To summarize:  She is looking to take an anniversary trip with her family of four to Cancun, Mexico and she has some flexibility to fly from either Baltimore or Washington, DC.  She currently has 60,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points and while she knows this won’t be enough to get four free round-trip flights, she wants to maximize her points as best as possible.

Sabrina’s Flight Options to Cancun

Before I get started searching for flights, I wanted to brainstorm Sabrina’s realistic potential options to redeem her Chase Ultimate Rewards points for travel to Cancun:

• Book travel through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal
• Transfer points to Southwest to book on Southwest flights
• Transfer points to British Airways to book on American Airlines flights
• Transfer points to United to book on United flights

The first thing we need to do on our search is find out what airlines fly to Cancun from the Baltimore/Washington, DC area.  So we go to the Cancun Airport Wikipedia Page and scroll down to the “Airlines and Destinations” section and search for both Baltimore and Washington, DC.  Here’s what I found:

Southwest has direct flights from Baltimore and United has direct flights from Washington-Dulles airport.  I’m quite pleased to see the Southwest flight as I know from experience that they are the easiest airline to book award seats with, especially when you’re looking for a family of four.

Not only that, but since Sabrina is flying from their main hub in Baltimore and January isn’t a high-demand month, there is a chance that these flights will be really inexpensive booking with either points or cash.

We also note there are some “seasonal” Delta flights out of both Baltimore and DC, but that isn’t going to help us much on this search:

One thing to note at this point is that since there aren’t any direct flights on American Airlines from the DC area to Cancun that we are now throwing out our option above to use British Airways miles to fly on American Airlines planes.  That just isn’t plausible for the itinerary.

Searching for Flights on Southwest Airlines

Since I have a strong suspicion that Southwest is going to be Sabrina’s best option, I start my search at Southwest.com and here’s what I entered (note that I clicked the “Points” button near the top right):

Since Sabrina didn’t specify her dates in January, I just randomly picked a few dates to get started.  Here’s what I found from BWI to CUN:

There appear to be two nonstop flights on the 18th and the one only costs 9,288 Southwest miles for each one-way flight.  Here’s the return on the 23rd:

There are also two nonstop flights back to Baltimore, but you’ll notice that this flight segment costs 15,124 miles for the one-way, which is not ideal.

Since Sabrina has some flexibility, we decide to click the “Try our Low Fare Calendar” in the upper right section of the page, which is a nice hidden search tool when finding award seats on Southwest.com.  Here are the options from BWI to CUN:

It looks like there are many options around 9,000 points per flight, which is roughly what we found on our search on the 18th.  Here are the options back from Cancun:

It looks like there are many dates with flights in the 9,000 – 10,000 miles range (though they may not be nonstop, so Sabrina will have to search additionally, but this gives her a guide at least), so we’re fairly confident she can get three of the four round-trip flights from BWI to Cancun using her 60,000 Chase UR points.  She just has to simply transfer them from Chase to her Southwest Rapid Rewards account and she can book through Southwest.

The other nice thing about Southwest is that she can easily purchase the fourth ticket normally through the site using cash; since Southwest points flights are based on the cash price, we’re fairly certain the flights she decides to book will be on the less expensive side, so there won’t be any nasty surprises waiting for her when she goes to book the fourth ticket.

Booking Options Through the Chase Ultimate Rewards Portal

Sabrina’s second major option is to book travel directly through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal.  She’ll get a value of 1.25 cents per point, so her 60,000 points will be worth a total of $750 through Chase.

First she’ll log into her Chase account and go to Ultimate Rewards and will see the following screen:

Then she’ll hover over “Use Points” and click “Explore & Book Travel.”  Then she’ll enter her flight info:

After clicking “Search” here’s what we find:

These are pretty awful looking flights with a cost of nearly 25,000 miles round-trip and at least an 11 hour journey.  I can’t imagine she’d prefer these options to the Southwest flights we already found!

For the sake of thoroughness, I also check from DC to Cancun:

While these flights are shorter, they still require one stop and are each over 24,000 points, so again not ideal.

Using United Miles to Fly to Cancun

From the United.com homepage, I enter the following info hoping to find Saver Economy availability on that direct flight out of Washington-Dulles airport:

After clicking “Search” here’s the availability I found:

The first thing that jumps out to me is that the Saver Economy flights cost a whopping 17,500 miles one-way!  That’s 35,000 miles round-trip, which is dramatically more than the roughly 20,000 we found using Southwest miles.

I conclude at this point that using United miles is a bad idea for this trip and stop my search.

Summary

We looked at Sabrina’s options to fly from the Baltimore/Washington, DC area to Cancun using Chase Ultimate Rewards points and Southwest Airlines came away as the clear winner.

