topic Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air in Credit Cards

Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

RadioRob — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 02:54:57 GMT

Saw an article in Forbes quoting One Mile at a Time blog saying that Chase and Korean Air are ending their relationship on Aug 25th.

After that date, you supposedly won’t be able to transfer UR points to Korean Air points.

https://onemileatatime.com/ultimate-rewards-transfers-korean-ending/

This will mostly impact folks traveling to Korea and China as KA’s redemption values are much less than others like United.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

signaturecardmember — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 03:55:17 GMT

Thats too bad, I was hoping they extend the UR airline network....this is going in the wrong direction lol

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

UpperNwGuy — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 11:58:08 GMT

Was Korean Air the only UR transfer partner that provided a means of booking Delta flights?

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

Anonymous — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 12:41:32 GMT

@UpperNwGuy wrote:
Was Korean Air the only UR transfer partner that provided a means of booking Delta flights?

Think you can still use Air France to book Delta as they’re part of SkyAlliance and they’re still a transfer partner . No idea how difficult that process is though. A lot of people used Korean Air to book award tickets to Hawaii on Delta or so I have read

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

mongstradamus — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 14:19:44 GMT

I think this is a major hit to UR with people who want to ur to fly J or F to Asia. I was going to use KE as backup plan in case VS fell through with ANA. I really don't know what secondary option is I guess UA but they increased the RT cost in J up to 180k which i don't really like. I am wondering now if i should start to move my spending over to Amex now instead of primarily chase.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

K-in-Boston — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 16:58:31 GMT

@mongstradamus I agree 100%. The big hit will be J/F redemptions. It's sad to see another SkyTeam partner missing from my available options. FWIW, the best value for Delta award flights flying on DL metal will usually be to transfer to Virgin Atlantic if you're using MRs, URs, TYPs, or Starriott-Carlton Ritzpoints. But of course with the quirky new Air France and KLM awards, you could find yourself flying business class for 60,000 miles or economy for 215,000 miles; it seems to be totally random, so certainly worth checking out FlyingBlue first! Also, for Delta it certainly pays to check out the actual cash price of the flight since you may do better booking it through the UR portal for 1.5 cpp, and you'll earn all of the elite-qualifying goodies as well as SkyMiles.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

mongstradamus — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 19:27:35 GMT

The last few trips to Asia we did J or F , i don’t want to sound snobbish but i find it difficult to fly economy for a 22+ hour flight. I am not sure at 1.5 cpp i could find anything like i could with KE. KE had a lot more availability than most. I probably would have to bite the bullet and use ual to transfer to either BR or OZ i have done both before in J they are fine. I have almost no TYP, and only about 70k mr so i can’t really do much with those. This is what happens when you put too many eggs in one basket you get burned.

I just have to hope VS will have a lot of ana availability when i try and book a flight early next year for Jan 2020 trip. I have heard it can be quite difficult finding availability for the JFK- NRT/HND flight so i am a bit stressed about that.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

K-in-Boston — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 19:36:37 GMT

@mongstradamus sorry I should have put some space in my reply. The DL part (most of my post) was addressing @UpperNwGuy's question about booking DL flights. I don't think you sound like a snob at all (I wouldn't want to do a trans-Pacific flight from the east coast in Y, either). In most cases I'd certainly say paying for F/J flights through a portal like UR or Amex Travel is a bad use of points. I did do pretty well with a one-way J flight on Aeromexico paying with URs, though.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

wasCB14 — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 19:39:23 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@UpperNwGuy wrote:
Was Korean Air the only UR transfer partner that provided a means of booking Delta flights?
Think you can still use Air France to book Delta as they’re part of SkyAlliance and they’re still a transfer partner . No idea how difficult that process is though. A lot of people used Korean Air to book award tickets to Hawaii on Delta or so I have read

In my limited experience searching, it's easy to get some Delta routes to appear as AF awards...but I mostly find flights that are cheaper to just book with SkyMiles!

