How I am using Credit Card Rewards Points and Airline Miles to Earn my ‘Round The World Award ticket
I have previously discussed why I use the Starwoods American Express as my primary credit card, how I’ve developed a reward strategy, how I’ve developed a secondary strategy for earning additional miles and points, and finally, I even discussed an opportunity for you to jump start points earning by discussing ordering coins from the U.S. mint. The point of these articles has been to discuss how I am using credit card points and airline miles to get an around the world trip (RTW) award ticket in business class.
I have news…I’m back to discuss an improvement to my overall strategy of getting a RTW business class award ticket with miles and credit card points. Even though my trip is still over 2 years away, I’ve been thinking about ways to best break up the trip and how to best use my miles and points to make this a possibility. One thing that I’ve been contemplating a lot about recently is the fact that staying with one airline or one alliance for the entire award ticket might not be the best idea.
The old way of Thinking and Why it Doesn’t Work
My original thinking for the RTW award ticket was to create a main route or trunk route for the award ticket itself. I would use miles from one program to get the award ticket and call it a day. This would allow me to focus my points earnings in a single awards program. My award ticket would cover this trunk route. If I wanted to do any other flying, my idea was to purchase discount airfare from places like Air Asia, Virgin Blue, or JetStar. My trunk route was going to look something like this at one point –> MSP – SYD – HKG – BKK – JNB – CAI – AMS – MSP.
First, RTW award tickets on airlines like Delta are notoriously filled with mileage restrictions, stop over limits, and back tracking restrictions. Agent interpretation of these restrictions vary and some agents will let you backtrack as long as it is not a stop over and is necessary to get to your next destination. Additionally, since Delta has limited coverage in the South Pacific weird routes from partner airliners might be in order. You ask why this matters? Well, because for e-tickets or other carriers that do not issue paper tickets, a maximum of 16 segments is allowed for the ticket. This is due to a system limitation of the airline’s ticket system. Now, American Airlines and its Oneworld partners still have the ability to issue paper tickets for complex itineraries. My guess is that they would prefer to e-ticket where possible.
The next issue I face when going with one airline or alliance in booking this award ticket is the issue of award availability. Since I was planning on using Delta/Northwest miles, I would have to hope I could plan my travel on my trunk route on days where there is award availability. This removes some flexibility from my travel schedule especially if there would only be availability on a certain day of the week in a given month.
My final issue with sticking with a single airline (in my case Delta/Northwest) was that the mileage requirements for the round the world trip have increased! It used to be an economy class ticket was 160,000 miles, business class – 220,000, and first class was 280,000 miles. Looking at the award chart now, economy class is now 180,000 miles, business class – 280,000 miles, and first class, a whooping, 340,000 miles! To give you an idea of the value of the business class award at the 220,00 mile level – I flew a business class award ticket to New Zealand for 150,000 miles with a routing of HNL – ICN (no stop over) – AKL and back. For another 70,000 miles, I could have flown around the world and stopped in 6 different places. This is the type of devaluation Delta has done to their program and why I can’t rely on earning points in a single program to earn the ticket.
How the Strategy Has Evolved…
Instead of relying on a single program to earn points in, I’ve adopted rewards programs like Starwoods and American Express Membership Rewards that allow you to transfer those points to multiple airlines. Certain airlines like LAN Airlines and Air Canada’s Aeroplan have generous rewards if you use Starwoods points or Membership Rewards points.
Another improvement of my strategy is the announcement of one way award tickets for half the round trip price in miles from American Airlines. I previously discussed American’s announcement here. I’m going to start collecting American Airlines AA miles. I should have 60,000 miles by the end of August by signing up for bonus offers associated with credit cards. I will provide more perspective on earning AA miles through credit cards in a different post.
The Newest Weapon…
Recently, I’ve started studying award charts from the major airlines. The first thing you will notice is how vastly different these charts are. One carrier might require 30,000 miles one way to get a business class ticket to South America, while another carrier would require more miles to get that same business class ticket. This has led me to conclude that it will be better to leverage my SPG and Membership rewards points in those programs with more favorable award charts. This gives me some what more flexibility in the sense it should cost me less points, but I will definitely have to plan the route accordingly especially if I am using 3 to 4 different carriers on different tickets. The main disadvantage is that this adds a little more complexity to the travel, but it allows me to truly maximize my rewards points for premium class travel. It should let me also stay in the place I want to be in longer as well giving me more flexibility.
Stay tuned for my upcoming post regarding my point balances today and if I could take an around the world trip strictly with the points I have right now.
- Buying Train Tickets in China Buying train tickets in China is not as easy one might think it should be. In fact, I would call it an interesting chore. On one of my last days in Shanghai, I told my friend - "wo xu yao mai yi zhan ho che piao" which basically told him......
