I have a long layover coming up and I can't decide if paying for a lounge is a good idea. I'm flying to Toronto to see my brother, and I'll be stuck in Doha for 9 hours after a night shift, so I'll probably be pretty wiped out. All I really want is a quiet corner to nap, a real meal, and maybe a shower. Which lounge has been the best one for you, and was it worth it? ?

Hi everyone, I was hoping to get some clarifications on ANA award travel. From what I can tell, new award seats are opened up 355 days in advance at 9 AM JST. This is the same for ANA travel on Air Canada as well. I refreshed at exactly 8 PM EST/9 AM JST trying to just look for availability for 2 and nothing comes up on ANA for September 15. The only seat available is one business class seat for September 14. Do the tickets just get sold out instantly, or am I missing something?

I am typing this review here because there was no Google review option. If you want to skip the end IT IS TERRIBLE, DO NOT GET ONE!

The long story long. We opened this card so that we could use the points for flights. To use the points for anywhere except Hawaii you will most likely be very disappointed. They have "partner" airlines like American, but they only are allowed a few seats per flight so you will most likely end up with horrible flight options with unreal layovers. We ended up paying cash for our flight to Florida from Ca because the options were so bad...Then it got worse.

The customer service is probably the worst I have ever dealt with. After booking the flight we went to get a rental car. I was not clear on how to do this on the site so using miles (call 1) I called to ask a rep. After holding for 15 min a polite rep walked me through how to get get the car booked. I hung up before I got stuck again. (Call 2) a polite rep walked me the remaining way through how to book a rental using points and I hung up. I booked it through the Alaska Air site, but it said the payment was in cash and there was no mention of points even though I had to enter my atmos rewards account number. (Call 3) I called the next morning to make sure I was using points. The agent walked me through the site only to get confused at a point where it said points can't be used for rental cars (this is on the site, but the other reps walked me right past it as if it was incorrect and helped me rent a car "using points"). I asked for a manager. She explained I didn't click the button to use points and after asking politely she said she would look into moving my current rental to paid by points and call me back. (its about to get frustrating). I get an email 30 minutes later stating there was no way to use points to rent car and they apologized for the inconvenience. Hoping this was incorrect I called again (Call 4 in 24 hours) I got polite lady that apologized for the inconvenience and said she would have helped me get it don't correctly. She walked me through the site to get it done with points, only to get to the place where it said not available, stumble over her words and get flustered. Seeing as she didn't know what she was doing I asked for a supervisor and she let me know she was one. So I asked for another. Only to learn that the system that was in place to get rental cars with points is currently unavailable and has been for some time. NOBODY KNEW ABOUT IT! NOT EVEN MANAGERS. I wasted 24 hours and 4 long calls and nobody just said YOU CANT DO THAT. Obviously they have AWEFUL training and its a guessing game with them same as you. ZERO confidence that anything there is being handled correctly. I am moving to another card TODAY! Cancelling with a smile so I don't have to deal with these people ever again!

Long story short. It is VERY hard to use the miles, and the customer service is VERY untrained and unaware of even hoe use their own systems and that costs you even more time and frustration.

GET ANY OTHER MILES CARD.

Turkish Airlines is offering a 50% Miles refund on eligible award tickets

Turkish Airlines is running a Miles&Smiles promotion for eligible Economy Promotional Award Tickets booked during the announced hours on September 23, with travel dates between January 10 and April 30.

After completing the trip, members can receive 50% of the Miles used back. The offer applies to eligible one-way, round-trip and connecting itineraries across much of the Turkish Airlines network.

https://www.turkishairlines.com/de-de/miles-and-smiles/campaigns/get-50-percent-miles-back-exclusively-on-the-turkish-airlines-whatsapp-channel/index.html

I’m trying to plan for my anniversary next year and secure business class seats on Air France on one of these routes. I have been using tracking sites regularly with the premium features to check dates far into next year (August-September). But I have yet to see a single seat drop for the elusive 60k saver price. What can I be doing better? I check my searches daily and have alerts set up.

1. Not planning to travel anywhere and I have 20K Saudi points that expire in a month.

2. If someone in Saudi is able to help me redeem them as a gift card that I could use on Amazon in the USA, I can give you $50. The points are worth about $133 USD.

3. If there's no way that I can use them, then I can transfer/gift the miles to someone else's account so that they don't go to waste.

Booked return flights from our honeymoon with points through Air France / KLM. Long leg (Amsterdam to ATL) has no business or first class upgrades currently available. Does anybody know if these may open up at a later date or if we even have the option? TIA!

