Points and Mile Totals

Some of my classmates at pre-school have been asking me lately how many points and miles we have. I generally just say "this much" as I stretch out my hands, but in the interest of transparency, I'm willing to share our family totals to all 3 loyal readers of Lap Child Diaries.

Airlines
American AAdvantage - 600,000 miles
United MileagePlus - 400,000 miles
British Airways Avios - 215,000 miles
Aegean Airlines - 60,000 miles

Hotels
IHG Rewards Club - 113,000 points
Hilton HHonors - 104,000 points
Starwood SPG - 102,000 points
Club Carlson - 18,000 points
Hyatt Gold Passport- 600 points

Bank Rewards
Chase Ultimate Rewards - 392,000 points
Citi Thank You Points - 165,000 points

Now clearly, there are families (and even individuals) out there that have 1,000x more than we do, so we're really not trying to show off. We're just answering a question we get often, and there's no shame/pride here.

The truth is that these points and miles will only decrease in value over time. Programs "devalue" their points from time to time by increasing the prices for award redemptions, so we recommend not hoarding these rebate currencies. Cash you can save, but with loyalty points and miles, you should "earn and burn" as quickly as possible!

Any good redemption ideas for us?

Changing Aegean Miles & Bonus

I've mentioned a few times about our obscure family goal of getting "lifetime" Gold status with Aegean Airlines, a Star Alliance partner of United Airlines.

So far, my mother earned it in 2013, and I earned it in 2014. My father was already 14,000 towards the 20,000 mile goal, when Aegean announced changes to their frequent flyer loyalty program a week ago.

Instead of needing only 1 flight credited to Aegean every 3 years to maintain Gold status forever, each of us will now require 24,000 miles every year.

While it's still better than United's MileagePlus requirement of 50,000 miles PLUS $5,000 of airfare spending, we're likely going to put away our Aegean frequent flyer number and just stick with our United accounts.

So it's still a bit unclear, but I think my mother and I will get to keep our Aegean status through end of 2015. Flashing our Aegean gold cards, we'll still be able to get complimentary access United airport lounges domestically. My father can still come in as well since both my mother and I can bring 1 guest each.

First Aegean Flight

Flight #91 - Aegean 655
Rome (FCO) – Athens (ATH)
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Depart: 5:40PM / Arrive: 8:40PM
Duration: 2hr 0min
Aircraft: Airbus 320
Seat: 2A, 2C, 2D (Business)
Earned: 0 miles (676 miles flown)
Lifetime Miles: 180,492 miles


Even though both I and my mother have Gold status with Aegean Airlines (A3), we've never stepped foot in an Aegean flight before tonight. As a part of our single round trip award booking from NYC-Rome (stopover)-Athens-NYC, my mother and I were able to try out Aegean's business class for 2 hours into Athens at no additional miles.

My father, however, had booked a cash ticket from JFK-FCO then open jaw back from ATH-JFK, so he needed to fill in the missing FCO-ATH segment. For his one way ticket, we used 20,000 United miles and paid $40 in taxes/fees for his business class seat next to ours. Had we paid in cash, it would have been around $470 USD for the one way flight. So while not an amazing $/mile redemption at only 2.1 cents/mile, our United miles still saved us a bunch of out of pocket cash.

But little did we know that a simple 2 hour flight would be so impressive. First, we arrived to the gate at FCO Airport a bit late coming from the Mosaic Lounge that Aegean business class passengers have access to.

By the time we arrived to the gate, there was a long line of passengers waiting to board. Unlike most boarding gates, however, there was just a single line and no area for business class ticket holders to queue. So we just went up to the front and asked if we could board, showing them our tickets. Since we were in the business cabin, the agents immediately let us in, bypassing the dozens that were waiting in line. I have to say, it was nice for my father to finally be able to do that, after getting shot down so many times at NYC bars and clubs when he was younger.

Despite being called "business class," the actual seats on intra-European flights is actually the same as economy but with the middle seat blocked off for additional room. We settled into our seats in Row 2 and noticed that no one else was sitting in the business class section. We had the entire cabin to ourselves.

