Why you might (and might not) buy Gold Points for 0.4 cents each

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A few bloggers have pointed out today that the current Club Carlson Gold Point flash sale allows you to buy up to 70,000 Gold Points for $280, or 0.4 cents each. I'm looking at my travel plans to decide whether to go for it. Here's why.

Opportunity cost and revealed preferences

In my discussion of Frequent Miler's latest experiment in mile and point valuations, I argued that the only kind of valuation that makes any sense for a travel hacker is asking the question,

"how much do I need to value a redemption to justify putting the needed spend on a co-branded credit card instead of a 2% or 2.22% cash back credit card?"

In my detailed analysis of Club Carlson's award chart, I found that it's relatively easy to justify manufacturing spend on the Club Carlson co-branded credit cards, requiring a valuation of just $111 per night at Category 6 properties like the Radisson Martinique on Broadway, where I stayed last weekend, while any value in excess of that is pure profit.

And I do, indeed, manufacture spend on my Club Carlson credit card, earning 5 Gold Points per dollar and foregoing 2% or 2.22% cash back on the same non-bonused spend.

That means I have what economists call a revealed preference: I'd rather hold 5 Gold Points than 2 or 2.22 cents, by definition valuing Gold Points at over 0.4 cents each, the price at which they're currently for sale.

That doesn't mean you should buy opportunistically

I have two simple goals here on the blog: destroying the undeserved reputation of the Chase Sapphire Preferred and convincing people to value their points correctly. The first appears hopeless, but I'm going to keep chipping away at the second.

The only mile-and-point valuation that matters is the value you get out of your miles and points — and the least valuable point is the one you don't redeem.

That means if you have a Club Carlson co-branded credit card and want to plan a weekend trip to New York, you can prepay $203 for two nights in advance by buying the "29,000 + 21,750" package. It's pretty hard to find a $101.50 night in the middle of Manhattan, and while the Radisson Martinique (deservedly) doesn't have a great reputation, that's still a pretty compelling value.

On the other hand, if you don't have upcoming travel plans where you can get an outsized, or at least good, value like that, the Gold Points are just going to sit in your account and fester, losing value with each devaluation, while you'll be out $203 in cold hard cash.

If you bought the maximum number of Gold Points during this promotion (70,000), you would need to aggressively plan some redemptions for them. Of course, the problem with planning your redemptions aggressively is that it might lead you to overlook even better values at other properties.

Conclusion

Take a look at your travel plans and point balances before deciding whether or not it makes sense to participate in the current flash sale.

In either case, the sale ends Thursday, June 19, at 11:59 am EST.

Moving credit lines between American Express accounts

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There are many reasons someone might want to move a credit line between accounts. Perhaps the most common situation is when closing a card to avoid its annual fee; rather than seeing your total available credit decrease by the amount of the card's credit limit, you can transfer all but (typically) a nominal sum to another credit card issued by the same bank.

Alternatively, if you have a large credit line on a non-rewards-earning credit card like the Chase Slate from your pre-travel-hacking days, then you might decide to transfer the credit line to a more lucrative card also issued by Chase.

Each bank has a different procedure for this operation. In my experience, I've been able to transfer all but $2,500 from my Chase credit cards when closing them, and I've done that both over the phone and through the Secure Message Center without any difficulty.

Bank of America, on the other hand, in my experience requires a hard credit pull when transferring credit lines – even though they're not extending any additional credit!

American Express has fiddled with their procedure over the years, but since I just did this, I thought I'd share the method that worked for me today.

What cards are eligible?

American Express's basic rule is that a card must be open for at least 12 months before you can transfer that card's credit line away from it. In theory, credit lines can be transferred to a credit card almost immediately after the card account is opened.

I can now report from personal experience that the 12 month clock does not reset when you upgrade a credit card: I upgraded my Hilton HHonors Surpass card less than 12 months ago, but was able to reallocate credit away from it today.

Additionally, credit lines cannot be reallocated from business credit cards to consumer credit cards. Any other combination is theoretically possible using the online system: from consumer to business, between business, and between consumer credit cards.