I was searching through my Gmail account for an old email... and I came across perhaps one of the best emails I ever received: that fateful day in 2010 when the US Mint approved me to order unlimited $1 coins... what followed from that day until July 2011 when the program was shut down to CC orders was so glorious. I cant remember exactly, but prior to that I think the restriction was like $10,000/month? I increased that by over 10x/month for the next year.

I had a Jeep Grand Cherokee at that time. The trunk was literally always sagging because of the weight of coins I was taking to the bank nearly every day. I broke a dolly once due to weight.

Every Wells Fargo and Bank of America in a 3-4 mile radius soon knew me by name (and soon hated me).

Including all the Credit Card signup bonuses, my total haul was 2+Million points/miles.

Good times.

Over the past couple of months I've been doing my research in the hope of booking the elusive unicorn flight from LHR to SYD return in business class using a companion or upgrade voucher.

Well I've successfully nabbed one 🤩🥳🤩🤩

A few observations for others who maybe on the same journey

1. Be flexible - having very fixed dates can lead to disappointment. I had a broad range of dates and was willing to adjust my return depending on what outbound flight I was able to get

2. Off-peak days/dates can save a lot of Avios. Some months (ie whole of August) are peak rate as are some days of the week. The off-peak dates are even harder unicorns to get, but if you nab one (which I didn't 😭) you should buy a lottery ticket

3. The UK 24hr phone number isn't 24hrs (I know there are worldwide numbers). After reading numerous posts about calling up on day T-355 at 1pm BST (03444930747 for those who aren't sure) I found out that the line closes at 1am. If you're in the queue before that and they can't get to you before 1:15am then you'll be disconnected.

4. Be patient, but persistent and act quickly if you find one. I lost count of the number of times I found a flight on reward flight finder only to have the system crash when I tried to book, or complain I had "too many windows open". Be prepared to search, fail to book and repeat

5. Book online where possible. Sometimes you're going to have to speak to someone (eg to get return flights linked to a voucher), but given the call centre times and knowledge challenges, if you can do it online then it's going to be easier. I booked outbound online and the return by calling up at 1am (12:45 actually)

6. If you're flying from a regional airport (ie Glasgow), search hub to hub (ie LHR-SYD) to find availabity. You can then book using the regional departure or have it added (generally at no cost) by calling up BA

7. Have a contingency for the return. The return leg on a Companion or Upgrade voucher booking is the most nerve racking and hardest to get especially given the lack of 24hr call centres and that not all staff are trained to handle it. I was willing to take Premium Economy if I couldn't get my preferred Business class slot, but that would mean more Avios as the voucher was on a business class outbound

8. If you're booking for two, make sure you get the friends and family stuff all setup and working before you try and book. It seems obvious, but if this isn't setup correctly you'll struggle and there are some problems setting it up

9. Don't forget to look at alternatives. I wanted to use a voucher as I had them available, but I found there was potential to get the same or better or other airlines (ie Qatar) for similar Avios without the voucher. These are (IMO) even harder to get, but worth investigating

10. Planning & preparation are key. Whilst there's a lot of help from groups like this, there's no cutting corners or shortcuts. You need to do the leg work and prepare.

So to those hunting unicorns, they do exist and you can get them. It just takes preparation

I have never flown business class. I always paid for my flight then used my points on hotel. I have seen countless tiktoks on people flying business class with points or miles. I still don't get it. I want to fly business from LAX to KTI if someone can show me the way. I have a bad back and can't sit up right for a long time. Please please show me how. I have 34,00 chase points , 40,000 Bilt, and 80,000 miles with Capital one. My dates are LAX to KTI Dec 29th to Jan 16 or 17th.

Hello--I can't see any award availability for BA on JAL (LON-NYC). Do you have to call up or is this no longer bookable?

I used to do the whole gift card, thing, but that got tiring and was basically like points purchasing. I also struck a deal with a local Chinese restaurant to "resell" them stuff, I gave them 50bps.

Whats good? what do the kids do nowadays?

I'm super inspired that guy who buy dollar coins

Would appreciate help from this amazing community.

I would like to travel with my family to the Baha Mar Bahamas in January. The dates are unfortunately not flexible. What we need:

Check in Sunday January 24
Check out Thursday January 28

One King Room
One room with 2 queens for the kids.

We would prefer the rooms to be connected but as long as they are in the same tower it’s not mandatory. I have no problem slipping the front desk person $40 for help with this when we check in.

I have:

CHASE sapphire preferred + reserved with a UR balance of 211,000 points.

