Miles and Points Archives - Page 7 of 10

May 02 2017

Do we overrate travel credits on high annual fee credit cards?

I thought long and hard about getting the new US Bank Altitude Reserve card. The card definitely looks like a potential big winner. People (not me) who can maximize the 3X mobile payments bonus might really have something on their hands. Ultimately, I decided to pass on the card for now. One of the main reasons for this is my belief that I’ve begun to overrate credit cards travel credits. I’ll present my reasons why and I’m also curious to hear what others think in the comments below.

This post serves as a bit of a corollary to my post on all the credit card annual fees I theoretically need to pay. Readers, you’ll be happy to know I’ve canceled/downgraded 3 cards since then with 2 more planned for this month. 🙂

You still pay a huge annual fee

I’ve long believed that getting, for example, a $300 travel credit on the Chase Sapphire Reserve means I’m essentially paying a $150 annual fee. This kind of language often gets used when people try to sell you credit cards. As my thinking about the game evolves, I’m not sure I quite believe that anymore.

Bottom line, you still pay $450 a year. Yes, you potentially get $300 of that back, but you still need to drop the cash up front. But if your finances are tight, you still need to front a significant amount of money. While that may not be my particular circumstance, the high annual fee that I actually need to pay in cash flows into all the reasons I am starting to find travel credits overrated. For my particular circumstance, of course.

When you have multiple travel credits, they become harder to redeem

While we just took a big trip to Hong Kong, for one reason or another we plan to travel less than usual for the remainder of 2017. (Related: two 15 hour flights with two little kids). We booked our Hong Kong flights on points and stayed in a relative’s apartment. That means the only travel credits useful to us on this trip came from Chase Sapphire Reserve. Admittedly, we have two of these, so that’s $600 in reimbursements, but we didn’t use all that up for our taxis and trains. (Hmm, should have tried to buy my Hong Kong Disney tix to test…woops).

Meanwhile, my three $200 AMEX Platinum airline credits and one $250 Citi Prestige airline credit lay dormant and useless. Now, if you state that you have $1450 in travel credits, that sounds great! But in reality, especially for a family that is cutting back on travel for a bit, that’s not particularly useful.

But you can buy airline gift cards with your travel credit! (But then you need to keep track of them)

So admittedly, my $600 in AMEX airline credits actually are no longer available to me. That’s because like any good travel hacker I redeemed them for airline gift cards way back in January. Now, again, I used to use this to justify the annual fee – I’m only paying annual fee minus travel credits total!

Well, you only get value from the travel credits if you actually use them. And between canceled Jetblue flights, United compensation, Delta compensation, and AA and DL travel credits from AMEX, I’m sitting on like $800-$1000 of travel credits. Credits that I likely will only use on domestic flights, which I’m taking very few of this year.

So, suddenly I need to keep track of all these credits that will not be used for awhile. It’s easy to make a mistake and just lose that “money”, which actually was never really money to begin with. So one thing I’d recommend is for you to ask yourself whether travel credits fit in with your travel goals. If not, you might find yourself losing flexibility or buying flights just to buy them and less because they fit in with your goals.

Travel credits and points can become mutually exclusive

If you’re traveling 10+ times a year this probably won’t be an issue for you. But I keep running into this problem where I can either use travel credits to pay for travel or use points. So I naturally opt for using my travel credits first, but then why did I earn all these points?

Basically, this comes back down to “resources you aren’t using are wasted.” You can hoard travel credits just like you hoard points and there are only so many rainy days. So make sure travel credits aren’t getting in the way of redemptions that you want to make. Which brings me to my most important point.

When you use travel credits, you are paying cash for travel

I think Free-quent Flyer said this somewhere awhile back (Update: he did! Further proof I am just three years behind his curve), but it never clicked with me. Travel credits = paying cash for your travel. You paid cash for your annual fee, and some of that cash went to pay for your travel. If I use $200 in AA gift cards that I got from AMEX Platinum, I paid $200 for those flights!