Avoid the phone and online agents

I twice attempted exactly the same procedure that was successful today, once over the phone and once through the online messaging system, but was unsuccessful both times. Both times I believe the agents attempted to reallocate the credit lines from my (new) Blue Cash card to my HHonors card, instead of the other way around. I may have simply had incompetent agents helping me both times, or they might all be equally poorly-trained.

So for the sake of your sanity, use the online system if possible.

How it works

From your American Express home page, click on "Profile" near the top of the screen, then "Manage Credit Limit:"

From there, look for "Transfer Available Credit to Another Card," and click "Start:"

From there, select the card you want to transfer your available credit limit from:

And the card you want to transfer your available credit to:

Once you confirm the request, you'll be immediately notified whether the request was successful or not, and your available credit limits will almost immediately reflect the change (they say it can take up to 15 minutes).

Dots, Lines & Destinations is a pretty good podcast

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This is the second installment of my now-long-running series: the Free-quent Flyer Reviews Stuff. In the first installment, I explained why Personal Finance Digest is a pretty good blog.

I have pretty specific taste in podcasts

Since leaving my job to pursue my true passions (blogging and taking money from banks), I spend about 3-4 hours every day manufacturing spend. That's mostly by choice; it would take a lot less time if I were willing to do it by car, but I hate driving and my new hometown has been torn up completely for road construction making driving an even more unbearable chore than usual.

That gives me a lot of time to listen to podcasts, which would be all well and good except there aren't very many podcasts I like. For example, I find the most popular NPR podcasts (This American Life, Planet Money) to be what I call "overproduced." The constant background noise, sound effects, and so on make them distracting and unpleasant to listen to (for me, although apparently not for anyone else).

It's pretty hard to do a miles and points podcast

Looking at iTunes, it seems that a guy named Kevin Le started a travel hacking podcast back in March. And a year or so back I remember seeing a podcast that only lasted a few episodes before the guys behind it seem to have given up (I can't find it anymore, so it may even have expired off iTunes).

The problem is, as I've explained before, most people who have the ability to leave steady employment in order to blog do so because of the replacement income they earn from credit card affiliate links. Podcasting is an incredibly time-consuming and ineffective method of generating income-earning conversions, which means few people with the expertise needed to produce a travel hacking podcast worth listening to have any interest in doing so.

Dots, Lines & Destinations is a pretty good podcast

With all that said, let me be clear: Dots, Lines & Destinations is not a travel hacking podcast. But it is a podcast by travel hackers, and informed by their knowledge and experience as travel hackers.

So what is Dots, Lines & Destinations? That's surprisingly hard to say. On the one hand, it's a discussion of industry news like new routes, loyalty program devaluations, and runway construction. On the other hand, it's a review of the hotels and routes the participants have used lately. For example, in a recent episode Seth Miller had a great discussion of the mechanics of booking Kenmore Air flights around Puget Sound. For some reason, the discussion participants refer to traveling on new routes and visiting new cities as "adding dots and lines," which I guess is the origin of the podcast's title.

All this hopefully has led you to ask, "so who are these 'discussion participants,' anyway?" That's a great question, which is, again, surprisingly hard to answer. The Seth Miller mentioned above is the Wandering Aramean, who programs online travel tools and by the sounds of it is present at every major travel conference in the world.

The other participants I've been able to identify are Fozz Mahmud, who blogs at upgrd.com, Stephan Segraves of badice.com, and a figure named "Rolo" who apparently visits South America frequently. They seem like nice guys, but as you can tell, there's no attempt to identify them or their expertise or qualifications for being on the podcast, besides perhaps being friends with Seth Miller.

But none of that ambiguity makes the slightest difference: I love listening to Dots, Lines & Destinations because it's the kind of natural, fun, wide-ranging conversation that you might overhear at a travel hacking conference and want to jump right into the middle of. Plus, whichever of the guys runs their Twitter feed also has a great sense of humor.

