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I'm going to Yellowstone (SLC airport) from the NYC area with my wife in a few months - August 19th to 27th. We need a morning flight on the 19th so we have time to drive the 6+ hours to the hotel after landing, and for the same reason need an afternoon flight on the 27th. (Alternatively, we could fly into one of the several smaller airports that are much closer to Yellowstone, but they seem to cost a lot more.) I looked for flights a couple months ago and the options seemed very limited and expensive, and it seems to have only gotten worse since then. Do you guys see any good options for this trip, or do you think any might become available soon, or should I just take whatever I can find while it's available? Also, I signed up for the Chase Sapphire Reserve earlier this year and thus have around 115,000 points. I know very little about getting the most out of them. We're probably going to Australia next year and I figure that would be a good time to use them, but if this trip to Yellowstone would also be a really good use of them then please let me know.
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May 24, 2017 23:50
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:04 |
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Mackieman posted:RIght now, best I see is $494, EWR-SCL leaving early in the morning and a return that puts you back into EWR at 2AM on Monday the 28th. It's doable, but I wouldn't want to have to work on the 28th. I also checked award seats to Jackson Hole and Idaho Falls on United (you can transfer your Chase points to United 1:1) but there's currently no award space available. Yeah, that's what I was seeing too, and yes we're working on Monday. Might just have to do it regardless... I guess we need to finalize our Australia trip next spring as soon as we can just to make sure we can use all those points. Thanks for checking.
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May 25, 2017 08:59
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asur posted:Did you look at any of the three SF airports? It should be closer than SLC as well.  Are you thinking of Yosemite? Mackieman posted:For what it's worth, 115K Chase points is not going to get you two coach tickets to Australia from the US. United is going to want 80K miles round trip on a saver award per person. Ah... could I use 120k for three one way tickets and buy the remaining one? Otherwise maybe hotels over there. I also recall that Reserve holders get a 50% point bonus for booking through the Chase site, but I guess that's generally worse than transferring to the airline. I suppose before long I'll have to figure out all the math for my particular case.
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May 27, 2017 00:58
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So for that Yellowstone trip we found a flight to Billings, MT for the same cost as SLC and half the driving distance. Apparently that's a place! With an airport! The flight times are really going to suck but at least we can drive the Beartooth Highway both directions.Mackieman posted:You could, but international one-way tickets usually price out at the full Y fare (read: very expensive). I somehow doubt that strategy would work in your favor. Alright, I could apply for a couple more credit cards to get enough points for round trip maybe... runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Jun 5, 2017 |
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Jun 5, 2017 08:16
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I asked about using Chase Ultimate Rewards points for a trip to Australia several months ago, but it turns out that won't be happening this year. It looks like we'll instead be going to Thailand this summer (during the rainy season), from New York. At first glance it looks like fares during this time are not expensive enough to give a good return on points, but there's definitely a lot I don't know about making good use of them. Am I correct? I'll probably only have the Sapphire Reserve until March, and I'm really struggling to find any way to use the points (currently around 145k) besides through the Chase portal for 1.5 cents each.
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Jan 20, 2018 02:14
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peanut posted:New York to Bangkok, $2000/person is reasonable and $1500/person is a deal (hotels and food and transportation is cheap af) so if you can get cheaper than that, go for it. So, uh... $800 on Korean Air... ?  Guess it would be stupid to use points on that, as I suspected. It's a lot harder to get rid of them than I thought when applying for the 100k points last year.
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Jan 22, 2018 08:08
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Saladman posted:It's way too late for you now, but if you fly internationally a lot then Global Entry is super handy for things like this. It takes 3-4 months from the application submission to when you get the interview and get global entry, but will save you time at immigration for any large international airport. I actually applied for Global Entry last weekend and just scheduled an interview for 2 weeks from today. So it's possible to get a quick turnaround I guess.
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Nov 1, 2018 23:33
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I got this email the other day if it helps anyone:quote:Dear Global Entry Applicant,
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Nov 4, 2018 22:01
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For precheck, you should enter your known traveler id in the relevant box when buying your airfare. It then shows up on your boarding pass for the TSA agent to check. When there isn't a separate precheck line, they give you a card that allows you to go through a normal metal detector and such. For global entry you don't need anything at all, just get in the global entry line with your passport. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Apr 9, 2019 |
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Apr 9, 2019 07:47
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Saladman posted:Thanks! By the way, your known traveler id also shows up on the boarding passes of anyone you're traveling with if you buy their ticket along with yours. You can get non-precheck family members into the precheck line this way.
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Apr 9, 2019 07:56
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There's a Lufthansa flight I'm interested in from NYC (JFK) to Amsterdam (AMS) with a 65 minute layover in Frankfurt (FRA). How bad of an idea is that, awful or just a little bad? There's another flight at a less convenient time with a 100 minute layover, but I'd have to take extra time off work for it, so I'd prefer to take the former if it's not just courting disaster.
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Jan 29, 2020 03:57
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I'm planning a ~10 day trip to the Netherlands & Belgium in May, looking to fly NYC -> AMS and BRU -> NYC (or the other way around). I've accumulated a whole lot of Chase UR points that I'd like to start using, but I don't think I've ever successfully used points by transferring them to an airline, only in the Chase portal. How can I actually find a flight with points that's better than the Chase portal? I tried looking on United, KLM, and Virgin so far and didn't see anything that wasn't a comically bad value. Am I doing something wrong, or are hotels the only way to beat the portal now? Or did I just need to look much further in advance?
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Feb 4, 2024 03:15
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Beef Of Ages posted:What you're seeing is the difference between revenue and award tickets. Airline award tickets have dramatically smaller availability than revenue tickets do for obvious reasons, and booking via the Chase portal is actually booking a revenue ticket from the airline's point of view, but Chase takes points from your account to pay itself back for buying you a revenue ticket via its travel agency (Expedia). So the key is exactly what you're experiencing: find an award flight available on a Chase partner airline, then transfer the points. In almost all cases this is a better value for the points you have, but it's much more difficult to find award space. That's the nature of the game. I know the Chase portal is for revenue tickets, but are you saying that the tickets on airline websites when searching to pay with points may also be revenue tickets, and that's why the points costs are so high? If so, is the only way to find award tickets just to experiment with different days and airports until something reasonable shows up? To give an example, on one random day the cheapest one-way JFK -> AMS on KLM is 68,000 points + $86, ordinarily $458. That's a horrid .5 cents per point, so obviously much cheaper through Chase. So is that a revenue ticket with an awful points rate, and I just need to try different parameters to find the decent award ones?
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Feb 9, 2024 00:51
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 23:04 |
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Beef Of Ages posted:Sort of, but not quite. Super helpful, I know. Alright, I understand, thanks. Confirms my decision to eventually move off of travel cards towards straight cash back in the future, lol. I hate this kind of stuff.
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Feb 14, 2024 21:06
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