Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd. Who will complete the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Ever since Draft Day, I’ve been madly working on plans for my 3 Cards 3 Continents challenge trip. As a reminder, Nick, Stephen, and I are competing to see who can build the most fantastic 3 continent trip using welcome bonuses from 3 cards. Based on the cards I picked, I have 94K Amex Membership Rewards points, 84K Citi ThankYou Rewards points, and $560 in cash to book what I previously vowed would be an around the world journey in business class. I also have five 50K Marriott night certificates to use for lodging, along with a handful of Marriott points and any leftover Citi or Amex points after I book flights.
- See which cards they each selected in the live-streamed credit card draft here.
- Review the challenge rules and budgets here.
- Catch up on all ongoing updates here.
To some degree, I didn’t need to hurry. Travel won’t begin until a yet to be disclosed date in September. But I had a deadline looming. The 20% to 40% bonus on Citi points transferred to Qatar ends June 30th. That gave me very little time to decide whether to do it and how many points to invest. The transfer bonus requires transferring more than 20,000 points in order to get the full 40% bonus.
I plan to use my Amex points to book an ANA Star Alliance Round the World trip in business class. But for 90,000 ANA miles (transferred from Amex), I can only fly up to 14,000 miles. In order to truly go around the world, I need to book at least one long leg of the trip separately. And Avios, transferred from Citi, offer one reasonable option for doing so.
After considering many Round the World options, I’ve settled on a loose outline in which I use ANA miles to traverse the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but use another currency, transferred from Citi, to cover the long distance between Europe and southeast Asia. Last week, I called ANA to see if an around the world booking like that was possible. It was! I was able to put an Around the World trip on hold. Total price: 90,000 ANA miles plus $365 in fees (the cash component was much lower than I had anticipated, so that was great news!).
The problem with the itinerary I had on hold was that it was nowhere near final. I still have work to do to figure out my final plans and so I’m not ready yet to book the ANA Round the World award for real. Once I book it, if I need to make a significant change, I need to pay 3,000 ANA miles to cancel the original so that I can rebook the entire thing. I’d like to avoid that if possible.
So… without knowing my exact ANA Round the World itinerary, I needed to figure out if Qatar Avios, transferred from Citi with a 40% bonus would be a good option for plugging the holes in my trip. The clock was counting down. A decision had to be made by June 30th! Qatar Avios points transfer freely between Qatar, British Airways, Iberia, and Aer Lingus and so I’d be able to use any of those programs to book flights. But I’m not limited to flying on those four airlines. I can use Avios to fly any OneWorld alliance member flights. In that way, Avios are a great option. On the other hand, their distance based award charts favor flying short distances. I need a currency that works well for very long flights. Still, a 40% bonus can go a long way towards erasing Avios’ inadequacies.
The first trick was to find likely routes to plug even if I didn’t have final plans in place. The next trick was to find OneWorld awards that were actually available during the likely dates of travel. Then, I had to find whether Avios could be used to book those awards at decent value. Finally, I had to have a pretty good idea of the exact number of Avios I’ll need. I didn’t want to transfer more Citi points to Avios than I’d actually use. I still have other plans for the remaining Citi points!
I wish I could give you details about what I found, but I don’t want to give too much away to Stephen and Nick just yet. Plus, I haven’t booked all of my flights yet so the last thing I need is for readers to snap up the award space before I have a chance to! Anyway, I will tell you that I found an excellent way to cross between Europe and east Asia with Avios for a total of 56,000 points. That means that I only had to transfer 40,000 Citi ThankYou points thanks to the 40% transfer bonus. The trip will involve two flights on an excellent business class product. One flight isn’t necessarily great value until one considers the 40% transfer bonus. The other flight offers incredible value. I’m pretty sure I found an award pricing error that makes this flight a fantastic value, even without any transfer bonus in place. I will eventually reveal this deal to members of our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group. I don’t want to publish it on the blog directly because that would inevitably cause the loophole to close quickly.
In summary, for the 3 Cards, 3 Continents challenge I decided to transfer 40,000 of my 84,000 Citi points to Qatar Avios while the 40% transfer bonus was still in place. This gave me 56,000 Avios, which I believe will be enough to plug the biggest current hole in my expected Round the World itinerary.
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Do you know when booking the RTW award, and it puts one of your domestic legs in First Class when requesting business class, is domestic first class awards considered the same as business class for RTW point purposes?
Yes. That’s usually the case with all business class awards. Domestic first class is treated like business class.
As someone who doesn’t have Facebook (and has a trip coming up in several months that will require a similar flight), I am searching like a madman trying to figure out the East Asia-Europe redemption!!!
Qatar Airlines is running a promotion where you can have a stopover for as little as $14 per person per night. Do you know if this is available if you book an award flight?
Great question. I’m pretty sure the stopover hotel has to be booked as part of a paid Qatar flight booking, but I’ve sent them an email to ask.
while I struggle to book simple award flights, you guys are an inspiration!
I would love to know how you all are getting award space on ANA, i have been checking any where from a few weeks until next year and all business class is waitlisted!!
ANA rtw awards apply to flights from any Star Alliance carrier, not just ANA itself.
Nice, do I have to call to get this? The wife and are are going to Thailand in 2023.
Yes you have to call. Have fun, it sounds like a great trip!
For the round-the-euros fares you have to call to book, but you can search for availability online. For simpler r/t it multi city itineraries you should be able to search and book online
I figured a cheap “ground transfer” was in your future at 14,000 miles. Can’t wait to see the sweet spot given my base in Seoul.
If we make the transfer today, would we still get the bonus 40%?
Transfers to Qatar from Citi have been instant for most (there’s always a risk that it’s not). The terms state that transfers completed by 11:59p GMT+3 today are eligible, so you have until 1:59p PT/4:59p ET to be eligible.
Thank you! Interestingly I made the transfer maybe 15 minutes ago and it hasn’t posted yet.
actually, it posted! Yay!
Awesome!
How long are you able to keep ANA award on hold? 5 days?
Only 24 hours
Should give us small, hidden hints here and there regarding the routings so some of us can figure out the Sweet Spot!
But I don’t want Nick to figure it out! 🙂
45 days to receive the bonus from Qatar. I’m on day 16…nada.
Yikes. I hope you don’t lose out on any awards as a result!
Fortunately for me, for the purpose of the challenge, the team agreed in advance that we didn’t really need to wait for transfer bonuses to happen in order to use points if we already had them. In general, just like the signup bonuses, we’re not really transferring points for the challenge if we don’t need to. Instead, we are keeping track of each transaction as if it is real in order to make sure we stay within budget and have a full accounting at the end.
I figured that was the case for this challenge and the previous versions and I have no problem with that. I did want to provide the DP, though. Thanks for the reply.
That’s a valuable DP! Hopefully, it will improve in the future.
I transferred on June 7th and have not received the bonus yet.