So give it a shot. It might not be for you, but you might just end up with a new favorite podcast.

Can you book or change flights into a weather advisory?

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One of the blogs I've read most faithfully over the years is Delta Points. Like René, I'm more or less hopelessly in love with Delta as an airline, and have more or less hopelessly given up on Skymiles as a loyalty program (as opposed to a convenient way to travel the world for next to nothing).

One of the things I admire about René is his dedication to booking "low"-level Delta award tickets, and willingness to do anything and everything to get flights, dates and routings that work for his schedule.

And that's why I thought of him when contemplating today's question.

Delta's proactive approach to developing weather situations

Until René started blasting his Twitter and RSS feeds with every Delta weather advisory, I had never paid much attention to the little box on the bottom of Delta's homepage notifying visitors of strikes, unrest, and weather disruptions:

New York City and Philadelphia are affected by inclement weather

As it happens, I'm headed to New York City tomorrow for a long weekend visiting family and friends, and while my outbound ticket is nonstop, my inbound flight connects in Detroit. Yesterday afternoon, I called in to Delta to request my upgrade (my upgrades are sometimes not requested when I book through Delta.com), and thought I'd ask if the inclement weather would allow me to change from my current, indirect, flight to a direct one.

Unfortunately my return flight on the 15th falls outside of the window of affected dates, June 11-13, so the representative wasn't able to help me.

But then I got to thinking.

Can you book or change flights into a weather exception?

I got to thinking because I'm a Platinum Medallion with Delta, which I regularly claim is the best Medallion status because it gives you free award changes and cancellations. That makes it easy to lock in "low"-level availability when it's available, even if you can't find availability on every leg right away. Plus you can make backup reservations hoping that revenue ticket prices will go down before you actually need to fly.

As the storm advisory helpfully explains:

"Even if your flight is not canceled, you may make a one-time change to your ticket without fee if you are scheduled to travel to, from, or through the following destination(s) on Delta, Delta Connection®, or Delta-coded flights during the specified time periods listed below."

Since I'm a Platinum Medallion, I wondered if I could change my return flight to a low-level flight during the affected dates, then take advantage of the weather advisory to change my ticket back to the original date — but now on a nonstop flight.

Unfortunately, when this occurred to me I was already within the 3-day window when online changes are impossible, and I didn't really feel like trying to convince a phone representative to let me game their system.

Conclusion

I am still curious, however, so next time a weather advisory pops up more than 3 days out, I'll be giving this a shot.

Do any of my readers have experience either deliberately or accidentally taking advantage of a weather-advisory-related change to improve a reservation, without actually changing your plans?

The "other" 4% cash back portal

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[edit 6/9/14: As Milenomics quickly pointed out on Twitter, BeFrugal is currently offering 4% cash back as well.]

As I explained last week, for the time being I don't have access to American Express gift cards. That doesn't mean I don't know that they're one of the most lucrative tools currently available for driving down the cost of manufactured spend: by clicking through shopping portals to the American Express gift card site, you can earn cash back that more than offsets the purchase and shipping fees associated with the gift cards themselves.

The Barclaycard Arrival RewardsBoost mall gets a lot of attention, whether for its relatively high payouts, the 10% rebate earned when redeeming Arrival miles against travel purchases, or the commissions (other) bloggers earn on successful applications for the card.

Unfortunately, the RewardsBoost portal isn't perfect. First of all, American Express gift cards have disappeared from the portal, at least for the time being. Secondly, if you don't have an Arrival card already, you may not be ready to apply for new credit, or have trouble being approved by Barclaycard for a new account. Finally, as discussed in the comments to this post, if you primarily redeem miles and points for your travel needs, you may simply not have enough paid travel purchases to justify running up large Arrival balances; when redeemed for cash back, an Arrival mile is worth just half a cent.

USAA MemberShop

Meanwhile, if you have a USAA membership, you have access to the MemberShop, another shopping portal operated by the same folks who run RewardsBoost and many of the airline co-branded shopping portals. Unlike those portals, however, the USAA MemberShop offers cold hard cash, deposited directly into your USAA checking account.