But what’s even worse is this. When I said above that I need to decide between using travel credits or points, what I’m actually deciding between is using money I already spent or points. Which is why using the travel credits is a no brainer.

But if your whole goal is to save the amount of cash you pay on travel, travel credits run counter to that. They force you to pay cash for your travel! And remember, you can’t invest points in your kids’ college education or your retirement, only cash. So if you pay cash for your travel in the form of travel credits, that’s less money into those accounts. Makes me think.

Final Thoughts

So yes, in the end, I think travel credits are a bit overrated. (Update: Dustin agrees with me too.) Don’t get me wrong, they are great, but from this point forward I’m not going to let them be a selling point in getting a credit card. A credit card must bring good value to me regardless of the travel credit, because the travel credit forces me to pay cash for my travel. Obviously this year is a bit of extreme for our family due to lighter travel loads (I hope to ramp up again in 2018), but I think I’ve learned a valuable lesson from it.

What do you think, are travel credits overrated or an important part of deciding whether to get a card? Let me know!

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Featured image courtesy of Pixabay

Apr 25 2017

Chase Sapphire Reserve for Dummies

I came up with a brilliant idea the other day. Write about a credit card almost half a year after everyone stopped hyping it! People will love it! Joking aside, a friend of mine, who will remain unnamed to protect her innocence, apparently did not know the Chase Sapphire Reserve offered a Global Entry credit. So she stood in line for forty five minutes watching her parents breeze through TSA Precheck. A lot of people who signed up for the Chase Sapphire Reserve have dipped their toes into the miles and points game for the first time with this good card for beginners.

If you’re one of those beginners (aka one of my tens of real life Facebook friends), here’s how to get the most Chase Sapphire Reserve value. If you’re one of the many experienced hobbyists who reads this blog, feel free to tell me why my advice is terrible!

Consider this a rough guideline of benefits you should take advantage in the first year of card membership. I’ve semi-ranked these benefits in order of importance, though of course I’m subjective and you need to adjust to your own life situations. Also, I’m assuming this may be your first foray into the miles and points world. Remember, the card carries a $450 annual fee that gets charged within the first month or two of card membership, so your goal should be to make that fee “worth it”. Hope this helps you to do that!

Meet the minimum spending towards the sign up bonus

When the Chase Sapphire Reserve first hit, everyone frothed at the mouth at the huge sign up bonus. While the bonus decreased to 50,000 points after $4,000 in spending, the card still presents a lot of value for beginners. So make it a priority to focus on spending that $4,000 in three months. Hopefully someone has told you to make sure you pay your balance off in full. If you’re getting charged interest you’re basically negating all the value you would get!

I’m not going to tell you how to spend $4,000, but you probably had a plan going in. When I first started out I usually signed up for a new card when I knew I might have a big purchase coming up (insurance payment, vacation, etc.). That’s a good way to bang out a chunk of the minimum spend. Anyway, make sure you have a plan for this first that doesn’t require you buying a bunch of crap you don’t need!

Use your $300 travel credit

I’m assuming you got this card to make traveling a little cheaper. So make sure you use the card to pay for travel expenses. The first $300 will be reimbursed. Chase applies the travel category pretty liberally, meaning you can get this credit for plane tickets, trains, hotels, even taxis and subways in some cases. You don’t have to worry about the credit, it gets automatically applied, usually within a couple of days.

To check how much of the credit you’ve used, navigate to the Ultimate Rewards page of your online account at chase.com. Here you can check your balance information and how much of the travel credit you’ve received.

Here's a guide to help you get the maximum Chase Sapphire Reserve value if you're one of the many new people to get this card. — 31 points only? Gotta work harder

Use the card overseas (no foreign transaction fee)

If you travel overseas, make sure you use the Reserve to pay for stuff. It doesn’t charge a foreign transaction fee which means you don’t get charged extra. Just make sure to pay in the local currency otherwise you’ll get charged a mostly hidden fee. Part of your annual fee goes into eliminating the foreign transaction fee. Take advantage of it!