Being a 2.5 year old, I loved being the only ones up front. It meant my parents didn't have to constantly apologize to businessmen in suits if I were making too much noise or kicking the chair in front of me. No one was there to complain. And the flight attendants thought I was adorable, so they were quite happy to have me on board. It was really refreshing to be treated like a welcome passengers instead of a nuisance.

Despite having our choice of seats, my mother really wanted us to sit beside one another in the same row, so my parents removed the middle seat tray and put me between then. So much for getting some space away from them!

About 45 minutes into the flight, they handed out our dinner menus. We were excited to be heading to Greece and always like it when we fly the national airline to the country we're visiting, mostly because the menus have local items on it. In our case, we had the choice of veal or rooster. Yes, rooster. Not chicken, but rooster.

Apparently, rooster is quite tasty when combined with the red wine sauce and vegetables.

My mother thought this was actually the "best in flight meal" she's ever had. And given how many flights my parents have been on during the past few years, that's really saying something.

We were finished as the plane began its initial descent into Athens. We were getting very excited as this was all of our first times to Greece.

When the plane stopped, everyone unbuckled and got up from their seats, starting to collect their bags from the overhead bins. Pretty typical.

The flight attendants informed us that we were not by the gate and that we'd be taking a shuttle bus from the tarmac to the terminal. Pretty typical in many smaller airports.

We saw the door open and given we were the only passengers up front, we got out first.

My mother wanted to go down first and take a photo of my father and me as we descended down the stairs. Hoping to get a nice photo of my father and me, I told my father we should wait at the top of the stairs until my mother was in prime photographer position. And also that we should to walk especially slowly so that we'd have a few extra photo ops. He was more than happy to oblige.

But as we came down the stairs, we noticed that we didn't hear passengers behind us.

By the time we reached the bus at the bottom, we looked back to see the stairwell completely empty. Not an expression. I mean literally empty. No one was there. Then when we boarded the bus, the flight attendant signaled to the bus driver and doors closed behind us as it started to pull away. We were the only ones on the bus!

It was just for us! Talk about VIP service!

Aegean Gold Status

Flight #88 - United Airlines 91 
Tel Aviv (TLV) – Newark (EWR)
Monday, June 23, 2014
Depart: 11:10PM / Arrive: 4:20AM (+1 day) 
Duration: 12hr 10min 
Aircraft: Boeing 777 
Seat: 17J, 17K and 17L (Economy) 
Earned: 5,692 miles 
Lifetime Miles: 175,328 miles

[UPDATE (September 23, 2014): Aegean announced they are changing their Miles & Bonus frequent flyer program so that you need to re-qualify each year. Therefore, it makes less sense to go for Aegean Gold Status.]

By the time everyone reads this post, I'll likely be in transit coming back to New York. It's definitely not an easy commute. From my grandparents' house in Haifa, we drive about 2 hours south to Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv. Since this is Israel, we are advised to arrive a full 3 hours before our flight departure time due to the extra security check points. And unless we're flying in business/first class, my father's United elite status doesn't get him much preferential treatment at TLV.

Then it's another 12 hours on board the plane til we land at 4:20AM. By the time we get through Customs (thank you, Global Entry!), collect our bags and get a car to take us to Manhattan, we're looking at 6AM. That's about 19 hours of transit door-to-door!

But on the positive side of things, upon completion of this flight, I will earn my very own Aegean Airlines Gold Status membership, clearing 20,000 Aegean miles in their Miles & Bonus frequent flyer program. I'm sure you may have heard me mention this in other posts, but I figured I'd take time now to answer the series of questions you may have.

1. But aren't you flying United?
Yes, this flight is operated by United. And our home airport is Newark where United Airlines has a hub with dozens of non-stop domestic and international flights to just about anywhere we'd want to fly. So most of our flights are operated by United. But...United is a key member of the Star Alliance that partners up 26 international airlines.

2.  What's Aegean have to do with that flight?
Through the Star Alliance arrangement, I can fly just about any airline in the alliance and credit the mileage to any other airline's frequent flyer program. One of the Star Alliance members is Aegean Airlines based in Greece. So I will fly United on this trip and credit the mileage to their Star Alliance partner, Aegean. My Aegean frequent flyer # will be on the boarding pass and as far as they know, I'm just another loyal Aegean customer.

