Thanks Matt!

David

I have over 150k Alaska miles, and I plan to travel from SIN-MCO-SIN in a couple of months’ time, could you suggest which is my best available airline option?

Based on my research, British Airways seems the most direct, SIN-LON-MCO but I read that it is next to impossible to get any first class seats with BA, and even for business cabin, I would need to be super lucky to get 2 seats several months out!

Do you think flying Cathay Pacific is my best option, I read it is not that hard to snag 1 seat in their first class cabin from SIN-LAX but that would still leave me from LAX to MCO, help, Matt, I’m stuck. Thanks! 🙂

I live in Scotland and have flown to the US around 50 times in my life. In 2010 I had 300,000+ miles with Continental and got a round trip Business Class to Hawai’i for $225 in taxes! I was Silver Elite and got a few free upgrades US to UK but only once the other way. I’m semi retired now so only cross the Atlantic once or twice a year and have lost that status.

I’m not sure about signing up for all the credit cards and doubt I would spend enough to accumulate enough miles for an upgrade.

Basically, I follow all your steps like going to Kayak first then re-checking the airlines own sites etc and noted with interest your comment about trying to buy a ticket in another currency. However, it seems the airlines are on to this.

Here’s what I’m trying to do right now.

I want a business first round trip from Glasgow to Honolulu on 6 October 2014 and preferably coming back from Hilo or alternatively Kona on 23 October 2014. This is about price not miles, so if there’s a better thread please transfer this post.

Your favourite airline United, are the only ones who fly out of Hilo internationally. Also they are the only ones who fly direct to and from Glasgow crossing the Atlantic which I much prefer to going to and from Amsterdam for KLM or London for BA and can get me there same day. (US Airways can do it but not in one day.) Currently Unitred are quoting about £3600/700 on their own site. However, when I used my Kayak app on my mobile (cell) phone at the weekend I got a fare of around £3063 (Note that I tried the online Kayak from a pc at the same time and it had the higher price, weird.) That’s a difference of around US$1000!

So I tried to buy the cheaper fare. Kayak, then said that although it had priced in GBP, United would price in USD, no problem. The USD price came up as $4949, which is just about £3090 at today’s exchange rate; so far so good. But to cut a long story short as soon as I put in my Continental (sorry United) FF number the system told me that because I was a UK person, I would need to start again on the UK version of the site and of course I knew that that would cost me £3700.

So I thought, that I could maybe defeat the system by not telling it I had a FF number and adding that in later. But again to cut a long story short, after allowing me to reserve seats all the way, when it came to paying with my UK based AMEX card, it through me out and actually repriced the whole thing for me at £3700+

Apart from being indignant at United charging a UK based customer $1000 more than a US customer for the same flights, any thoughts on how I could book the fare at the USD price.

I did think about using my US bank account but it has a UK mailing address and also I need to pay with AMEX Platinum for the insurance.

I’m going to call AMEX themselves and then my last stop will be United agents in the US if I can find one.

Although we’re nomadic we travel at a much more sedate pace than most. We spend 12 months in each country we visit so flying is not such a common occurrence.

We have taken your advice and got ourselves on a points program. Our US credit card gives us the option to transfer points into miles so we’ve been relying on the fact that we’re traveling in ‘high cost of living’ countries to drum up enough spending to accrue points!

I am getting into my cash back schemes so frequent flyer is next on my list! I’ll be sure to check out your resources when the time comes!

See my response above….and what George said!

There’s a small temporary ding whenever someone pulls your credit but it goes away after a few months and what is more important is having a good debt to credit ratio. My credit score is 791 and I am never denied a card or loan or anything.

Reload cards can still be bought with a credit card. I buy them with a card all the time. You can’t load your Bluebird with a card though.

Only with miles and there is usually an added fee.

You can usually get the bonus again if you haven’t had the card for 12-18 months.