It's a little tricky to find the MemberShop: from your USAA home screen, click on "Our Products," then "Retail & Discounts:"

From there, scroll down until you see MemberShop, and click "Shop Now."

Conclusion

The 3% cash back offered by TopCashBack ends in 6 days, and as always it's unclear if that means the rate will be going up, down, staying the same, or disappearing completely. If you have or are eligible for a USAA checking account, it's one more option to maximize your return on American Express gift cards.

Twitter feeds worth following

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Last week I mentioned that I've come to rely on Twitter more and more, while simultaneously cutting down my consumption of blog posts. In response, a reader asked me to suggest some Twitter handles that are worth following.

To be clear, these are not necessarily reviews or endorsements of the underlying blogs or bloggers behind these feeds; just Twitter feeds I happen to follow, and why.

To be clear, these aren't all the Twitter handles I follow, which you can find here. But they are the folks that I consider part of any well-rounded travel hacking diet, for the reasons explained above.

Are there any I'm missing? Let me know in the comments.

Initializing Iberia Plus Avios accounts

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Last month I mentioned that I was trying to figure out how to "initialize" my Iberia account. Now that I've succeeded, I can share my experience.

What are Avios?

For most hotels and airlines we use in the United States, a loyalty currency is almost indistinguishable from a loyalty program. It doesn't occur to anyone that there's a difference between the Delta Skymiles loyalty program and an individual Delta Skymile.

Avios work slightly differently: Avios are the rewards currency of three different loyalty programs: British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus, and the Avios travel rewards program.

So just like you can use Euros issued in France to buy bratwurst in Vienna, you can use your Avios for rewards through any of the three programs.

However, as the people of Greece recently discovered to their chagrin, just because countries use the same currency doesn't mean they can't impose border controls. That's exactly what Iberia has done, and smuggling Avios past those controls is the subject of this post.

Why Iberia?

While British Airways and Iberia charge the same number of Avios for flight redemptions through either program, Iberia charges much lower fuel surcharges for award redemptions on their own flights than those booked using Avios in British Airways Executive Club club accounts.

Here's British Airway's Avios calculation for a non-stop flight between Madrid and New York's JFK airport:

At the request of a very generous reader, this picture features a circle

Here's the same route priced out using Avios in an Iberia account:

At the request of a very generous reader, this picture features four arrows

What's the problem?

In a perfect world, that's all you'd need to know. By choosing "Combine my Avios" (find it under "Manage my account") on British Airways' website, you'd be able to save yourself hundreds of dollars on your Iberia award flights by booking using Iberia Plus instead.

Unfortunately, the world we live in isn't perfect yet, and you're not allowed to transfer Avios into your Iberia account until it's been open for 90 days and has at least one other (non-"Combine my Avios") transaction.

What's the solution?

In response to my original post a number of readers reached out with suggestions on how to "initialize" my Iberia account:

  • e-Rewards redemption. This is what I ultimately did: I redeemed $25 in e-Rewards credit for 750 Avios in my Iberia account. That transaction initialized my (over-90-day-old) account, and I was then able to successfully transfer Avios from British Airways to Iberia using Avios.com as the Points Guy describes here. This worked for me since I already had about $24 in e-Rewards credit, so I just had to flunk a few surveys in order to earn the additional $1 in credit. I initiated my transfer on May 29, and the Avios were credited to my Iberia Plus account on June 2;
  • Membership Rewards transfer. In the comments, Grant not-very-helpfully (I don't have Membership Rewards points) pointed to his post on transferring Membership Rewards points to Iberia Plus in order to initialize an account;
  • Melia Rewards transfer. Another reader reported being able to transfer the 2,000 point signup bonus with the MeliaRewards program to Iberia. I wasn't ultimately able to do this — as the reader pointed out, the 2,000 bonus points aren't supposed to be eligible for transfer. However, if you do ever stay with a Melia-affiliated property, or earn Melia points through some other activity, you will be able to transfer the points you earn to Iberia Plus.