3. Why Aegean? 

The Aegean Airlines frequent flyer program is called Miles & Bonuses. Since Aegean is a Greek airline primarily serving a domestic market, they don't fly that many long haul routes compared to United or Lufthansa.

Therefore, M&B has one of the lowest mileage thresholds for earning elite status in the industry. In a single rolling 12 month period, only 4,000 miles are required for Aegean Blue (comparable to United Silver which requires 25,000 United mile per calendar year) and 20,000 miles for Aegean Gold (comparable to United Gold and it's 50,000 mile in a calendar year requirement). Plus, just for signing up with M&B, you get a free 1,000 mile head start, so it's really only 3,000 miles for Blue and 19,000 miles for Gold.

Additionally, while most frequent flyer programs have elite status that ends every year, Aegean's lasts indefinitely. After you have earned Blue or Gold status once with Aegean, you keep it as long as as your M&B account is active, which means having at least 1 flight credited to Aegean every 3 years. For United (and most other airlines), you'd have to fly another 50,000 miles each calendar year to retain Gold status for the next year. It's just a crazy hamster wheel.

4. 20,000 miles seems to be 3-4 month's worth of travel for you. Why did it take so long?
Good question. Not every flight earns the same % of miles in each program. It's based on a few things: (a) what airline I'm actually flying and (b) what the fare class was on my ticket.

Each operating airline (the one actually labeled on the plane you're flying) has a different agreement with each of the other Star Alliance members in terms of crediting mileage. Aegean has a website with each of their partner airlines to show you what you'd earn on each of the 25+ other partners.

Separately, the mileage credit depends on the fare class of your ticket. I'm not talking just the cabin classes of first, business or coach. There's literally a dozen fare classes within each cabin class (F, A, J, C, D, Z, Y, etc), so you can earn anywhere from 0%-300% of the mileage depending the airline program you want to credit the miles to.

Most leisure travelers who book weeks in advance have oftentimes purchased discounted economy tickets (W, S, T, L, K, or G). These discounted economy fare classes on United "metal" only earn 50% mileage credit with Aegean. In fact, even some discounted business class fares (P) earn nothing in Aegean's program.

5. So then you really flew 40,000 miles to get Aegean Gold? 

Not really 40,000 miles, but yes, definitely more than 20,000. First, as I mentioned earlier, you receive 1,000 Tier miles just for signing up.

Second, some of my flights were actually on US Airways (when they were still part of the Star Alliance). The agreement between Aegean and US Airways was to give 100% credit on all economy fare classes.

Additionally, there is also a 500 mile minimum you will earn on all flights, regardless of fare class. So for United flights under 1,000 miles (like New York-Chicago), I'd still earn 500 miles on Aegean and not 357 (50% of the actual 714 miles flown).

6. But then still...Why Aegean instead of just crediting to United?
Another multi-part answer. First, starting in 2014, United implemented a dollar spend requirement to earn status with their MileagePlus program. The way my family chooses to fly - long distances on cheap fares - we were not going to meet the $5,000 Premier Qualifying Dollar requirement for United Gold (or even $2,500 United Silver) even if we were able to hit the mileage targets.

To give you an example, my father has flown 36,928 miles credited to United already this year before including our ZRH-TLV (1,747 miles) and TLV-EWR (5,692 miles) flights. So he's well on his way towards United Gold's 50,000 threshold by December 31.

However, in terms of PQD, he has only spent $2,096 and will likely not get to $5,000 absent some really bad situation where he needs to buy an expensive last minute ticket. Fortunately, he can waive this PQD requirement by spending $25,000 on his United co-branded credit card in 2014. Through his manufactured spending tricks, he's already been able to do just that.

Fun fact, though - 2.5 year old toddlers can't get credit cards, so I'm SOL.

Second reason. If I earn Aegean Gold status now, I'll potentially have it for the rest of my life (as long as the M&B program rules don't change). I can always earn United Gold status later on and get on that hamster wheel later.

And the most important reason, when you have Gold status with a foreign Star Alliance airline, you get complimentary access to United's domestic airport lounges. Oddly enough, even having United Gold won't get you United lounge access within the US unless your itinerary includes an international segment overseas.

So if I'm flying United BusinessFirst class from New York-Honolulu and have United Gold status, no lounge access for me.

