Flight Disaster?

[mnocket]

4 hours ago, -Lew- said:

I applied for a Chase Sapphire card and have transferred Ultimate Reward points to United in order to purchase trans-ocean travel in business class. 

Somehow I was under the impression that there was some benefit to using Chase's travel department to book.  I'll have to research that as I'm considering breaking my "never book flights thru a TA" rule for an upcoming overseas Business Class booking.  I'm not experienced with booking with points and I'm a bit apprehensive about moving my points from CSR to an airline and then finding that the airline doesn't have frequent flyer seats available for my desired flight. I'd appreciate any thoughts you have on this.

[BBWC]

33 minutes ago, mnocket said:

I'm not experienced with booking with points and I'm a bit apprehensive about moving my points from CSR to an airline and then finding that the airline doesn't have frequent flyer seats available for my desired flight. I'd appreciate any thoughts you have on this.

The trick is to find availability first and then transfer the points. Chase points transfers to most airline partners are instant.

[Lonedaddy]

1 minute ago, BBWC said:

The trick is to find availability first and then transfer the points. Chase points transfers to most airline partners are instant.

Look at the airlines you can transfer to on the route you are looking at.  Then sign up for their frequent flyer program (costs nothing) and do an award search.  you can look up some airlines award availability on expert flyer as well.  Sometimes you need to be creative and look at multi city routings that span multiple continents (e.g. DFW-LHR, LHR- CPT. 

[-Lew-]

1 hour ago, mnocket said:

Somehow I was under the impression that there was some benefit to using Chase's travel department to book. 

 

Chase offers 10x total points on most hotels and cars and 5x total points on flights when you purchase through Chase Travel.  However, you need to be careful because at times the dollar or points cost more than if you were to book directly with the provider.

 

I have found my points go further with United if I transfer them rather than use them to book through Chase Travel.  I try to book when flights first become available.  You need to be careful with United because their points requirement bounce all over for a week or so before they settle down...then they tend to gradually increase.

 

When preparing to book, check the required number of points required for a flight two to three weeks before your flight date to see what you should actually expect to pay.  When our flights to London became available, United initially wanted 275,000 points per person for one-way business class.  We paid 120,000 points after waiting a couple of weeks...today the cost is up to155,000 points.

 

When I book United with points, I go through the booking process until I need to apply the points,  I then go to the Chase website to transfer the points over to United.  It happens almost immediately.  I then refresh the booking page on the United site and apply the points to the booking.

 

Occasionally you'll find a good deal on Chase Travel.  In 2023 we booked a hotel stay for cash in midtown Manhattan through Chase and got a very good deal.  You just need to check all sources.

[papaflamingo]

14 hours ago, mnocket said:

Good to know things are changing, or perhaps my experience was a one-off. 

Well, in all honesty, MY experience could have been the "one-off" regarding the ability to change the flight. 

[jeb_bud]

On 5/9/2024 at 11:04 AM, mnocket said:

Somehow I was under the impression that there was some benefit to using Chase's travel department to book.  I'll have to research that as I'm considering breaking my "never book flights thru a TA" rule for an upcoming overseas Business Class booking.  I'm not experienced with booking with points and I'm a bit apprehensive about moving my points from CSR to an airline and then finding that the airline doesn't have frequent flyer seats available for my desired flight. I'd appreciate any thoughts you have on this.

The benefit to using Chase’s travel department is that your points have extra value, e.g. $5,000 worth of points has $7,500 of value at booking time. There are some internal pricing shenanigans that need to be taken into account but my experience has been that using Chase has usually been cheaper than booking with airline points. Of course and as always, YMMV.