Conclusion

Iberia has great award availability and relatively low fuel surcharges on their own flights; that can be a powerful combination when trying to decide how to fly to or from Europe using Avios, while Avios can be one of the easiest loyalty currencies to earn since British Airways Executive Club is a transfer partner of Chase's Ultimate Rewards points.

Update on life/career changes

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Back in April I announced that I was leaving my pretty casual employment in New England to move halfway across the country. I'd been in a long-distance relationship for way too long and it was time to cut down the distance. Rather than look for a new job, I decided to rededicate myself to my two favorite pastimes: blogging and taking money from banks.

My original announcement was titled "Everything (nothing) is changing," and I think I hit the nail squarely on the head. In case readers hadn't noticed my somewhat-more-frequent posts lately, I'm now settled into my new lifestyle, and I'm loving it. Three weeks into the move, here's where things stand.

What's changed

One (the only) good thing about my former position was that, besides giving me a flexible schedule and plenty of time to both travel and hack, it also gave me a regular paycheck. The money was enough to live on, which meant I could manufacture spend on miles- and points-earning credit cards "opportunistically," as Frequent Miler put it in the comments here. That is to say, I didn't mind foregoing cash back speculatively, since I knew I would be able to pay my rent no matter what happened to my American Airlines balance.

While manufactured spend gives me access to unlimited liquidity, given the constantly changing nature of the game I'm unwilling to use that liquidity to pay actual expenses. That means I've set myself the goal of earning enough cash back each month to meet my (honestly, pretty minimal) expenses. Fortunately, I'll still be receiving a nominal sum from my former employer for the next month or two, so I'm not leaping in completely without a parachute. It sure feels that way, though!

And in case you're wondering why I would have trouble manufacturing enough cash back to live on, I'm happy to share: my American Express gift card orders have been declined ever since the move, presumably because my new billing information hasn't populated to whatever database they use to validate orders. Unless those orders start being approved in the next few months, I'll be relying on brute force to earn enough to pay the rent.

What hasn't changed

My impression is that most people who quit their day jobs to write travel blogs full-time do so because they realize how much they're earning from credit card affiliate links, and decide it's enough to live in the manner they're accustomed to. Of course, the really big players earn enough to hire employees and merely phone in the occasional (16-part) post. 

I don't have any credit card affiliate links. This site is entirely reader-supported, by readers who buy or borrow my ebook from Amazon, use my signup links for travel-hacking-related services, and most importantly sign up for PayPal subscriptions using the subscription button on every page of the website.

Why do I say PayPal subscriptions are the most important, when a single Uber signup might offer $10 or $20 in referral credit? Simple: the trivial amounts you sign up to contribute each month (subscriptions start at $2 per month, and top out at $10 per month) add up, and give me a kind of base income I can more-or-less rely on each month. You probably won't notice PayPal deduct your $2 subscription each week or month, but if just 200 readers like you subscribe, that's $400 in rent I can worry a little less about manufacturing each month. In other words, it's a small thing to you that makes a big difference to me.

Plus it gives you access to my occasional subscribers-only newsletters and the recently-launched complete archive of past newsletters.

Other developments

As my readership has grown, a number of readers have reached out to me for one-off help consulting with them on how to develop or refine their own miles-and-points strategy. That's been a really exciting development and I've been able to help a few people out now, in addition to the help I'm always happy to provide readers here on the blog and through Twitter or e-mail.

Meanwhile I guess I've entered into the same summer funk I was in last year when I asked "Has affiliate blogging gotten worse?" because I've cut way back on my consumption of other travel hacking blogs. The simultaneous disappearance of both American Express affiliate links and articles about American Express cards is the kind of "coincidence" that helps you realize just how shameless many of those blogs can be. Of course there are exceptions (the crew over at Saverocity are still putting out great content), but I'd rather be hacking than reading most bloggers writing today.

Finally, one thing that's been fun about the renewed intensity of my manufactured spend is that it's put me on the front lines of recent changes that I've been able to share with my readers in real time. While the biggest news eventually makes its way to the blog, I've come to rely on Twitter for real-time reporting of developments, and there's really no substitute for a great Twitter feed.

