a question you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a giant mailbag, you can send it to that. So Mitsu, I think, is how it's pronounced. Hopefully I said that right. Writes in and says, listening to your podcast, it does seem that you and many other players of this game

earn so many points per year that you have what seems to be an endless supply of points to do business in first class on a continual basis. I've been playing this game for a few years and have managed to get globalist status and Delta Silver.

And we do two big economy class international trips a year, plus smaller vacations and whatnot. But I don't really understand how you can keep acquiring so many points every year. I'm leery of manufactured spending because the story is the shutdowns by both Amex and Chase. Amex has no lifetime language, so churning those cards seems difficult unless you get a targeted offer, etc. I read up on points generation strategies, and they're all things I'm mostly aware of. But I'm curious to hear stories

of how many points you guys are able to generate each year on a year after year basis. I've only found a couple of articles out there like this. So essentially, they're wondering, you know, how is it that we earn the points that we do? And what can someone who is a bit risk averse and puts a medium amount of effort in expect to be able to generate as time goes on? What do you think? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. We've had similar questions pretty often, I think. And I'd say if you're willing to keep signing up for new cards, even though there are no lifetime language issues with Amex and there are 24 month and 48 month rules with various cards. There are so many issuers and so many cards out

there. You can go quite a ways by signing up for lots of cards. You do have to have to get into signing up for business cards, I think, to keep earning a lot from that approach because that opens up a whole world. And speaking of which, Amex doesn't seem to care about their lifetime language with some of their business cards. They like to keep offering cardholders of certain cards, like the business platinum card or the business gold card, more and more points for opening up additional cards for the same business. So they're saying open the same card again. And so I know in my family, I've opened a whole bunch of business platinum cards over the last couple of years and earned at least 150,000 points each time. So that's one approach.

It does require a lot of spend. So you do need to get into some of those techniques for increasing spend. So when you hear about shutdown stories where people have all their cards shut down, it's not because they were manufacturing enough spend to meet a welcome bonus requirement. It's because they were trying to spend, and I'm going to make up numbers here, but $100,000 a month, that kind of quantity, the amount they're spending, the amount of times they're running up their credit limit, paying it off, and then running up again within one billing cycle, those are the types of things that get the bank's attention and cause a shutdown. So I wouldn't worry about it as much from that. The multiplayer is another thing. If you have a spouse, if you have adult children, you have parents that are willing to sort of go along with your recommendations. And these are all ways to increase how many credit cards you can earn from referrals. So you can often refer to family members and earn bonus points for referring a card to someone else. They earn points from the welcome bonus. You earn points from the referral.

And you could go both directions with that. You know, with Chase points, you can share points within your household. So if your spouse, let's say, earns points in their card, but you want the points in your account, your spouse could move their points to you. With Amex, as long as you're an authorized user and have been for 90 days on one of their Amex cards, they could transfer their Amex membership rewards points to your frequent flyer accounts. And so there's different ways like that for you to still, you know, earn points across the family, but use them all in one account.

Yep. I think those are all great, great tips and techniques. And to give you a real world example of the player one, player two thing, I think it was last year at some point, but actually the current, this will work. I'll use it as though it was current, even though I did this before. Right now, a lot of Amex consumer cards have an offer to earn an extra five points per dollar on US supermarket spend for three months and up to 25,000 spend when you refer somebody successfully. And so what I did last year was something similar to this. My wife has an Amex gold card. So that earns four points per dollar at the US supermarkets on up to 25,000 spend per

year as it is. And then, you know, one X after that, if you keep spending, but anyway, so she has that card. So she referred me to an Amex at the time I did an Amex business green card, because at least at the time, I don't know if it's still the case now, the annual fee was waived the first year. So it didn't cost anything for the first year to have that card. Now the welcome bonus on the Amex business green card was like next to nothing. It wasn't exciting or anything, but I knew that it wasn't going to result probably in a hard pull because Amex usually doesn't do hard pulls for existing cardholders. It wasn't going to prevent me from getting another card in the future because it wasn't going to show up on my reports because it was a business card.

And my wife was going to earn 25,000 points for referring me as part of the referral bonus on the gold card, plus an extra 5x. Now it's at US supermarkets for three months. So 9x at supermarkets total for three months. So it was worth that extra 25,000 points and the 9X, because even if you do some moderate gift card purchases here and there, then you've earned a decent number of points on top of that 25. So that's an example of playing in two-player mode.

And then I could do the same thing with her. And for her, again, I'm going to say business green, but I'm not sure that they waive the annual fee in the first year anymore on that card. But that's just a decent, for instance, anyway, that you could do. Maybe a Blue Business Plus that has no annual fee. If they don't already have that, you could do something like that. So those types of techniques can help. And I think Greg's point was an important one when he said that it's not usually the, if you're talking about doing a few thousand dollars here or there of increasing spend through gift card purchases that aren't obvious, like giftcards.com purchases, but other types of gift card purchases, I think it's likely to fly under the radar. The shutdown stories are much higher than what you're at.

Like if you're nervous about it, you probably are not at that point. Unless you're at the point where you know you should be nervous, then you're just probably not at that point. Unless you're at the point where you know you should be nervous, then you're just probably not at that point. So yeah, I mean, I think that there's when you ask how many points, man, Amex with these continuous business platinum and business gold offers that they keep giving people and the referral option to refer your friends. And also, by the way, if you have a consumer Amex platinum or consumer Amex gold, check to see if you have the referral offers for the 150K or 90K plus $200 offers, if you have the referral offers for the $150K or $90K plus $200 offers, because we have a referral thread in our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. And I think Stephen had calculated, I don't know, months ago that people had earned

millions of membership rewards points overall, our readers, by posting their link in that thread, because we use those on our best offers page right now, as long as that offer is increased. I don't know whether there's more capacity to add more people to that, but it's worth keeping an eye out when we do that. Now, keep in mind, we only want referral links in our Facebook group on posts where we've solicited the referral link. We don't allow referral links just willy nilly. Otherwise the group of 30,000 people would become 25,000 posts about referral links. So you do have to look specifically for those referral threads, but that's another thing to keep in mind. There's a lot of people that have earned points that way. So yeah, I mean, I think there is a fair amount. Now you asked,

I didn't include this, I kind of paraphrased, but they mentioned maximizing gift cards with the in cash. The gift card thing seems inconvenient having to juggle gift cards and split payments and so on. And that's a good point. Yeah. If you're going to buy a bunch of Visa gift cards to use them for personal purchases, there is some headache in juggling that. So you have to consider whether that's worth it to you or not and at what level. But certainly that is a technique that can work using those cards to get 5X essentially everywhere that you bought it at office supply stores. So again, I think the other key point that Greg made is that you got to open your mind to the idea of business cards, you know, become entrepreneurial and open your mind to

that idea because there's just so many more cards that way. You know, once you get into that side. Absolutely. Okay. All right. There you go. There you have it. That brings us to the end of this week's episode. If you enjoyed the episode and you'd like to get these tips in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe again, frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social medias, join our frequent miler insiders, Facebook group. If you're not following us on Instagram yet, you should do that sooner rather than later,

because we do have that challenge coming up soon. And you're going to be wanna, or you're going to want to be following along on Instagram as we post things to stories for that. And wherever you're watching or listening, please like this, leave a comment, subscribe, enable notifications and share it with your friends and family. We appreciate all of those things. And we'll see you guys again next week. Goodbye, everybody.