US Dividend Miles Buy/Gift Miles 100% bonus - Cheap way for F/J *A Awards

[bcworld]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

thanks mhen. I hope this puts an end to the doubters of the 1:1 conversion.

They can start speculating about award chart devaluation now!

 

[burmans]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

They can start speculating about award chart devaluation now!

I thought we already got that with a 1:1 conversion, personally.

 

[markis10]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

I thought we already got that with a 1:1 conversion, personally.

Not sure about that, especially if one travels a bit in the south pacifc!

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

Not sure about that, especially if one travels a bit in the south pacifc!

Indeed. And the 30K additional for an F reward to Europe flying CX or QF is more than worth it over TG.

 

[repete]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

Assuming ZHR means Zurich here's what you're suggesting:

Great Circle Mapper

In general terms, your stopover should be on a relatively direct route between your origin and destination....SZG is clearly nothing like that.

Bear in mind also that SZG may be further from your origin than MLA...therefore it becomes your destination rather than the stopover.

If you want to go to SZG you'll most likely have to book a separate side trip.

Thanks bcworld (again!). You guys are very informative... and helpful! Reading more of the 'successful bookings' thread last night, it threw up the idea of IST as a route through to Malta that also has business class. Perhaps I could work something more like this IST-MLA-FRA-SZG-VIE over in Europe (thanks for the Circle Mapper!), which looks more circular, though would have to keep in mind what you're saying about destinations and stopovers.

In terms of other discussion here at the moment, my purchase would purely relate to getting Mum and Dad on this trip... which brings me to my question of the night... Exploring ANA tool etc. gives reward availability up to 330 days in advance. Can you book further than this with US Miles? Folks are keen to travel next April, so if I can't book that far ahead, I may not end up being able to buy the points this time around???

 

[bcworld]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

Indeed. And the 30K additional for an F reward to Europe flying CX or QF is more than worth it over TG.

It's only 10k extra innit?? 150k vs 80k + 80k?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

It's only 10k extra innit?? 150k vs 80k + 80k?

even better!! I thought for some reason it was 90K each way in F. So a real bargain for 10K each way for QF/CX.... IF you can plan in advance

 

[Alanslegal]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

even better!! I thought for some reason it was 90K each way in F. So a real bargain for 10K each way for QF/CX.... IF you can plan in advance

One can almost have little chance in securing 2 F award seats on QF ..... even 3,000,000,000 days out in advance

 

[casanovawa]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

even better!! I thought for some reason it was 90K each way in F. So a real bargain for 10K each way for QF/CX.... IF you can plan in advance

And who wants to be forever locked into planning their holidays 330 or 350 days out???

And while CX might be great for getting to Europe, if you try to use them to the US (or maybe MH if they offer it or the Japanese airline if they offer it) you will have to book 2 awards, rather than just the one with USDM, pushing an F redemption Oz-US up to 112.5k or 122.5k depending on if you go through Asia 1 or Asia 2 ONE WAY wouldn't it???

And when all those USDM members hit AA i don't think the amount of QF flights transpac are going to go up commensurately are they??? Whether they choose to relax that two awards going through Asia might be another option???

 

[casanovawa]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

Not sure about that, especially if one travels a bit in the south pacifc!

And isn't the USDM deal for the pacific better than AA, with AA being 20k/30k Y/J one way while USDM is 25k/30k return??? Even if you just take South Pacific as being NZ travel mostly, and so included in the Aust/NZ whole country thing, its still 10k/17.5k one way which is still slightly less and slightly more in Y and J than the USDM chart??

The only proviso being that of late it seems like Air NZ J has been a bit non existant and with QF you might have a bit more direct connection to some Pacific islands than having to route through NZ...

 

[markis10]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

And isn't the USDM deal for the pacific better than AA, with AA being 20k/30k Y/J one way while USDM is 25k/30k return??? Even if you just take South Pacific as being NZ travel mostly, and so included in the Aust/NZ whole country thing, its still 10k/17.5k one way which is still slightly less and slightly more in Y and J than the USDM chart??

The only proviso being that of late it seems like Air NZ J has been a bit non existant and with QF you might have a bit more direct connection to some Pacific islands than having to route through NZ...

Better in the context of options!

 

[robcuk]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

One can almost have little chance in securing 2 F award seats on QF ..... even 3,000,000,000 days out in advance

We have quite a few Skywards miles in the bank now, I recently checked required miles for a QF redemption to LHR in F and there was
a decent hike in miles required over an EK reward. Would love to try there product and there SYD lounge but it may work out better through
USDM in a year or 2!?

 

[burmans]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

Better in the context of options!

Seems to me there is inconsistency in the treatment of "options" here in calculation of value, e.g. the quoting of QF being better value to Europe when we all know availability is abysmal.

 

[Alanslegal]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

We have quite a few Skywards miles in the bank now, I recently checked required miles for a QF redemption to LHR in F and there was
a decent hike in miles required over an EK reward. Would love to try there product and there SYD lounge but it may work out better through
USDM in a year or 2!?

Just to put things into (my) perspective, when I was WP I rarely found two F awards on QF. Any direct F awards AUS<->USA (similarly to LHR) was non existent, even checking out so far in advance ... so the question is, am I hopeful that QF F awards will be available through AA(US)? Then to me the answer is no. BA looks more of a chance to EUR but at super-charged ++ fines.

 

[casanovawa]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

I think for the F options to Europe some are hoping MH and perhaps QR and EY will add a bunch more seats to BA, CX and QF, but none of those are going to help with US routes unless you want to pay for 2 awards which jacks the AA miles up considerably... Unless they choose to allow Oz-US via Asia as one award, which they probably won't...

 

[markis10]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

Seems to me there is inconsistency in the treatment of "options" here in calculation of value, e.g. the quoting of QF being better value to Europe when we all know availability is abysmal.

QF options do very by status level of course, and the ability to request seats. In the context of my quote, plenty of availability ex PER to NAN and other islands and of course the option to take EK F when codeshared to NZ, the ability to travel anywhere in Oz for 17.5K in J is of course not a current US Air option

 

[casanovawa]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

The EK option won't be there for AA redemptions unfortunately...

 

[markis10]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

The EK option won't be there for AA redemptions unfortunately...

Why not, they are about to sign up as codeshare partners?

 

[casanovawa]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

Can you fly on a non-OW or AA-partner flight using an AA redemption even if its a OW codeshare???

Or is EK signing up to be a codeshare partner with AA???

 

[markis10]

Re: US Dividend Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here.

Can you fly on a non-OW or AA-partner flight using an AA redemption even if its a OW codeshare???

Or is EK signing up to be a codeshare partner with AA???

EK flights will have AA flight numbers, just not sure the scope.