Advice on using airmiles

[MomofCKJ]

Can I just think out loud here and ask for some opinions. I am losing my mind trying to plan this. I must have spent 4 hours online yesterday just looking and taking notes and trying to figure out what to do. Thought some of you seasoned travellers could give me your 2 cents.

DH has 50,000 Delta miles. (side note, I am so mad that his Boston-LA trip in November didn't credit, he didn't save his paperwork, didn't make sure he gave his card, it was a work trip and I guess they didn't put it in at booking, so there go those miles). I have 8500.

We are flying in January and need to go from here (MA, but looking to fly out of Hartford, smidge closer for us) to Orlando then Orlando to Nassau and then Nassau to home. It looks like this:

1/8 Hartford to Orlando
1/11 Orlando to Nassau
1/15 Nassau to Hartford

I found a multi city ticket with Delta, good times for us, for $465.
I tried to see if I could book DHs with his award miles, found the same exact itinerary and it will be 60,000 miles plus $60.

So to make this work I would have to transfer 8000 of my miles to him and with the promo they have till tomorrow he'd get 1600 bonus as well. So that would cost $110. That would put him at like 59749 miles, still 251 short. So we'd have to buy them but the minimum purchase is 2000 miles for $60.

Say we do that, we have now spent $230 ($60 for buying miles, $110 for transferring my miles, $60 for fees with using the miles) to get him a "free" ticket that has a value of $465.

My thought is this is a poor use of the miles. We are only really saving $235 or so doing this.

Do you agree? Should we just buy the two tickets at $465 each and save the miles for something in the future? Just sounds like this would not be the smartest use of miles?

And if this is a dumb question, forgive me. My head is just spinning right now with numbers and flight times and miles and I just need someone to say "Yes that is a bad use of miles" and make me feel like I know what I am talking about!

Allyson

 

[prncess674]

Say we do that, we have now spent $230 ($60 for buying miles, $110 for transferring my miles, $60 for fees with using the miles) to get him a "free" ticket that has a value of $465.

My thought is this is a poor use of the miles. We are only really saving $235 or so doing this.

Do you agree? Should we just buy the two tickets at $465 each and save the miles for something in the future? Just sounds like this would not be the smartest use of miles?

Sounds like a really bad use of miles! Depending on how long ago your DH flew you can use your credit card statement that has the ticket number on it to get the ticket number, then just fill in the missing miles request.

Buying/transferring miles is usually a poor use of miles. The money to transfer just isn't worth it. Keep holding onto those miles till you have enough in one account to redeem an award.

Also I would wait to use my miles till I could get a skysaver award. A skysaver US-Europe award is only 50,000 and goes much further.

http://images.delta.com.edgesuite.net/delta/pdfs/skymiles/multi_airline_awards.pdf

 

[DebbieB]

I would just buy the tickets and save the miles for another time.

 

[Darcy03231]

I would buy the tickets and save the miles until you've accumulated enough without having to buy any.

 

[heartbeeps]

call Delta directly and tell them what you're trying to do; they'll help you out and then you can book online to save miles and money if you'd like or grab it from the telephone call for an additional fee. There's no fee for asking questions - just for booking tickets. I find they're better than beating my head against the computer trying to figure complex itineraries online.

to answer your original question, yes, it's a poor use of miles; however, IF you are really short on cash, and you're not saving miles up for a specific use, it's one way to reduce your overall expenses!