Sign up for Global Entry and get TSA Precheck

Global Entry enables you to get through customs quickly, and the Chase Sapphire Reserve offers a $100 credit for the application fee. But a lot of people plan to stay domestically for the travel. They then assume that Global Entry has no use to them but don’t realize that it also qualifies you for TSA Precheck. Or some people think going into the airport for an interview presents too much of a hassle.

So let’s ask a question, an honest one. What will be more of a hassle for you in the next 5 years? (That’s how long Global Entry lasts). Going to the airport for the interview, or taking out your laptop and taking off your shoes every time you fly. Not to mention the aforementioned line! If going to the airport really hassles you more, then I guess pass on Global Entry. (Or if you live in stupid Boston which has no interview availability for the next 500 years).

If you have trouble finding an interview, you can schedule at airports other than your home airport. I wasn’t joking about Boston’s availability, but I scheduled for Newark which tends to have a lot of space. Though you have to go to Newark…

Use the Chase Sapphire Reserve for your rental car

The Chase Sapphire Reserve (man I’ve typed that so many times imagine if I sold cards!) helps rent cars in multiple ways. First, you can get Avis Preferred and National Emerald, which mostly helps you cut lines. That matters in airports like MCO. Secondly, you can use the Reserve’s discount rate to get 25-30% off your rental reservation. Finally, Chase Sapphire Reserve offers primary car rental insurance.

That means if you get into an accident, Chase Sapphire Reserve covers you first. If that’s not enough, then you go to your regular auto insurance policy. (Cards that offer secondary insurance are the opposite.) So unless you visit excluded countries (Ireland and a few others), you can happily waive the collision damage waiver companies want to charge you.

Fall back on other coverages when necessary

I’m not going to go through all the benefits, you can find them here. I will point out that the Chase Sapphire Reserve offers Trip Cancellation/Interruption insurance, Lost Baggage insurance, Baggage Delay insurance, Roadside Assistance, and various emergency insurances when traveling. If you’re new to miles and points, just put everything on this card – you might be protected and not even know it. If something goes wrong, it’s more than possible the Reserve has you covered. You can check out Free-quent Flyer’s experience with the Preferred trip deal coverage here, Reserve coverage is equal or better. (He also describes trip delay insurance here.)

Enroll in Priority Pass

Priority Pass is a decent, but not great lounge benefit. Still, you might get access to lounges in a few places (I think I’ve used it…twice?). You get two companions to go in with you so that’s nice too. You need to activate this. The easiest way? Go to this page, then click on “Learn More” under Lounge Access. Login and it’ll bring you to the page below, click activate now, profit.

Transfer points to partners or use to pay for travel?

To me, you can get the most value out of your points by transferring to partners like Hyatt, United, or Korean Air. For example, if you can rent a $500 room for 25,000 points transferred to Hyatt, you get a value of 2 cents per point.

But maybe you don’t define value in fancy hotel rooms or first class flights (I don’t think everyone should). Then you can use the Chase Travel portal to book flights for a value of 1.5 cents per point. That means your 50,000 point sign up bonus is worth $750 towards travel. Families on a tight budget should definitely consider this, though you might want to avoid booking hotels through the portal.

Most important rule? Use your points. You can’t take them with you and there usually isn’t a good reason to hoard them. They’re worth nothing until you redeem them, so just use them in any way that makes travel less expensive for you and your family.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this gives a good overview of the benefits you can get with the Chase Sapphire Reserve. It’s a great card and I’m likely to keep it next year (though I’ve canceled/downgraded a bunch of cards since I realized how much I was paying in annual fees!). I’m fairly certain I can squeeze $150 of value out of it (after you subtract out the $300 airline credit).

So, were there any great benefits I missed? Let me know!