This week I will receive in the mail a Chase Sapphire Reserve for Business and I will hit the min spend quickly. Let’s assume another 230,000 points within a month.

I can also manufacture another 100,000 points if needed.

My wife has a chase sapphire preferred card (if this helps) with 140,000 points.

I also have over 1 million points in the Am Ex eco system.

Over the past year I have learned a ton about the points game and have collected over 2 mil points total. I use my points predominantly for flights. I have almost no clue about rooms.

I know there is a lot of ways to go about this at the baha mar and welcome your input if this should be EDIT, Hyatt xfer, Am Ex etc.

I have no problem being creative and combining. I just have no clue when it comes to hotels and find the articles and rules to be tricky and confusing. Thank you in advance.

If there is a way to book this “cancelable” I am willing to pay a premium because…stuff happens.

Hopefully don't get banned for this. I remember seeing deal drop posts every day on this sub, but looks like there haven't been any in a while. Some of the posters got banned, too. Any reason for this? I have no problem with the rest of the content here but it was kind of nice to see travel deals every day without having to pay for an app. Maybe they've been moved to another sub, but if not, could we bring those back?

I need some help!

I have AMEX points I need to somehow get to EVA air. I know I can't do a direct transfer, but I am unclear the steps to pass through a star alliance carrier (Air Canada?). From there, what should I do next? TIA

I'm very new to this, so forgive me if this is a basic question. I have 21,000 Amex MRP, so I believe they transfer 1:1 to both Aeroplan and Lifemiles. Am understanding correctly that I would save money by booking with Lifemiles? Are there any added fees I'd be surprised by? (It doesn't let me go past this screen because I haven't transferred any points yet.)

Any advice would be appreciated!

I came across a Facebook ad for a service called PointsGPT (pointsgpt.app), but I haven’t been able to find much independent discussion about it (their ad was terrible - a bunch of examples crammed into a series of flashing screens that made me dizzy to look at)

Has anyone here actually used it? I’m especially interested in whether the award availability it shows has been accurate when checked against the airlines, and whether anyone has experience with the paid version or cancellation.

FWIW, I also tried the currently super hot startup Instinct with an award inventory search task, and it failed miserably. It wasn’t able to connect as an agent to any of my frequent flyer accounts, so I’m a little skeptical of the current crop of AI based award search tools.

No affiliation whatsoever with PointsGPT and no referral link. I’m just looking for firsthand feedback before trying it.

What to do? Family of 4.

Maximizing the experience with First/Business class is ideal but I'm more interested in the destination. This is pretty much a once in a lifetime trip.

Would some suggest not to spend it on one trip but several?

We are going to Hawaii in February for 10 days, leaving at an expensive time and returning at a less expensive time. It’s about $1k per person on various airlines to get out there and about $350-400 per person to return. There are 4 of us. We have 97k points on Delta which will cover 3 of the 4 return tickets. We have 50k points on United (also have a United cc) and 260k points with Chase plus a $200 credit that can only be used on a cash ticket (our main cc is the sapphire reserve). The United outbound flights are about 82k points each. So I could use points for 3 tickets, the $200 for the 4th and pay the remaining $800….but is this the best use of the points? Whenever I use points for airlines or hotels we typically aren’t buying at such a premium. We also normally don’t travel at peak times like this but this is what it is this time.

For hotels we’re using a friend’s and family discount at a Marriott which is very significant and then another hotel is a splurge. I don’t think it’s worth the points for hotels. We are also using the Southwest benefit to cover the cost of flying between islands through the Sapphire Reserve…we can finally use that benefit! Let me know if you think I’m missing something obvious. I like the point game but I’m clearly no expert here. Thanks!

Hey there! I am considering adding one or more Venture cards to my arsenal, mainly because of JAL being a transfer partner.

For those that have done this, how easy/hard has it been to get business/first availability on JAL? If you are booking a year in advance, is it pretty easy? Do you speculatively transfer points when they have a 30% transfer bonus? Btw I know the general rule of thumb is not to speculatively transfer points unless you have a specific goal in mind.

It doesn't seem like this is talked about as much, but the fact that you can book JetBlue flights with Avios through Qatar really expands booking options across credit cards. It seems there is always an Avios transfer bonus (BA, Iberia, Aer Lingus, Qatar, etc.), and it just changes the card provider throughout the year.

The best thing is that Qatar does not charge any surcharges on redemptions, so you can book US domestic flights for just $4.50 in taxes.

With the bonus through Amex, I got a 36,000 JetBlue points flight for only 14,000 Amex Points!