I want to thank all my readers for reading, and for giving me the courage to take this pretty radical step with my life. See you in the comments!

New(est) changes to Walmart point-of-sale systems

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There are no two ways about it: it's been a frustrating week in the world of manufactured spend. Just a month after I wrote my award-winning (or at least widely retweeted) post on dealing with changes to Walmart point-of-sale systems, the geniuses in Bentonville struck again and implemented another set of obstacles to seamless Walmart financial transactions.

I've been experimenting extensively with the new(est) changes. This is my report.

Processing of prepaid debit cards

Historically, there's been a divide between the way (many) Visa and (many) MasterCard prepaid debit cards have been processed at Walmart registers. Visas, particularly the widely-available cards administered under the Vanilla brand, have (until the most recent changes) been processed by default as debit cards. That means immediately after swiping, a PIN pad would appear and allow you to input either a pre-set or extemporaneous PIN code, depending on the prepaid debit card product.

Many MasterCards, on the other hand, have required users to manually instruct the point-of-sale system to process the card as debit; otherwise, the system initially recognized them as credit cards and refused the cards for debit-only transactions.

As a result of that historical difference, I have never used a MasterCard prepaid debit card at Walmart.

The latest changes have resulted in (many) Visa prepaid debit cards being processed just like (many) MasterCard prepaid debit cards have been in the past: initially as credit cards, and only after explicit user intervention as debit cards.

Change payment – but fast!

Over the past few days I've visited many different Walmart store locations and processed all of the transactions popular among my readers. I'm pleased to say that there is no transaction that previously could be conducted with a prepaid Visa debit card that cannot, today, be conducted with a prepaid Visa debit card.

But that doesn't mean it's easy.

Upon each swipe of a prepaid debit card, you have exactly one chance to alert the point-of-sale system to process your transaction as debit, instead of credit. That chance comes immediately after swiping the debit card, while the customer-facing keypad appears to still be "thinking."

On the keypads at my Walmart registers, you'll first see a red button in the bottom right corner of the screen. Then, within less than a second, a yellow "Change Payment" button will appear in the bottom center of the screen. That, and only that, is your cue to push the yellow button on the right side of the keypad, embossed with a left-facing arrow.

If you miss that chance your transaction will be processed as credit, and fail.

As I mentioned, I've done these transactions at a variety of Walmarts and at a variety of registers, and I've started mentally classifying them into "fast" and "slow" locations.

At "slow" locations, you may have up to 1.5 or 2 seconds to press "Change Payment," either using the touchscreen button or pressing the yellow left-facing arrow button.

At "fast" locations, you will have less than half a second, and you will probably not be able to press the on-screen button. But you can still press the left-facing arrow button the moment you see the yellow on-screen button appear, and it will have an identical function (the screen even displays the "depressed button" animation).

Why are so many experienced people having so many problems?

If all that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it's been widely reported for many months with respect to MasterCard prepaid debit cards. But this latest update has caused problems even among people who are well aware of the historical situation and the ongoing updates. Why?

My best guess is that they aren't taking into account the interaction of the new(er) changes with the new(est) changes.

As a reminder, under what we might call "first generation" Walmart point-of-sale software, for all split-tender transactions the cashier first typed in the amount of each swipe, before the customer interacted with the terminal.

Under the "second generation" [new(er)] software, the customer first completes their interaction with the terminal, all the way through to typing in a PIN code, before the cashier types in the amount of the split tender.

The problem is that under the new(est) software, the customer's interaction with the terminal takes much, much longer. And it's difficult to convince a cashier to not interact with her register during the entire 8-12 seconds it takes for the customer to complete their interaction with the customer-facing terminal.

Emerging differences between money orders and bill payments

In my earlier reporting on the "new(er)" point-of-sale software, I said or implied that the new "customer first" protocol applied to all split-tender transactions.