But if I were flying New York-Boston and flashed my Aegean M&B Gold card, then I'm relaxing in leather seats enjoying Youtube using the free lounge wifi while my dad is drinking free cheap beer and mother is stealing packing up the complimentary crackers and carrot sticks.

[UPDATE (September 23, 2014): Aegean announced they are changing their Miles & Bonus frequent flyer program so that you need to re-qualify each year. Therefore, it makes less sense to go for Aegean Gold Status.]

One Last United MileagePlus Redemption

This past weekend, United Airlines implemented their new award redemption price chart, which frequent flyers have been dreading for the past few months.

For most people who use their United MileagePlus miles to redeem for economy award seats, the new pricing chart won't be much of a change (unless you're going to Hawaii).

However, for those people who were planning to redeem United miles for premium cabin seats on Star Alliance partners (i.e., Lufthansa, Thai, Swiss, ANA, Turkish), then this repricing is like pooping yourself without your diaper on. For example, our flight from Thailand on Asiana business class last year will now cost 160,000 miles round trip per person, up from just 120,000 miles when we took the trip (33% increase). Unfortunately, while we never had a chance to fly International First Class, some of those awards go from 140,000 miles round trip to a whopping 260,000 miles -- an 86% increase!

Graphic from Travel Summary

Of course, now that I'm over 2 years old, my family has to pay for my own seat on our trips. Meaning, we'd have to book 3 award seats now all at these new higher prices. As good as my father is at generating frequent flyer miles and points, we probably weren't going to be able to fly in business/first class anymore after the new pricing scheme took effect.

So with the deadline looming, he decided to pull to the trigger on one last premium cabin redemption for my parents' 5th wedding anniversary coming up this July. The good news was that there were actually some decent award flight options for the trip in mid-late July to Europe where they were looking. The bad news was that my father only had about 30,000 miles in his United account (after redeeming a bunch for our last minute trip to Israel last September).

Fortunately, we had a stash of Chase Ultimate Reward points built up from both my parents opening up 3 different Chase credit cards each and spending on them over the past two years.

So we found some sweet business class awards on Lufthansa from New York JFK to Rome (via Munich) on Lufthansa's A330 planes which should have their new business class seats. Baby Songer loves her lie-flat seating on overnight transatlantic flights.

The Stopover
Now we could have stayed in/around Rome for the entire trip, but we like taking advantage of United's flexible award routing rules. As you may recall, United lets you stop somewhere for up to 1 year before continuing on to your final destination. So we could have used Rome as our final destination, but we decided to use it as our stopover city instead.

Because we were flying on Lufthansa both ways, we'd have to connect back in Munich (or Frankfurt) on the return anyway. So it wouldn't matter where we were coming from as long as we got back to Germany to connect onto our final return flight to NYC.

My nerd father likes to have themes for his big trips.

• In 2012, it was Japan and Korea (historic enemies). 
• In 2013, it was Germany and France (another pair of historic enemies). 

So for 2014, we "needed" to find somewhere that fit in well thematically with Italy. Note: my father did notice that he seemed to be hitting all 3 of the World War II Axis Powers (Japan, Germany and Italy). To be fair though, that was 1 of the 100 questions my mother had to study for her U.S. Citizenship test.

Then an idea entered his mind. Italy & Greece. These two ancient power cultures formed the origins for all current socio-political intellectual thought in Western civilization. Of course today, the nations of Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Julius Caesar and Michelangelo are currently represented by slick Mediterraneans with excessive body hair and gold chain necklaces.

 vs. 

But my father had never been to Greece, so after looking up dates and flights that worked out to give us 5-6 nights in each place, here's what our trip will look like flying on Lufthansa and Aegean Airlines.

1. Thu July 17 - New York to Munich (Lufthansa Business) arriving July 18
2. Fri July 18 - Munich-Rome (Lufthansa Business) - STOPOVER
3. Wed July 23 - Rome-Athens (Aegean Business) - FINAL DESTINATION
4. Tue July 29 - Athens-Munich (Lufthansa Business)
5. Tue July 29 - Munich-New York (Lufthansa Business)

Total cost per person: 100,000 United miles + $163 cash. Had we waited til today to book this trip, it would have been 140,000 United miles + $163 cash. For those of you who are bad at math, that's an additional 120,000 miles for the 3 of us.