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

mongstradamus — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 19:42:09 GMT

@K-in-Boston wrote:
@mongstradamus sorry I should have put some space in my reply. The DL part (most of my post) was addressing @UpperNwGuy's question about booking DL flights. I don't think you sound like a snob at all (I wouldn't want to do a trans-Pacific flight from the east coast in Y, either). In most cases I'd certainly say paying for F/J flights through a portal like UR or Amex Travel is a bad use of points. I did do pretty well with a one-way J flight on Aeromexico paying with URs, though.

I will just have to see what options are out there. Maybe i will blow all my points if/when SQ releases non stop to Singapore from JFK. It just seems like less options makes me a bit sad.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

MAZDA3 — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 04:55:54 GMT

So this means my Delta KE redemption in J (the one seat KE released to DL) ATL-ICN-BKK in February may not be a full cabin. It usually never is now that DL operates a midnight flight to Seoul, but February is the tail end of high season to SE Asia.

I can live with that. Sorry....

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

red259 — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 05:10:54 GMT

@mongstradamus wrote:
@K-in-Boston wrote:
@mongstradamus sorry I should have put some space in my reply. The DL part (most of my post) was addressing @UpperNwGuy's question about booking DL flights. I don't think you sound like a snob at all (I wouldn't want to do a trans-Pacific flight from the east coast in Y, either). In most cases I'd certainly say paying for F/J flights through a portal like UR or Amex Travel is a bad use of points. I did do pretty well with a one-way J flight on Aeromexico paying with URs, though.
I will just have to see what options are out there. Maybe i will blow all my points if/when SQ releases non stop to Singapore from JFK. It just seems like less options makes me a bit sad.

yea. Don't count on ever getting that redemption if you want suites. Its extremely unlikely. I snagged EWR to SIN in J and that was the best I could do. I did get SIN-JFK via FRA in Suites on the way back. Still with less options for people that will mean even more trying to get SQ redemptions and it will become even more difficult.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

red259 — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 05:13:48 GMT

Based upon these changes by Chase I think I may stop worrying about 5/24. The only real value I see for Chase URs is Hyatt redemptions. I was keeping a low profile so I could get under 5/24 by Feb and pick up another ink card but now I am thinking that the value is just not there. Probably more worth it to say to hell with Chase and their 5/24 rule and focus instead on picking up other non-chase cards.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

iced — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 14:42:46 GMT

@mongstradamus wrote:
I think this is a major hit to UR with people who want to ur to fly J or F to Asia. I was going to use KE as backup plan in case VS fell through with ANA. I really don't know what secondary option is I guess UA but they increased the RT cost in J up to 180k which i don't really like. I am wondering now if i should start to move my spending over to Amex now instead of primarily chase.

SQ is the top dog airline for J/F TPAC flights. As you yourself state, KE was but a backup plan. UA is also pretty viable - I booked several flights back when it was 150-160k R/T, and to be honest, an extra 20k isn't really all that much more.

If you can consistently spend on 5x stuff for platinum MR, your plan has some merit, but otherwise earning 3x UR on all dining and travel is still going to get you to redemptions faster than 1x MR, even if it's 180k UR vs 90k MR.

On a side note, I've flown ANA J before (ORD-NRT a few times). Not a great J seat, though food was ok. You'll be better off with SQ, DL, UA, or any of a number of other carriers in J.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

iced — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 14:56:17 GMT

@K-in-Boston wrote:
@mongstradamus sorry I should have put some space in my reply. The DL part (most of my post) was addressing @UpperNwGuy's question about booking DL flights. I don't think you sound like a snob at all (I wouldn't want to do a trans-Pacific flight from the east coast in Y, either). In most cases I'd certainly say paying for F/J flights through a portal like UR or Amex Travel is a bad use of points. I did do pretty well with a one-way J flight on Aeromexico paying with URs, though.

Mostly agree - I'd replace "most cases" with "all cases".

If given the choice of wasting 333k URs at 1.5 cpm in their portal for a $5,000 flight or paying $5000 cash, I'd pay the cash every day of the week and twice on Sunday. 333k URs is 2 international J R/T tickets, worth far more than $5,000. Paying the cash for that flight would also net 15k UR (or 25k MR) plus the mileage earned for flying that ticket, which for me would be an additional 35-55k miles on top of the MR/UR accrual, which is enough to put one halfway or more to another J reward.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

K-in-Boston — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 15:50:26 GMT

@iced when you're dealing with $300 one-way J fares, it's not that big of a deal. I only used about 65k URs total for four tickets.