I frankly don't know whether that was an error on my part from the beginning or whether a change has subsequently been implemented.

Either way, since the new(est) software changes have been implemented, I've observed a recurring difference between split-tender transactions for money orders and for bill payments.

It's now my belief that at some Walmart store locations with the new(est) software, split-tender transactions for money orders can still be processed "cashier first." Bill payment transactions, on the other hand, can only be processed "customer first."

I know better than to suggest that's the rule at every one of the thousands of store locations in the United States. But if you're having ongoing problems with these prepaid debit transactions, that would be the place I would start diagnosing the problem: either buy money orders or, during bill payments, find a way to convince your Customer Service and Money Center employees to resist processing the split tender until you've completely finished interacting with your customer-facing terminal.

Conclusion

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Booking premium domestic products (on the cheap)

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Back in March I observed that Delta's premium transcontinental BusinessElite service was bookable using Alaska Airlines' Mileage Plan miles at the standard domestic First Class rate. That fluke has since been fixed, but it got me thinking about the best ways to book those premium transcontinental seats using partner miles. Here's what I found:

American Airlines

American Airlines operates a 3-cabin First Class product on transcontinental flights between JFK and LAX and between JFK and SFO. Booking these 3-cabin First Class seats through AAdvantage costs 32,500 miles each way at the SAAver level.

The popular workaround of using British Airways Avios on oneworld awards is actually counter-productive in this case, since for premium cabin redemptions British Airways charges 2 (Business) or 3 (First) times the cost of an economy award. Since LAX and SFO are in the 2000–3000 mile band, a First Class redemption will cost 37,500 Avios from JFK each way.

Instead, book your First Class ticket using US Airways Dividend Miles. You'll pay just 50,000 Dividend Miles, since US Airways doesn't have a spot on its domestic award chart for 3-cabin Business Class.

While researching this I naturally started wondering what would happen if you tried to price out a First Class award on a date when seats were available in Business but not First, since they don't have a separate price point for domestic Business. This is what I found:

Clever girl!

Delta Airlines

Delta operates their premium BusinessElite product between JFK and LAX, SEA, and SFO, and prices those seats out at 65,000 Skymiles roundtrip.

Many people would prefer to burn Skymiles instead of other, more valuable mileage currencies, but you can still book BusinessElite tickets with 65,000 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles roundtrip, which you might consider doing in order to put together an itinerary that mixes and matches American's First Class and Delta's BusinessElite products, perhaps if you're some kind of travel blogger intent on reviewing these products (or if you just happen to be Mileage Plan rich).

If you're booking an award ticket for yourself or a (very) immediate family member, and are willing to persevere through their Byzantine booking procedure, you can transfer Ultimate Rewards points to Korean Airlines and book a roundtrip BusinessElite flight for 45,000 SkyPass miles.

United Airlines

United operates their "Premium Service" BusinessFirst product between JFK and LAX and JFK and SFO. Unfortunately my cursory glance showed essentially no award availability on the product. If you are able to find award space at the Saver level, it costs just 25,000 United miles each way, since it is a two-cabin product.

Star Alliance has a number of member airlines with interesting mileage programs, so you may find lucrative redemption options in your own favorite non-US program. Here are some that occurred off the top of my head:

  • Aegean Airlines. If you happened to have run up a balance of Aegean miles while qualifying for Star Alliance Gold status, you can redeem 21,000 of them for a one-way Business Class ticket within North America;
  • Lifemiles. As you may have noticed, Lifemiles are currently having a moment. If you've accumulated a stash of them, you can redeem 60,000 for a roundtrip Business Class flight within North America. Those miles may be cheaper than you think;
  • Lufthansa Miles & More. As is pointed out ad nauseam whenever a new affiliate link is released, Lufthansa allows you to redeem 35,000 miles for roundtrip domestic First Class (or in this case, BusinessFirst) awards within the US.

Do take a look at United BusinessFirst award availability, in case you think I'm exaggerating. You should probably not plan on redeeming any reasonable number of miles for that product, unless they open up vastly more award space in the future.