It looks like she can book three round-trip tickets with her 60,000 miles (transferred from Chase to Southwest) and she can pay for the remaining ticket through the Southwest website.

The post Helping Sabrina Take an Anniversary Trip to Cancun with Ultimate Rewards Points appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

To summarize Jordan’s question:  He’s new to travel rewards and just got started by opening a Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card.  His wife opened one as well, so they’ll each earn the bonus.  By my calculations he’ll be very close to 120,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points after earning the bonus and authorized user bonus on each card (plus points for regular spending).

They want to visit Europe sometime during 2017 with a longer stay in Estonia plus some additional travel to Italy and France.  Since they are new to this hobby, he’s looking for some easy ways to make this happen.

How Jordan Can Use Chase Ultimate Rewards Points on a European Vacation

I think Jordan made a smart choice to get started with Chase Ultimate Rewards points, as they provide a ton of flexibility.  The easiest way to book a European trip would be to mock it up through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal and see what deals he can find.

When you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred card you get 1.25 cents per point in value when booking through the Chase UR portal, so their 120,000 points would be worth $1,500 in travel booked through Chase.

While that may be a reasonable option if you were just visiting one European destination, the likelihood would be slim that Jordan and his wife would be able to put together this trip to Estonia plus a stop in Italy and France for just 120k points through Chase UR.

So it is time to get a bit creative!

Tallinn, Estonia

I love using United Airlines miles for international trips, especially when you want to include a stopover in another destination.   United is a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, so you can transfer your UR points to become United miles.

In Jordan’s case both he and his wife would want to consolidate their 120,000 miles into one of their United frequent flyer mile accounts (free to setup, free to transfer) so they can book the two tickets together.

120,000 miles is actually the EXACT number they need to book two round-trip flights to Europe from the United States using United miles, so they are in great shape.

Excursionist Perk Explained

Here’s United’s very clear explanation of the new Excursionist Perk (entire article here):

In Jordan’s case this will allow him to travel from the US to European City #1, get an entirely free flight to European City #2, and then fly back to the US on a third flight (this can be from City #2 or an “open jaw” from any City #3 (so you don’t have to fly back from any of the cities you previously flew into or out of!)).

And all this costs the same 60,000 miles as if you were just doing a simple round-trip from let’s say New York to London.  This is an amazing perk!

Jordan’s Itinerary

Okay, so taking what Jordan told us above, we’re going to use the following as his trip itinerary (I assumed he was flying out of New York City since he didn’t specify, but this would work for any US city):

• New York City to Paris
• Paris to Rome
• Tallinn, Estonia back to New York City

Here’s how you put this trip together on United.com:

First, go to the main homepage and click “Multi-city” as shown below:

After you click “Multi-city” you are brought to this page where you have to enter your first two segments of the trip:

In this case we said that Jordan would be traveling from NYC to Paris on May 1st and then from Paris to Rome on May 6th.

The next step is to click “Add another destination” which allows you to enter your next segment:

In this case we entered Tallinn, Estonia flying back to NYC on May 20th and then clicked “Search.”

I just wanted to mention at this point that Jordan and his wife will have to make their way from Rome to Tallinn on their own, as that isn’t part of this flight itinerary.

If they wanted to just do a stopover in Paris and then fly from Paris to Tallinn, that would be part of the 60,000 mile booking, but since we’re throwing in another city (could be Rome or anywhere else really…), they would have to make their way to their final destination.  Flights within Europe are very inexpensive, so this doesn’t seem like a big hurdle to see another city on their big trip.

Moving on with our booking example:

As you can see, there are Saver Economy award seats nearly every day in May on this NYC-Paris route.  On May 1st we selected a nonstop flight from EWR-CDG.

You’ll note that United is showing this as a segment that costs 15,000 miles, but they are actually prorating the normal 30,000 mile one-way from the US to Europe across this flight and the Paris-Rome flight we mocked up next:

Again we find tons of Saver Economy award availability, and the total for the first two segments equals 30,000 miles plus $56.90 (60k plus $113.80 for the two of them).

The return flight availability looks like this:

Again, lots of Saver Economy award seats and this is a wonderful one-stop itinerary back from Tallinn to NYC!

After selecting the flights the entire trip comes out as follows:

120,000 United miles transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards plus a very manageable $178.12 in unavoidable taxes and fees for the following itinerary:

It took me about 3 minutes to mock this award flight up on United.com, so I’m quite confident that with the right flexibility and planning time that Jordan and his wife can take a wonderful trip to Europe next year using just the Ultimate Rewards points they have already earned!

I hope this step-by-step explanation was useful for you and, as always, if you have any questions, please ask them below in the comments section.

