Starwoods points advice

[maivina]

Hi, this is my first foray into points and tickets. I hve 49,998  amex starwooods points. i need a ticket from israel and back for pesach for a student. I heard of some point transfer system through Lan and or British airways. Can anyone give me the step by step instructions how to do this? thanks

[steve2]

Hi, this is my first foray into points and tickets. I hve 49,998  amex starwooods points. i need a ticket from israel and back for pesach for a student. I heard of some point transfer system through Lan and or British airways. Can anyone give me the step by step instructions how to do this? thanks

 1stly I would forget about BA as it will cost you appx $600 in addition to the 65k in Miles tahst if they have anything availabel at all.

Besides that before transferring anything anywhere make sure you will beable to get a tkt for the dates you want.Otherwise you will end up having your Miles sitting somewhere and have to wait till you can find something that works for you Date wise and end up paying for the tkt in the end and have little to no SPG pts left over.

 what you need to do is call each program AA (One World), DL (SkyTeam), CO (*A) and see what if anything they might hav ethat will work, of cause they may not be so helpful if they 1st want your acct # and you dont have it, they arent too interested that you will be transferring the miles in from elsewhere

 most important is to be Flex with the routings and not to demand a non-stop, so be prepared for say a TLV-BUD on Malev then BA to London and AA to the US, also be prepared for flying at crazy hrs.

[flyingace]

With 50,000 spg points your best bet is skyteam via Alitalia, they are only 50,000 points per ticket, and you can try for a Delta nonstop. However, they no longer allow returning points to the FF program if you decide to cancel. AA is 90,000 points and CO is 75,000 points. You cannot transfer SPG points into CO points at a worthwhile rate, but you can put them into a partner airline to redeem on CO. The Lan route is no longer worth it as they have a new way of charging km and it comes out to be a lot of miles to TLV.

[SuperFlyer]

Ladies, I would look into http://www.flyingbluenews.com/promotions/spendingmiles/promoawards.html

For a 15k +25k = 40k you can travel between tlv and ewr (newark) return.

If you want to check availability before transfering, pm me or post here the dates (the more flexible the more chance).

[SuperFlyer]

The downside would be that you would need to fly via europe (or an advantage, if you want to visit the place), and that the europe-tlv and the europe-newark parts would be 2 different tickets, so it would be a good idea to leave at least 2.5 hours at your stopover in europe (both ways).

[steve2]

The downside would be that you would need to fly via europe (or an advantage, if you want to visit the place), and that the europe-tlv and the europe-newark parts would be 2 different tickets, so it would be a good idea to leave at least 2.5 hours at your stopover in europe (both ways).

 If it will be 2 separate tkts, then isnt it a very good chance that they will be restricted to only 1 Checked in bag , unless they are willing to pay for the 2nd? Out of the US they might be lucky at get the Agent to tag the bags all the way thru to TLV but that means only connecting on teh way to TLV and not staying in the connecting city.

On the way back its a very good chance that the Agents in TLV will NOT play ball and will only allow 1 bag (weight restricted as well) and also might only tag it to to the connecting city where you would have to go to baggage claim get it and then recheck it in.

 A definite case of YMMV as I know people who got an agent that wasnt willing to do anything except tag to Europe and charge for their 2nd bag. Some others the Agent simply tagged teh bags all tehw ay thru but charged for the 2nd bag, and a couple were real lucky and the agent tagged both bags all the way thru and didnt charge for the 2nd bag.

now if it was all 1 tkt then it would be 2 bags per person

[flyingace]

The OP needs dates around Passover. The current promo only extends until 1/30/2010, but looks very good pointswise.

[Mikeoracle]

Make sure to find out what the fees are for this promo. Last time I checked they were about $400 in fees for these award tickets.

[flyingace]

Make sure to find out what the fees are for this promo. Last time I checked they were about $400 in fees for these award tickets.

These are the taxes and fees that apply to all European airlines. You would pay this on all tix. Booking on a US based airline will avoid these.

[Dan]

Why does it need to be 2 separate tickets?
You can go for 25K with promo awards on 1 ticket.

The best options are
SPG-ANA for Star
SPG-Alitalia or Air France/KLM for Sky
SPG-AA for El Al.
SPG-LAN if you will fly via Jordan...

[Mikeoracle]

For your reference,
Here is a link to a thread about the "SPG-ANA for Star" option.

http://www.dansdeals.com/forums/index.php?topic=1196.0

[maivina]

Sorry can u clarify how I can do the above?  what are promo awards? thank you.

[Dan]

Sorry can u clarify how I can do the above?  what are promo awards? thank you.

http://www.dansdeals.com/archives/5290