Maximizing Membership Reward Miles, A Case Study
by Jason SteeleHere is a case study in recooping the highest value from your reward miles. It just so happens the example is from my globe trotting parents.
Start With A Flexible Program
As Delta frequent fliers, they do accumulate some serious SkyMiles. Fortunately, they have diversified their portfolio to include a generous helping of American Express Membership Rewards points. As you may well know Membership Reward points can be redeemed at a host of airlines for miles and/or flight awards. This means that when you need to redeem an award, you have far more options than a single, airline based mileage program can offer.
The Challenge
My parents have been planning a trip to Africa, to see the mountain gorillas, among other things. I had helped them book their trip using SkyMiles to and from Africa well in advance, in order to maximize their award availability. Now, as the details of their itinerary are taking shape, the realized they were missing one flight from Entebbe, Uganda down to Johannesburg, South Africa where they will catch their return flight to the United States. There is only one airline, South African Airways, that flies non-stop between those two cities.
Yesterday, my mother emails me to ask me my advice. She tells me that her Delta miles will no longer work for South African Airways, as they have left the SkyTeam alliance and are now part of the Star Alliance. She informs me that she does not have any points with a Star Alliance carrier, but thankfully she has some American Express Membership Reward points. Can I find her an award flight?
The Legwork
No one ever said that booking award travel was easy, in fact, it seems to be deliberately designed to be difficult. I suppose they figure that travelers with more money than time will just pay cash for their flights. Fortunately, I always have time for my parents. Step one was to find out which airlines offer partner awards on South African Airways. The easy answer would be any Star Alliance carrier, however, I know that they might have other partners as well. Rather than look at every airline frequent flyer program in the world, (I don’t have that much time!), I went straight to South African’s web site and found out what airlines they are partnered with.
I then looked up the airlines that American Express Membership Rewards points can be redeemed for. It turns out that there are six airlines listed that are partners with South African, as well as South African Airways itself. The airlines are Air Canada, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines, Swiss Airlines, El Al Israeli airlines, and All Nippon Airlines of Japan. Redeeming the miles directly for miles in South African’s program would have been obvious, almost too obvious. Closer observation reveals that the only award redemption opportunity from Membership Rewards on South African is an economy class companion award ticket for 50,000 points. While this is a fine award, it is only for travel to South Africa from the United States.
One Down, Six To Go
South African awards being a dead end, I went through the remaining six airlines. Swiss only offers a round trip flight award on Swiss itself, there is no points transfer option. Air Canada’s Aeroplan program wanted an astronomical 80,000 miles per person for a Star Alliance award within Africa. Virgin Atlantic offers the same award for a more reasonable 40,000 miles per person. I can’t even figure out the award mileage on El Al’s web site. It looks like someone tried to translate it from Hebrew to English in a hurry. Singapore Airline’s Kris Flyer program offered the award for only 25,000 per person.
All Nippon Airways (ANA) of Japan computes awards by mileage. I found out that the mileage between Entebbe and Johannesburg is 1,835 miles, about the distance from L.A. to Chicago. Unfortunately, ANA also requires all awards to be round trip. Even the round trip award for 3,670 miles is only 22,000 miles, the best deal so far. Even better is the fact that ANA is unique among Star Alliance carriers in that they show partner award availability online. Other carriers, like my nemisis, United Airlines, ask you to call them on the phone to make a partner reservation.
I was able to quickly sign up online for a free ANA account and use it to find out if they had any award availability on that flight, on their date of travel. They were in luck as there were at least two seats available on their travel date. I guess Uganda hasn’t quite caught on yet as an award travel destination, but I digress. It turns out that the ANA reward site is a popular tool that savvy award travelers use to determine Star Alliance award availability. Since the one way is not permitted, I recommended that they just pick a random return date that they will never use.
What They Will Need To Do
You would have to open an ANA acct online for free. Call and confirm the availability, and hold the tickets if possible. Then they will transfer the 44,000 Membership Rewards points to their new ANA account. Finally, they will call up ANA, confirm the transfer and issue the award ticket.
In the end, my mom was amazed that she could redeem her American Express Membership Rewards points, for miles in a Japanese airline, for a reward on South African Airways, to fly out of Uganda. It is a crazy world out there, but the best awards go to those with the patience and persistence to maximize their reward card points.