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Apr 21 2017

Resolution and update on my friend’s Chase travel concierge fail

I wrote yesterday (or two days ago? All messed up from Hong Kong time) about how the Chase travel concierge kinda sorta screwed my friend and his family out of a hotel room. Well I’ve got some updates, including what we think happened, how he was compensated, etc. It was getting too long to update the original post so I just decided to start a new post. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Quick recap

To quickly recap the original situation, my friend and his family of 5 (one baby) made a reservation through the Chase Sapphire Reserve portal for a suite at Homewood Suites in Williamsburg. They showed up the first night and Homewood Suites had no record of the reservation.

They checked in for one night, were told by Chase that they would be reimbursed, and then were later told by a second rep that they would NOT be reimbursed. They also had to move hotels on the second night of their trip due to the Homewood Suites being full – a standard smoking room to add insult to injury.

Since I posted, a room opened up back at the Homewood Suites so they moved back because they needed the space and clean air for the baby. They originally redeemed about 50,000 points for a $762 four night reservation.

What we think happened in terms of the reservation being missing

My friend and I think we’ve pieced together what’s happened, but I’d love to hear if this makes sense given what you all know about how Chase travel works and your own experiences.

It seems that Chase travel uses Expedia for their bookings. Yup, a third company is involved. Apparently Expedia faxes their hotel confirmations but this hotel in Williamsburg doesn’t have a functioning fax machine. My friend said the manager at the hotel told him that this happened to a few more reservations over the last few days.

So yeah, maybe Expedia should start using that popular new technology e-mail. Also, to avoid this happening, please remember to call the hotel to confirm your reservation.

Another wrinkle in all this is some info from this Flyertalk thread which indicates that sometimes hotels don’t receive the confirmation until 24 hours before. That seems a little bit last minute to me. Also, I should note that a bunch of people commented with similar “lost reservation” datapoints.

How customer service handled things

Just wanted to make a couple notes on the customer service here. It seems like the first Chase rep my friend spoke to did her best to rectify the situation. She asked to speak to the hotel manager, promised to compensate for that first night (I think it was pretty late already), and overall seemed very helpful.

The manager at the Homewood Suites also seemed like he did his job well – although he had to deliver the bad news that there was no room for nights 2-4, he did call other hotels in the area trying to find them a place to sleep (a suite specifically).

Chase CSR 2, who refused to listen to Chase CSR 1’s phone call, did a terrible job customer service wise. Again, we are talking about a Chase Sapphire Reserve cardholder. If a customer spends $450 a year on an annual fee, I expect them to be treated with respect and for CSRs to be going out of their way to help.

Finally, Chase reached out to me on Twitter offering to help, so good on them for that. I’ve heard nothing from Hilton, so take that for what it’s worth.

Chase’s resolution and compensation

Ultimately, a Chase rep called my friend about two days after the first night. They confirmed that they will pay for that first night and they will also refund all the points from the reservation plus an extra 5,000 for compensation.

One thing I find interesting is that the two Chase reps who confirmed that he would be reimbursed for the first night stated that it would happen “because they listened to the recording.” They didn’t say for the inconvenience or anything like that. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they possibly felt that the original rep had already stated that. Being cynical – did that first rep screw up giving him compensation for that first night? I’ve reached out to Chase for comment.

IF the cynical view is true, that super sucks. So a Chase Sapphire Reserve $450 annual fee payer shows up at a hotel with the reservation bricked and is just s.o.l.? That seems…bad. Hoping I get to delete these sentences after clarification. Update: They won’t comment since it’s not my reservation.

Should he have asked for more compensation?

So do you think he should have asked for more compensation? For reference, he originally budgeted out $600 for four hotel nights. He used 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points instead. Subtracting out the cost of the first night, he will end up spending $578 on hotel. He also missed one night of free dinner at Homewood Suites due to having to live in that other hotel.

My gut feeling is that he didn’t get enough. Whether Hilton, Expedia, or Chase screwed up, I believe the whole point of a concierge is to figure out what happened and make the customer whole accordingly. Plus, 5,000 points won’t make up for the stress and hassle my friend had to put his wife and kids through.

Ultimately, he said they’ve been enjoying their vacation because “thankfully my kids are low maintenance.” But this is the kind of potential nightmare scenario that a $450 annual fee should severely mitigate; in his case, I’m not sure Chase did enough.

