Piggybacking on another thread on credit cards I asked recently – was wondering what mileage program you guys are with, and why?
Currently I’m with ANA, was able to get 150k+ miles and a bunch of flights through credit cards and converting points. What’s nice is that Tpoint, Rakuten, Vpoint all convert to ANA nicely, and there are pretty good rates when using Edy.
What’s not so nice is that award tickets still cost fuel, so if I were to fly to Thailand for example, I’d still pay 50k yen on top of 35k miles. For domestic this doesn’t matter so much because the surchage is usually just like 1000 yen. I can basically fly domestically for free for the coming years until I run out or they expire.
Also you can’t buy miles and they expire, so if you’re short – SOL. Then doesn’t look like you get anything of value when getting their premium cards from the looks of it?
I also have a JAL Gold card but butched the registration campaign. Nice that they give you business checkin counter access with the gold card for domestic flights.
Not as much converts to JAL miles as ANA though and I know less about One World / JAL.
Third option that gets mentioned a lot in Japan is United. Miles don’t expire, you can buy miles, no fuel surcharge, and there are cards available here with 1.5% rate, that’s higher than most other cards period. But United doesn’t operate as much here, so it would be mostly for Star Alliance award tickets.
Did I miss any options? Curious if there are any tips/tricks when dealing with airlines here. Is there an obvious point program that’s king over the others to convert to miles?
(Not american, don’t have access to US cards)
by HoodFruit