One-ways for Europe!

Dear Annabelle,

I have been trying to figure out lately whether we have ANY chance of making a Europe trip in Summer 2016 work with points.  I was hopeful that I could get the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the United card because my FICO score is high enough but in applying for the CSP I was denied.  My AMEX history isn't on my credit report yet it turns out so they weren't able to approve a "premier" card for me :(

Andrew applied for the AMEX Gold Premier Rewards card and was approved the next day; we were able to find the 50K bonus with only a $1,000 spend.  He also applied for the Chase United Explorer with a 50k United bonus and we haven't heard anything yet.

If we get all the bonuses our points will look something like this:

Delta	52000	From Delta AMEX
AMEX	102000	From both having AMEX Gold Premier Rewards
Chase	57223	From CSP and Chase Freedom
United previous	16000	Andrew already has
United if get card	52000	Not sure will get?!?
Potential United if get card	125223

Without me getting the United/Chase cards, reaching a United balance of 240K is not happening in time to book a summer trip.  So I had started looking more into the frequent flyer programs that are transfer partners of both Chase and AMEX:  BA Avios, Singapore KrisFlyer, and Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Atlantic doesn't fly to Denver so that doesn't look very helpful.  KrisFlyer partner rewards need to be booked over the phone or fax so it is difficult to get an idea of availability and cost.  The conundrum on cost is that internet research gives a very mixed result regarding whether KrisFlyer passes on YQ on United flights on not, with both sides of the debate being very clear they are right!  Their North America to Europe RT is only 55K points though so that is nice.  BA Avios are more complicated because you have to be able to fly on one partner, or one partner and BA but then you have huge YQ, in order to not be charged the multi-partner rate that is huge.  It looks like Aer Lingus does have a codeshare out of Denver to Chicago (United plane) and then another flight Chicago to Dublin.  This is the ideal routing too because it only comes in at 27.5K each way for the two flight segments.  And no YQ because you are flying Aer Lingus.  So that is definitely a possibility but might be tough to find availability.

The only problem with this whole logic, I am realizing now as I write this, is that our United points wouldn't help.  So we would only have around 160,000 at the moment in AMEX and Chase points.  And I just read that "As of Oct 1 2015, transfer ratio will drop to 250 MR points for 200 BA Avios" so that is not helping matters either.  It would be hard for us to get to 220K in time in time for this trip.

The main reason I was trying to figure out whether it would be possible to use these points for Europe is because if it is not I might use them for the Christmas flights which I am trying to book now; at least for the return which has more reward seat availability.

Enter my current A-h-a! moment: we could use the points to book one way trips to Europe in both directions.  No need to have a program that lets you merge the points just book them separately on different carriers with different frequent flyer programs.  I have no idea why I didn't think about this until just now.

So what could that look like: with 102K AMEX points we could theoretically transfer to Delta but their reward fares are very high so this isn't really feasible in all likelihood.  We could transfer to BA but then the 102K would only be worth 81.6K; that is a sizable hit and I don't think we will have our plans set before October since my parents are waiting until they know where my Dad's work is landing.  It seems other options to consider would be Aeroplan, ANA, Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles (has Aer Lingus as a partner) and KrisFlyer.  I wonder if they have rules about tickets having to be RT?  At least some of them allow one-way flights but it looks like none of them allow stop-overs on a one-way so we would have to book intra-Europe travel separately.

If we got the new United card then the 125K we would have after the minimum spends would be enough right there at 30K*4 to cover one direction.  Otherwise we need to find another 47K to cover it.  Now we are spending still on the CSP because it has such great travel benefits.  So our flights to Florida and our flights home for Christmas time will go on it.  With a 2X bonus on travel this will definitely help.

I think the take home for me at the moment is that we might be able to do it on points so it is worth saving them for now rather than spending them on an Ottawa flight (apart from the Delta points).  As Andrew says we will have no shortage of Ottawa flights going forward.  Another cool realization is how much it helps me to write it all out here, as opposed to a spreadsheet where I had been jotting some notes.

Hugs,
Jen