Update, 5/4 – after messaging Chase four times, they gave him another 5000 points. “I think they just gave them to me to get rid of me.” It shouldn’t come to that, in my opinion.

Your thoughts? If you’ve had similar experiences with Chase or other card issuers, what did you receive for compensation?

Featured image courtesy of Pixabay

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Apr 20 2017

Chase travel concierge put my friend in a horrible situation

I’ve spoken a few times about how important staying in suites can be for families. Anyway, a buddy of mine shared a story with me about a Chase Travel concierge fail that really turned into a bit of a nightmare situation. I’m not sure if Chase can be blamed for the situation itself, but I’m 100% sure it can be blamed for some parts of its response. I’ll update this post as the situation gets (hopefully) resolved.

Update: I posted about the resolution and compensation here.

Now the Chase Sapphire Reserve deservedly gets a lot of good press. Getting 1.5 cents per point for travel can really make travel possible for families on a budget, so my friend used it for his trip for a family of 5 to Williamsburg. Now like I said, suites are important for families – they’re even more important for families of that size.

He booked a four night stay and received this confirmation:

Now that looks pretty solid to me. But, you guessed it, you won’t believe what happened next.

No room at the inn

When my buddy showed up at the Homewood Suites, they told him he didn’t have a reservation. I’ll let him pick up the story from here, paraphrased for grammar and clarity:

“Yeah I received my confirmation number from chase and everything. But the hotel had no record… The first rep I spoke with told me that the hotel had one night available and to go ahead and check in and that Chase would pay for it and that Chase would figure reservations out for me.”

OK, so Chase representative one seems to be doing a good job taking control of the situation. While my friend didn’t get an explanation for why things broke down, at least they promised to accommodate him. Now, again, for a family of five, this situation is far from ideal – they were going to have to move the next day, but at least they had a place to stay for the night and Chase offered to pay for it. I’m assuming they offered to refund the points too, which were a significant amount:

A bad customer service representative

Now at this point, many people would probably just let things lie for the night and figure things out in the morning. I personally would not be able to do that – I’d be too stressed out not knowing where I’m going to stay for night 2. My friend apparently felt the same way because he called back a few hours after checking in. Again, in his words:

“So I check in and call Chase back several hours later to check the status. This second rep confirms that the hotel has no space for us for the remaining nights. I ask her about Chase paying for the first night because the previous rep had made the offer. This second rep flat out refuses saying that it wasn’t Chase’s fault so she isn’t giving me anything, even after I said that it was already promised to me by the first rep.

The Chase travel concierge is supposed to make life easier, but put my friend in a really difficult situation. This type of thing shouldn't happen! — Chase not doing a great job with this for my friend right now (Photo Credit | Pixabay)

“I ask her to listen to the recording and to look at the notes. The second rep does nothing and puts me on hold for 10 minutes. She kept blaming the hotel and said wouldn’t transfer me to anyone else, basically accusing me of lying about the first night being paid for.”

OK, so people might disagree, but to me this is ridiculous. The whole reason they record these calls is for situations like this. That’s what bailed me out of my Thank You points snafu a few months back. Also, regardless of whether this is Chase or the hotel’s fault (unclear to me), if you’re going to have a premium card with an annual fee of $450, then your travel concierge better work on making the customer whole in situations like this. Especially when it’s within reason, like one hotel night for less than $200.

A frustrating resolution

So I don’t believe you should have to do this with a premium card like Chase Sapphire Reserve’s concierge, but at this point my friend did the right thing and hung up. I’ll let him finish the story:

“I hung up and called back to speak with someone else who looked back at the recording and confirmed the free night. The second rep wouldn’t even go back to the recording. But now all suites in the area are booked and we are all in one standard room that’s smoking.”

That totally sucks. Again, to me the point of having a premium card is to avoid travel stress. If you’re in a smaller room than you were expecting, and one that is a smoking room to boot (why do these still exist), that is the opposite of decreasing stress.