The post How Do I Use Chase Ultimate Rewards Points to See Multiple Cities in Europe? appeared first on Travel Miles 101.

This will be a useful post for everyone, especially those with transferable points such as Chase Ultimate Rewards and Amex Membership Rewards.

Here was her recent post in our Facebook group:

I followed up asking for some more info and here was her response:

Summary of Andrea’s Situation:

She was looking to book two round-trip tickets from Salt Lake City to Kauai, Hawaii, and she started her search on United.com.  She wound up finding two Saver Level tickets for this round-trip; Saver Economy seats are each 45,000 miles round-trip to Hawaii using United miles, hence the 90,000 total for two tickets she quoted above.

She had 71,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points which she transferred to her United MileagePlus account with the intention of buying the remaining 19,000 miles from United to complete this booking.

United attempted to charge her $690+ dollars to buy the 19,000 miles she needed, so she didn’t move forward with it since the flights only cost $1,000 total for the two round-trip tickets when paying cash.

Mistakes Andrea Could Have Avoided:

Buying Miles from Airlines is Usually a Terrible Deal

Andrea found out firsthand that buying miles directly from an airline is usually a terrible idea as they are absurdly expensive.

In Andrea’s case she needed 19,000 United miles which would have cost $665 plus a “7.5% excise tax,” bringing the total up over $700.

That’s a completely ripoff and definitely not worth it!

Always Check the Cash Price First to see if Redeeming Makes Sense

We like to squeeze as much value from our miles as we can!  We use a rough calculation that we hope to get 2 cents per point in value on award flight redemptions.

This is a very loose guideline, but one that is helpful as a background calculation to see if redeeming makes sense.

So in Andrea’s case, we’d hope to get 2 cents per point in value out of her proposed 90,000 point redemption, so it would meet the 2 cents/point value if the two flights cost $1,800 or more (90,000 x $0.02 = $1,800).

She said the cash price was actually only $500 each ticket for a total of $1,000 for the two tickets.  So even best-case scenario she was only getting slightly over 1 cent per point on her redemption, which is not ideal for Chase Ultimate Rewards/United miles.

In Andrea’s case she also could have tried to book these flights directly through the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal.  If you have the Sapphire Preferred or Ink Business Preferred you get 1.25 cents per point in value (1.5 cents per point with Sapphire Reserve) so her 71,000 points would have been worth $887.50 and she could have paid the difference between the roughly $1,000 price she found elsewhere and that $887.50 on her credit card.

While this wouldn’t have been an ideal redemption either, it might have been a plausible one for Andrea.

Don’t Transfer Your Points Until you are 100% Ready to Book

Chase Ultimate Rewards and other ‘transferable’ points are ultra-valuable because of the flexibility they afford you; Chase UR can transfer to become miles/points with 11 different partners including some of our favorites such as United, Southwest, Hyatt and British Airways.

But once you transfer the points to one or more of those partners, you cannot transfer them back, so they are stuck there.

That means you only transfer them when you are 100% certain the award flights or hotel nights are available and you have enough points to book.  The vast majority of the transfers from Chase UR are instant, so you can literally log into your Chase account, transfer the points and then see them in your airline/hotel account within seconds.

Now all is not lost here, as Andrea still does have 71,000 miles sitting in her United MileagePlus account, but that is not nearly as flexible as having 71,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points.

Always Look for ‘Sweet Spot’ Redemption Options

It is not always easy to know your array of options when booking award seats; there are often ‘sweet spots’ to certain destinations where you can use a different mileage currency to book for substantially fewer points.  This was unfortunately the case with Andrea’s trip to Hawaii.

Her instincts were correct to start her search with United as they are usually the easiest option to find Saver Level award seats in my experience.

She even found the exact seats she wanted at the Saver Level, so everything was going wonderfully.

However, this one piece of information would have saved her redemption:  You can book flights to Hawaii on United Airlines planes using their Star Alliance partner Singapore Airlines’ miles for only 35,000 per round-trip ticket.

So in this case it would have only cost 70,000 Singapore miles for the exact same United flights she found Saver availability on.  And, since Singapore Airlines is a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards she could have sent 70,000 of her 71,000 UR points to Singapore and booked these flights.

Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help!

Alexi and I have tried to build the most helpful and supportive travel rewards community on the internet here at Travel Miles 101, so you don’t have to struggle alone.  We  are always here to help!

Every day in our Facebook group, we field dozens of questions from people who are looking for some guidance, and with a community of over 3,500 members there is always a wealth of knowledge and insight.

So don’t hesitate to reach out if you have a question!

The post Caution: Avoid these Mistakes when Booking with Ultimate Rewards Points appeared first on Travel Miles 101.