Because of transfer partners and alliances, just because you have one type of miles does not necessarily mean you're limited to one airline.
Most of our transfer partners plan on coming in to pick up animals they have on hold, or arranging transport to their shelter or rescue on the 9th day.
The huge
diversity of transfer partners means that you can find award space in the program you want to use and then transfer the points to book that award.
These programs have
lots of transfer partners, and if there isn't any award space, you can choose to just book any ticket if you're willing to give up some value.
Getting the ultimate value can be a little bit of work as you'll need to pay attention to the
schedules of transfer partners to find the best times to book.
Similarly, demonstrating normal findings on x-rays of the lungs when they were previously abnormal may indicate reduced risk of serious complications, and may ease
concerns of a transfer partner.
That said, the card still leaves a lot to be desired... maybe if they got
rid of the transfer partners and allowed lounge access without paying a fee?
Getting the ultimate value can be a little bit of work as you'll need to pay attention to the
schedules of transfer partners to find the best times to book.
Transfer points to any of Chase's
network of transfer partners at a 1:1 ratio (the Freedom Unlimited card doesn't allow you to transfer points)
Although cards like the Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite MasterCard ® allow you to redeem their miles in simple fashion with no black out dates, the benefit to the Chase Sapphire Preferred is that you can transfer your Ultimate Rewards at 1:1 ratio to a variety
of transfer partners including:
Since these cards can earn you points that you can transfer to a
variety of transfer partners, I personally would make it a priority to get one, two, or all three of them.
But SPG has been coasting on their (admittedly impressive) list
of transfer partners for long enough and it's time for them to step it up a bit.
I'm certainly not the first person to re-evaluate Ultimate Rewards in light of recent devaluations by
several of its transfer partners, but I will try to put my own spin on the topic as always.By... [Read more...] about Is Chase Ultimate Rewards Still the Best Rewards Currency?
However, for those that can make shrewd
use of transfer partner award charts, the sign - up bonus could easily be worth $ 2,000 - $ 3,000 or more.
Booking travel through the online portal, as opposed to transferring your points out to one of the many Ultimate Rewards transfer partners (more on those below), allows you to redeem your Chase points with airlines, hotels, etc.,
outside of their transfer partners and receive a 20 % bonus on your points.
In order to find the best values, you have to navigate the terms and
conditions of each transfer partner — understanding the routing restrictions and keeping an eye out for fuel surcharges and other hidden fees — and you need to familiarize yourself with their awards charts.
The Chase Ultimate Rewards program bumped its number
of transfer partners up to seven with the addition of Air France KLM Flying Blue.
These points are the same as the ones you earn from your Chase Sapphire Preferred card and are extremely valuable if you know how to make use
of transfer partners properly.
Again, it's not a terribly great option, but Amex has a different
set of transfer partners, so the opportunity costs of moving points to Elevate may be different.
Amazingly, the press release and Arrival Premier website make no
mention of the transfer partners, but both Doctor of Credit and View from the Wing report these ratios, so I believe them to be accurate.
The Ultimate Rewards program gives you a
choice of transfer partners, so you can transfer points to six other airlines: Southwest, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore, FlyingBlue Air France / KLM and Korean when United miles don't work for you.
Flying Blue, the loyalty program operated by Air France and KLM, is a significant new addition to the Ultimate Rewards
portfolio of transfer partners.
I think a lot of people right now are of the mindset that most changes to reward programs are going to be negative, so it's good to see a positive change with the list
of transfer partners growing.
Chase does not have as an extensive list
of transfer partners as SPG, but they do have some options not offered by Starwood, such as Hyatt.
SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest) points are valued at some of the highest in the loyalty world partly due to
value of transfer partners.
Overall, although SPG has a large number
of transfer partners airlines and also adds a 5,000 bonus for every 20,000 points, the fact that transfers are not instant makes transferring Starpoints to airline miles less useful than it should be.