Pay up or buy points?

[stigsfilocousin]

Hey guys,

So I havent been here for god knows how long but now that I'm looking like finally graduating from university, the prospect of more travel awaits (so long as my hip pocket can stomach the pain) and thus I need your collective wisdom and criticism.

Me and a mate from high school decided that we should do a Contiki tour next year (well he wanted to go and I happened to be looking at where to go to celebrate after 6 years of going to lectures and watching my HECS debt go up ever slowly); if I do end up passing this year, we agreed to go in May for a 3 week tour (and probably squeeze in 2 weeks in Thailand as well). Now, ive been grazing the interweb this past few months and looking at J fares to the continent and today I came across a forum wherein one of its members talked about buying points on US Airways and using that to redeem a return J fare to Europe. The problem is that US Air is merging with AA and will leave *A but I also want to use this trip to get *G on Aegean's FFP (as then I can travel every 2 years and keep enough mileage on the account to maintain *G).

Now, UA allows you to buy points but the amount needed seems to be not worth it (plus for the life of me I cannot find the redemption chart) so my question is, do I buy points on a *A FFP and use that to redeem award tickets, or suck it up and go revenue J i.e. buy it?

My proposed routing is as follows:

• SYD-FRA-BKK-SYD (on the assumption that I can convince my mate to go Thailand with me...or I just do it anyway)
• SYD-FRA-SIN-SYD

Any help or advice or telling off will be greatly appreciated

 

[TomVexille]

So which do you want, cheapest option to FRA or A3 *G? Buying points and redeeming for flights will not get you status at all.

 

[markis10]

The USDM way is still relevant and viable for you, I would have a close look at it, forget status and points earning as you won't come close to the cost!

 

[stigsfilocousin]

The USDM way is still relevant and viable for you, I would have a close look at it, forget status and points earning as you won't come close to the cost!

That is still one of the options (but kind of a last one as I had stupidly assumed that I can still earn points by doing it that way when it isnt the case) apart from keeping an eye on Skyscanner et al every few days. Last night I was on Skyscanner and saw a J fare to FRA with Asiana via ICN for around $5800 which I thought wasnt too bad for a *A carrier with the next cheapest being a LH codeshare from SYD to LAX then LH metal to FRA with the return leg LH metal to BKK before a codeshare to SYD (that was around ~$6,300 from memory). The mileage earned on a revenue flight will then push me to *G as there is already around 3k points sitting on that Aegean account (20k points needed to go *G if im not mistaken on Aegean).

Before I get asked the question, I'm flying to FRA because of the price differential between it and LHR; the tour we're going on commences at London and finishes at Paris (with an option to go back to London for no charge) and I figured that to avoid paying that nasty APD ex LHR, we could get a train from Frankfurt to St Pancras return and the difference could then be diverted to something else. Please correct me if im wrong on that assumption.

 

[markis10]

That is still one of the options (but kind of a last one as I had stupidly assumed that I can still earn points by doing it that way when it isnt the case) apart from keeping an eye on Skyscanner et al every few days. Last night I was on Skyscanner and saw a J fare to FRA with Asiana via ICN for around $5800 which I thought wasnt too bad for a *A carrier with the next cheapest being a LH codeshare from SYD to LAX then LH metal to FRA with the return leg LH metal to BKK before a codeshare to SYD (that was around ~$6,300 from memory). The mileage earned on a revenue flight will then push me to *G as there is already around 3k points sitting on that Aegean account (20k points needed to go *G if im not mistaken on Aegean).

Before I get asked the question, I'm flying to FRA because of the price differential between it and LHR; the tour we're going on commences at London and finishes at Paris (with an option to go back to London for no charge) and I figured that to avoid paying that nasty APD ex LHR, we could get a train from Frankfurt to St Pancras return and the difference could then be diverted to something else. Please correct me if im wrong on that assumption.

Still not real close to the USDM cost which is under $3k, and has good availability to CDG.

 

[stigsfilocousin]

Still not real close to the USDM cost which is under $3k, and has good availability to CDG.

Thanks for that markis10. I have signed up to USDM and waiting for the 'block' to be lifted before I can start buying points. I'm still flexible on where to fly into and out from as my mate is being indecisive although he prefers to fly in to Heathrow so I'll have to work around that.