mrsdoctau and I are planning a big (~12 month) RTW trip to leave in about two years time. Part of the early planning for that is figuring out how best to take advantage of credit cards now to give us benefits (like upgrades) when flying then. The OneWorld network fits our plans better, and I'm QF SG now (and probably will be then too) so the best options from that side would be a LONE* ticket and using points to upgrade flights on assorted carriers, or a QF OneWorld Explorer fare.
I have looked into a bit, but since AFF is full of knowledge, I'm definitely asking for ideas
This is in the CC section of the forum since that's what I'm mostly concerned about now not the LONE*/OWE itself (unless it impacts the chiuce of CCs).
We're thinking of flying BNE to LAX or MEX, overlanding to the bottom of Central America, flying to northern South America (AA via MIA, or potentially now Lan Colombia direct), overlanding down the continent, flying out of SCL or Brazil to MAD, going around Europe for a bit, flying from somewhere to BKK or similar, going around nearby countries and then flying (probably out of BKK again) home. A LONE* would be preferred since it allows more stopovers or side trips, everything else being equal, but obviously it's far from equal when one is a cash fare upgradable on individual carriers versus an aware fare which isn't upgradable but the 280k J award may be doable. A Y ONE aware would save us money, but something that gets us some J flights (even if we pay cash for Y, a la LONE*) would be nice.
Right now I've collecting QF points since almost all personal travel ends up with them, and the small amount of work travel I do tends to be on OW international flights. I have a HSBC platinum (would have cancelled but they waived the fee anf still gave me QP invites) and Macquarie Platinum earning QF points 1:1 on non-QF domestic spend, with about $70-80k a year going through them.
Currently I have ~130k QF points, about 12k SQ points due to expire in a month, and small amounts of points in various other FF and hotel programs.
Since there are two of us, a ONE award means I'll need 280k for Y, 420k for W, or 560k for J. Getting the extra 150k QF points for a Y OWE aware would be easy, but then we'll be in Y the whole way with no possibility of upgrading as far as I can tell. If I switched to an Amex card for most things (earning 1.5 pt/$) and got a few sign up bonuses, I think I should be able to get the 290k points for the W one but many of the flights will not have W class so we'd be really in Y.
With two years and $80k annual spend, I can't see us getting 430k more QF points with 1.5 pt/$ and sign up bonuses. I know some of the cards from Amex itself have higher earn rates for various spending categories, does anything think that would be enough to help?
The second choice is paying for a LONE* and then using points for upgrades with the carriers along the way. For the route, I'd think we have QF/AA to the US, AA to MEX, AA or LA to South America, LA, IB or JJ (TAM) to Europe), IB+CX or QR to Asia and then CX/QF back home. For this option I'll obviously need card(s) that let me store points and then transfer to a different carriers depending on the flights I want to upgrade.
I think a card that lets me get to SPG would be helpful here, as I can transfer points from there on to AA, LA, BA, CX, QR. However from what I can see, an Amex issued card seems to be the only one that does it, at 2:1 to SPG then effectively 1:1.25 (for 20k points due to the bonus) to the airlines.
There are a number of cards that let me transfer to CX but I'm probably not going to be flying much or at all with them.
Any suggestions of what the best idea may be?
I have looked into a bit, but since AFF is full of knowledge, I'm definitely asking for ideas
This is in the CC section of the forum since that's what I'm mostly concerned about now not the LONE*/OWE itself (unless it impacts the chiuce of CCs).We're thinking of flying BNE to LAX or MEX, overlanding to the bottom of Central America, flying to northern South America (AA via MIA, or potentially now Lan Colombia direct), overlanding down the continent, flying out of SCL or Brazil to MAD, going around Europe for a bit, flying from somewhere to BKK or similar, going around nearby countries and then flying (probably out of BKK again) home. A LONE* would be preferred since it allows more stopovers or side trips, everything else being equal, but obviously it's far from equal when one is a cash fare upgradable on individual carriers versus an aware fare which isn't upgradable but the 280k J award may be doable. A Y ONE aware would save us money, but something that gets us some J flights (even if we pay cash for Y, a la LONE*) would be nice.
Right now I've collecting QF points since almost all personal travel ends up with them, and the small amount of work travel I do tends to be on OW international flights. I have a HSBC platinum (would have cancelled but they waived the fee anf still gave me QP invites) and Macquarie Platinum earning QF points 1:1 on non-QF domestic spend, with about $70-80k a year going through them.
Currently I have ~130k QF points, about 12k SQ points due to expire in a month, and small amounts of points in various other FF and hotel programs.
Since there are two of us, a ONE award means I'll need 280k for Y, 420k for W, or 560k for J. Getting the extra 150k QF points for a Y OWE aware would be easy, but then we'll be in Y the whole way with no possibility of upgrading as far as I can tell. If I switched to an Amex card for most things (earning 1.5 pt/$) and got a few sign up bonuses, I think I should be able to get the 290k points for the W one but many of the flights will not have W class so we'd be really in Y.
With two years and $80k annual spend, I can't see us getting 430k more QF points with 1.5 pt/$ and sign up bonuses. I know some of the cards from Amex itself have higher earn rates for various spending categories, does anything think that would be enough to help?
The second choice is paying for a LONE* and then using points for upgrades with the carriers along the way. For the route, I'd think we have QF/AA to the US, AA to MEX, AA or LA to South America, LA, IB or JJ (TAM) to Europe), IB+CX or QR to Asia and then CX/QF back home. For this option I'll obviously need card(s) that let me store points and then transfer to a different carriers depending on the flights I want to upgrade.
I think a card that lets me get to SPG would be helpful here, as I can transfer points from there on to AA, LA, BA, CX, QR. However from what I can see, an Amex issued card seems to be the only one that does it, at 2:1 to SPG then effectively 1:1.25 (for 20k points due to the bonus) to the airlines.
There are a number of cards that let me transfer to CX but I'm probably not going to be flying much or at all with them.
Any suggestions of what the best idea may be?
