I have done a decent amount of research into the awards/flight redemption world and am now trying to actually execute so any help/guidance would be appreciated!

I am trying to find PE or business flights for my family of 4 from JFK to LIS next April (but open to other European destinations too like Brussels, AMS, MAD). I keep seeing/hearing about good availability and deals on TAP in general but have no been able to find anything. I have been searching Aeroplan for TAP flights and Air France for delta flights but the flights that exist don't even show up when I search those partner sites - am I doing something wrong that I don't even see the flights there? Or is there just no availability? Is my timing off?

Trying to understand if I am doing something wrong or if I am doing it right and there is just no availability.

I am trying to sign up for the JAL JMB, but the phone number portion is driving me crazy. I have tried different formats and keep getting an error message. what do I do?

Error message:

• Please enter "Phone number" in the correct format within 14 numeric characters.

I've got over 145K delta miles looking to travel from Atlanta to Rome next May. Flights are running 100k plus for the whole month which seems ridiculous. It's been that way since flights opened in June. For those of you frequent flyers, do you think that mileage will drop? Trying to cover both me and my spouse with that mileage.

Turkish Airlines Limited-time offer running Sep 2–10 that may be relevant for members trying to retain or upgrade status before upcoming award travel.

The thresholds are:

100K–149,999 miles → 5K Status Miles
150K–199,999 miles → 10K Status Miles
200K–249,999 miles → 15K Status Miles
250K–500K miles → 20K Status Miles

The Status Miles have to come from a single transaction and can only be used toward status qualification or renewal.

For those who regularly redeem through Miles&Smiles, do you think reaching or retaining Elite/Elite Plus this way offers enough additional value to justify it, or would you rather keep status qualification separate from your redemption strategy?

For context, I have tried using a few. Though not for very long.

My questions:

1. Is there a clear go-to tool (or combo of tools) that covers most use cases well, or does everyone end up juggling 2-3 of these?
2. For those who have a paid version, which one(s) do you think are actually worth the money vs. just using the free version?
3. Any deal breakers I should know about before picking one as my "primary" tool?

Appreciate any input from people who've actually used these day-to-day or plan trips in advance.

Saw this pop up on my (laughably outdated) RSS feed and had to do a double-take like this was a super duper late April Fools joke…

OMAAT is probably the only OG points blogger I still read on a sporadic basis. I’ve enjoyed Ben’s content, not just the tips but his reviews of largely aspirational bookings, stories about his fam, and I’ve given him a few affiliate clicks over the years but this seems SUCH AN ODD way to monetize the site further with a seeming mashup of Bilt 2.0, Substack, Reddit, FT …thoughts?

Are folks still reading OMAAT (let alone engaging on) boarding area and the like?

Trying to use Chase Edit credit for a 2 night stay:

Same room is:
Hotel website $800
Chase Travel: $1000 (or $500+ 25K UR)

A lesser room on hotel website is $700 and this room
Is fine for my needs but not available on Chase travel

Is the “true” cost of the Chase travel room really: ($800-$500)/25K or 1.2cpp? Or am I missing something?

What is the best value here: cash for lesser room?

I have no other uses for this Edit credit so it’s use it on this hotel or forfeit it.

For some reason, my brain is not getting this.

we are doing the safari/seychelles combo in april, and getting to the seychelles from south africa is weirdly hard.

inital plan had been to skip our last game drive (so get 7 of 8 available) and catch one of the three weekly directs that night between JNB and SEZ after a safari camp hopper flight. problem is to get to the island in seychelles we want to stay at anyway, would need to stay a night on main island and fly out to other in the morning as we'd miss the last island hopper. The direct is air Seychelles and I’d book with some 1.5x value UR.

other idea i had was a later connecting redeye through nairobi. would allow us to see last game drive, but JNB-NBO-SEZ getting in at like 4am would obviously suck. but we would get to our destination at the same time if not earlier since we have to stay that positioning night in the other plan anyway. Would book this same way or via a VS transfer.

flights to the seychelles are weirdly limited from south africa/kenya so option two scares be a bit due to more connections/room for error. crappy sleep/lack of sleep we'll get over.

anyone have thoughts, tips, or experience here? I realize this is pretty niche/might just be strictly personal preference.

Trying to decide whether this is one of the rare situations where a speculative transfer actually makes sense.

I have ~215k Capital One miles and currently don’t have any particularly compelling use for them. For context, I’m sitting on roughly ~1.7M Amex MR, ~1.3M Chase UR, and ~250k Bilt, so I already have pretty substantial coverage of most of C1’s overlapping transfer partners. I’m also continuing to earn MR through SUBs.

With the current 30% C1 → JAL bonus, the normal 1,000 C1 → 750 JAL becomes 1,000 C1 → 975 JAL. Transferring my entire ~215k balance would therefore give me roughly 209.6k JAL miles, versus only ~161.3k at the normal ratio.
I do want to take my parents to Japan in the future, likely in JAL business class. I’ve been seeing JAL’s own-metal saver pricing around 55k for the first couple of J seats, with subsequent seats sometimes around 80–85k, so ~210k JAL could potentially cover a one-way for all 3 of us depending on availability/pricing.

I also have ~250k Bilt, which transfers 1:1 to JAL. So between Bilt + transferring C1 during this bonus, I’d effectively have access to roughly 460k JAL miles.

The obvious catch: I’m not planning to book Japan anytime soon. It could easily be 2027/2028, so I’d be locking ~215k transferable points into JAL, starting the 36-month expiration clock, and taking on the risk of award-chart/availability changes.

Normally I’d never speculatively transfer ~200k points, but my thinking is:

C1 doesn’t currently have another unique/compelling use for me. I don’t fly EVA/TK.

~1.7M MR + ~1.3M UR already cover most of the partners I’d otherwise use C1 for.

0.975 JAL per C1 is dramatically better than the normal 0.75.

Japan/JAL is a redemption I genuinely expect to make within the next few years.

I have another ~250k Bilt available for JAL.

I can also acquire additional C1 miles at around 1.2cpp if I unexpectedly need C1 later.

Would you dump the ~215k C1 into JAL now and lock in ~210k miles, or keep the C1 flexible despite having ~3M+ points across other transferable currencies?

Where would you draw the line between reasonable positioning for a likely future redemption and speculative-transfer stupidity?

Got 100k chase and 100k amex points. wanna go to japan for two weeks, cheapest route i can take from cleveland area to japan,
. maybe neighboring airports, would prefer to use least amount of points unless a crazy deal in business comes up what would y’all do?