Let’s recap here. Family of five, the youngest a toddler, books hotel through Chase and receives confirmation. Shows up at hotel, no record of confirmation. Chase offers to pay for one night before they have to relocate due to no room at the hotel. Then second Chase rep reneges on offer and essentially questions customer’s integrity (at least that’s how he felt). Family eventually needs to relocate into a standard sized, smoking room at a different hotel. As of right now, family has received no offer of compensation for their troubles.

What I hope happens next

I have no delusions of grandeur, this is a small blog, but I hope someone at Chase reads this. I recognize that everyone can have bad days so I’ll give CSR 2 some leeway, but I believe Chase should have been going out of their way to make my friend whole.

Now I’m not a “ask for compensation for every little thing like a seat not reclining” type of person, but I think my friend should receive compensation for this. If it’s Chase’s fault, they should compensate above and beyond the one hotel night and the returned points. If it’s Hilton’s fault, they should compensate as well. I believe that the Chase concierge should at least work to figure out what happened.

Now my friend wanted to see me type this up for two reasons:

Has anything similar happened to anyone working with Chase travel concierge before?
What do you think is fair compensation for this situation, if any?
He now feels hesitant to book anything with Chase travel, including airline tickets. Fair or unfair?

So I’ll end things there – do you think Chase (or Hilton) did my friend wrong? What could he have done differently? (Oh, on that point, I’d say he could have called the hotel to confirm before arrival, though I don’t think you should have to do that.) Your thoughts and comments would be much appreciated. Let’s keep it civil – I know these things can sometimes get people heated.

And Chase or Hilton – please make my friend whole and I’m happy to update this post accordingly. Both these companies have done very well by me in the past and I’m hoping they do the same for him.

Update: Obviously one way to avoid this happening is to call the hotel to confirm your reservation. One problem, according to this Flyertalk thread, is that the reservation sometimes doesn’t load until 24 hours before check in!

Update 2: The original hotel had a room open up so they moved out of the smoky room and back to the original hotel.

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Apr 07 2017

A quick look at Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges

I actually scheduled this article to be posted while I visit Hong Kong next week, but since people are flipping out about Delta’s latest devaluation I moved it up the queue. When I wrote about Korean Air award holds the other day, I decided to poke around and test out some flights to Europe on Skyteam partner airlines. I found that Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges run much lower than I had thought. I’d argue that travel hackers should look more and more to using Korean Air miles.

I spent most of my time looking at fuel surcharges to Europe in business class, because that’s where the real sweet spot is. 80,000 Korean Air miles for round trip in Delta business class vs. 140,000 Delta miles for the same flights, IF the fuel surcharges are worth it. Before I get into my East Coast biased research (that’s not a joke), let me say that I’m just positing that you should consider Korean Air award tickets as an option, but by no means do I think they offer a slam dunk. Some things you should know before we get started.

Korean Air Skyteam awards must be booked for round trip travel
Virgin Atlantic can also book Delta flights (but not other Skyteam). 90K RT from select East Coast cities like Boston, 100K RT otherwise, no stopovers
Korean Air Skyteam awards allow one stopover
Like with all Korean Air awards, you can only book for family members in your family plan
You can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to Korean Air

Why Korean Air is worth considering

Straight up, Virgin Atlantic presents a better value than Korean Air for Delta flights to Europe. No fuel surcharges and it’s cheaper. When you decide between Korean Air and Delta miles, you need to ask yourself whether 60,000 Delta miles (the price difference) are worth the cash outlay for fuel surcharges. For Virgin Atlantic that difference in miles is as low as 10,000 miles, so in general you’re better off with Virgin Atlantic, since both KE and VS transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards.

However, you still should keep Korean Air in your arsenal. With Korean Air, you can get one stopover, you can’t get that with Virgin Atlantic so that might make it worth it. You also need to go through the regular decision making process – do you have a surplus of X currency lying around, can you get a better deal transferring MR to Virgin Atlantic instead, etc. etc. For this post I only used itineraries that you can’t book on VS, but tons of itineraries on VS exist so I suggest you seek them out.