- Developing a secondary strategy for Credit Card Rewards Points In previous posts about credit rewards strategies, I've talked about how to develop a rewards strategy, discussed why I use the Starwoods American Express and Schwab Visa as my primary cards, and talked a little bit about how I've earned extra SPG points buyingcoins from the U.S. Mint. Now it's......
- China Trip Update 2 - Booking my Hostels and choosing my seats on the Northwest Airlines My previous update on my trip to China discussed why I wanted to go to China and receiving my Chinese visa.Now that it has been a few weeks I wanted to provide an update on my activities to prepare for the trip. So far to date, I've done some research......
- How to develop a rewards program strategy.... I have spent countless hours pondering this exact question and getting asked this question by many of my friends. Many co-workers and friends alike are intrigued at the amount of time and "number" running that I have done to find the best cards and programs that will help me with......
- The value of Starwoods SPG points part 1 NOTE: I've decided to split this into two posts. Part 1 of my response is long enough as it is. The second part of my response will address the calculations made in Chua's second post "Travel Cards Part II". My friend Chua over at THINKchua.com and I share common interests......
Related Websites
- American Express Launches Premier Rewards Card With 3X Points On Airlines, 2X On Gas & Groceries American Express just launched a new Premier Rewards Gold Card that pays triple Membership Rewards points on airfare purchases, double points on gas and grocery purchases, and one point for all other purchases that you make. Card members can also earn 15,000 bonus points when they spend $30,000 on the......
- From Startup to $3 Billion in 3 Years I’ve written an article on why startups are a good idea during a recession and another article on how to fund a business. Both of these articles came to mind when I read about Costco’s rise to glory in the early to mid 80’s. How did they do it? Raising......
- Should I Use Savings to Pay Off Credit Card Debt? Eric writes in with the following question about using savings to pay off credit cards: I have about $2,000 on a credit card and I have about $5,000 saved for an emergency fund. Would you recommend taking out the two grand out of savings and paying off the card? I......
- Saving Money with Your Credit Cards pt 2 Continued from part 1... Another type of credit card that you can use to save money is one that offers frequent flyer miles or air fare rewards. Airfare is expensive, and if you fly relatively frequently then you are probably well aware of how expensive it can be to fly.......
- Using Business Credit Cards in Business Solutions If you haven’t yet recognized the benefits of owning a business credit card, it’s definitely a matter worth your consideration. Aside from enabling you to separate your business finances from your personal money, business credit cards offer more advantages. Let’s take a closer look at some of them. Build your......
Hey Tim. Thanks again for sharing. Appreciate all the legwork you’re doing—it’s saving me a tonne of research. I’ll be sure to share any tips that I come by. I agree that leveraging SPG points and air miles, etc, in other programs is they way to go. Some companies, like Air Canada, are currently offering generous bonuses if you transfer those points into their programs. So — you’re planning on leaving in a little over two years. So are my wife and I — well around 23 months anyway. Wonder if we’ll cross paths while traveling?
Dan,
Thanks for the comments. Hopefully we will cross paths. Once I have a more definite route planned, maybe we can swap routes and where the two might intersect. I can already relate to the plight of cold weather and trying to escape it as I live in Minneapolis. With SPG points, I am not sure if it is the same airlines and bonuses as the US SPG program, but start google searching LAN airlines and converting SPG points to LAN miles.
You might consider converting SPG points to AA miles, then look at AA “Oneworld” Awards – http://tinyurl.com/mjvc3a
Using the Oneworld award you could come close to your original route for around 190K miles in business. Use the Great Circle Mapper – http://gc.kls2.com/ – and the Oneworld timetable to figure a route that stays below 35K flight miles (counting all stops and connections) – otherwise it goes to 220K for business.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll definitely keep this as a possibility. I was going to originally convert SPG – LAN miles as the conversion rate is better and do some of my RTW ticket there. Looks like OneWorld is a better / redemption friendly program compared to Skyteam. Of course I don’t have any status in Oneworld (yet), but hopefully I can get to Platinum or Exec Platinum level next year.
If you’re going to focus on American, make sure you register your cards with rewards network/idine to get miles where you eat, use the AAdvantage shopping portal, and shop at Vons/Randalls/Safeway!
[...] cards and Tim has promised to show me other ways to extract value from the SPG/Rewards programs (one strategy here). I do still believe that cash in hand is better than rewards points, therefore, even for the [...]
[...] the Starwoods Preferred Guest Program (SPG) as my rewards program of choice. I’ve discussed how I am using the SPG program to save up for an around the world award ticket and why I carry the SPG Amex and the Schwab Visa card as my primary cards. My articles on [...]