But yeah when I'm doing 6-digit points/miles redemptions I certainly want incredible value.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

iced — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 15:58:20 GMT

Love to know where you’re finding one way international J for $300 out of BOS.

I can’t even book premium economy R/T to Europe for much less than $2000 and J is usually double that, unless I pick a horrible routing or time in the middle of the week. Even then it’s still almost always $3000+.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

K-in-Boston — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 16:24:37 GMT

@iced wrote:
Love to know where you’re finding one way international J for $300 out of BOS.

I can’t even book premium economy R/T to Europe for much less than $2000 and J is usually double that, unless I pick a horrible routing or time in the middle of the week. Even then it’s still almost always $3000+.

Aeromexico. It's just a BOS-MEX-CUN redeye flight. But it was actually cheaper than taking a Y flight the next day (which is when we want to arrive). February school vacation week in Massachusetts doesn't usually make for great deals on airfare, but I bought at soon as they went on sale. For comparison, those same tickets that were $1203.88 total are now $1263.31 each and even Economy Classic and AM Plus seats are twice as much.

Here's the AM eTicket Receipt showing my 1E Clase Premier seats for each segment. Always find it odd that when booking through Amex or Chase there's always a random credit card number that shows for the payment method.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

iced — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 16:29:13 GMT

@K-in-Boston wrote:
@iced wrote:
Love to know where you’re finding one way international J for $300 out of BOS.

I can’t even book premium economy R/T to Europe for much less than $2000 and J is usually double that, unless I pick a horrible routing or time in the middle of the week. Even then it’s still almost always $3000+.
Aeromexico. It's just a BOS-MEX-CUN redeye flight. But it was actually cheaper than taking a Y flight the next day (which is when we want to arrive). February school vacation week in Massachusetts doesn't usually make for great deals on airfare, but I bought at soon as they went on sale. For comparison, those same tickets that were $1203.88 total are now $1263.31 each and even Economy Classic and AM Plus seats are twice as much.
Here's the AM eTicket Receipt showing my 1E Clase Premier seats for each segment. Always find it odd that when booking through Amex or Chase there's always a random credit card number that shows for the payment method.

My bad on this one. When I say international, I mean transoceanic international - Canada and Mexico are obvious exceptions to the international pricing rules. I treat flights to both the same as I do domestic since they basically are.

Re: Chase UR Ending Relationship with Korean Air

mongstradamus — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 16:30:16 GMT

@iced wrote:
@mongstradamus wrote:
I think this is a major hit to UR with people who want to ur to fly J or F to Asia. I was going to use KE as backup plan in case VS fell through with ANA. I really don't know what secondary option is I guess UA but they increased the RT cost in J up to 180k which i don't really like. I am wondering now if i should start to move my spending over to Amex now instead of primarily chase.
SQ is the top dog airline for J/F TPAC flights. As you yourself state, KE was but a backup plan. UA is also pretty viable - I booked several flights back when it was 150-160k R/T, and to be honest, an extra 20k isn't really all that much more.

If you can consistently spend on 5x stuff for platinum MR, your plan has some merit, but otherwise earning 3x UR on all dining and travel is still going to get you to redemptions faster than 1x MR, even if it's 180k UR vs 90k MR.

On a side note, I've flown ANA J before (ORD-NRT a few times). Not a great J seat, though food was ok. You'll be better off with SQ, DL, UA, or any of a number of other carriers in J.

I have been using EDP as my primary card to get MR but yes its not exactly optimal vs say CSP/CSR/Ink Cash for that matter.

Right now the plan is still to try and fly ANA via VS miles and backup plan is probably BR via UAL miles. I was hoping to try a different airline on the next trip to ASIA, I have tried CX,OZ, and BR before. I have heard fairly good things about Japanese airlines so i wanted to give them a try. When I flew OZ and br it was still 160k RT