So let’s not bury the lede here: in many instances paying the fuel surcharges on Korean Air might be worth it. Especially if you have a lap infant since they only cost 10% of the miles instead of 10% of the revenue fare (which could be $600-$1000). Now lots of this hinges on Delta availability, which can be great for Bostonians like myself, but not so great if you live in a small city. Still, Delta business class availability for four this July:

BOS-CDG (one way)

JFK-CDG (one way)

DTW-CDG (one way)

Award availability should be similarly good to cities like London. A lot of people live in those three cities and award availability is decent from others, so don’t let people tell you otherwise. Delta sucks because of unpredictability, but that doesn’t mean its award space sucks.

Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges to Europe on partners

So before I get into the numbers, I should address that I mostly focused on business class flights. That’s because the mileage difference is way more stark between Delta miles and Korean Air miles for business (140,000 vs. 80,000). In economy, a 10,000 mile difference (60,000 vs 50,000) presents much less value.

So let’s see what we got, starting with my hometown of Boston.

So this itinerary costs you 80,000 KE miles and $513.22. On Delta:

On Delta it’ll cost you 140,000 miles and $139.76 (I chose the wrong flight for screenshot but the fuel surcharges should be the same). So the question to ask yourself: Are 60,000 Delta miles or Membership Rewards worth $373.46 cents to me?

There’s no right answer to that question. Maybe you use Barclays Arrival points to pay the $373.46, that’s different than using cash, which, famously, is fungible. But that difference came out much smaller than I had expected.

Here’s Detroit-London:

So Detroit to London in Delta business class using KE miles costs 80,000 miles and $546.59. Delta?

So Delta costs 140,000 miles and $260.66. So again, are 60,000 Delta miles/MR worth $285.93 to you?

To me, there’s no right or wrong answer here, but this definitely puts Korean Air on my radar in terms of options to Europe.

One Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharge example to Asia on partners

One award redemption that had Gary Leff downright chagrined was LAX-PVG. I didn’t search this route for my original post but I let curiosity get the best of me so I figured I’d share. Here’s LAX-PVG outbound on Delta:

PVG-LAX return on Delta:

I included both options since the rage revolves around how it costs 15,000 extra miles on partner airlines (justified rage). Anyway, this flight costs anywhere from 160,000 Delta miles and $220 to 190,000 Delta miles and $350.

On Korean Air:

The equivalent flights on Delta would cost 175,000 miles and $220. So in this case, are 20,000 Delta miles worth $200 to you? Again, just presenting the data (though in this case I personally would go Delta. But if only partners were available, KE becomes very attractive).

One Korean Air stopover example

I did mention that Korean Air offered the stopover benefit, so I wanted to share one example of how great that can be. I took a look at BOS-CDG // CDG-LHR (stopover) / LHR-BOS. Basically, visiting both Paris and London.

The itinerary looks like this on Delta:

These flights cost 165,000 miles and $327.76. You need to pay an extra 25,000 for the business class leg between Paris and London since Delta no longer allows stopovers. Same itinerary on Korean Air?

Booking the same flights on Korean Air cost 80,000 Korean Air miles and $701.24. So this time, we’re talking 85,000 Delta miles/Membership Rewards points for $373.48. A clear and present value? In my mind, yes, but do what works best for you and your family.

Final Thoughts

Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges really came out lower than I had expected. They are still at that level that would make me need to make some hard decisions, but it’s great to have another option to get to Europe, especially from the East Coast. Yes, Delta’s unpredictability sucks, but I find little use whining about it these days.

Instead, I encourage you to leverage their decent award space and book with other partners. I used to think that Virgin Atlantic and Flying Blue were the only viably realistic ones, but looking at the sizable yet not exorbitant Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges, now I’ve got a third option. And so do you! Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to write another post to schedule for vacation. Thanks for nothing, Delta!

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Featured image courtesy of Pixabay