Abby S – DCAAs part of Airtran’s merger with Southwest, you can now transfer Southwest miles to Airtran reward flight credits at a rate of 1,200 Southwest miles to 1 Airtran credit.  Additionally, if you don’t have many SW points, you can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points 1 to 1 to SW points, and then the SW points to Airtran credit.  Why do this?  It takes 8 Airtran credits for a one-way coach ticket *anywhere *Airtran flies — including Mexico, the Bahamas, and as far as Aruba — so for 19,200 Southwest miles or Ultimate Rewards Points, you can fly round-trip to Mexico or the Caribbean.  This is much better than the standard 35,000 mile coach redemptions for Mexico and the Caribbean through United, Delta, and American, and can be a very good value — I recently booked tickets to Cancun and the cheapest fares available were over $600, so this would be an approximately 3 cent per mile coach redemption.  It also may be much better than what you could otherwise get out of your SW miles, which are fixed at 1.66 cent per mile value, meaning 19,200 SW miles would normally be worth only a max of $318. 

For those looking to visit Europe later this year but have hit a wall trying to use their miles to book a roundtrip award ticket, if you work with a mileage program that allows one-way awards (United, BA, AA), then see if you can get at least one way booked as an award, and then pay for the other one-way via Iceland Air.
Sure, you’ll be paying out of pocket for a flight, but on most dummy searches for one-way flights from JFK, BOS or IAD, Iceland Air is offering far and away the most competitive — and honest — pricing to destinations like London or Paris, selling the one-way fare for basically half the price of a full roundtrip. I thought this was worthy of being highlighted, because it’s rare to ever see an airline offer one-way fares for exactly 50% of what the roundtrip costs, instead trying to gouge the customer by charging like 2/3rds the price of a roundtrip. You’ll connect in Iceland’s capital of Reykjavik, where you could just transit or spend a few days in the city and their attractive naturally heated pools.
Iceland Air doesn’t have many airline partners on which you can collect those butt-in-seat miles, but does partner with Alaska Airlines, a valuable program for those who know how to use it.

$194 JFK-San Juan round-trip (including tax). Example: May 2-5 on Delta. Good for various days over the next month or so if you want to get take a quick trip down the beach to get summer off to an early start.

You can buy Best Western, Choice, Hilton, and/or Hyatt points for cheap from Daily Getaways (https://dailygetaways.ustravel.org) and then use them to transfer to US Airways for hits in the next Grand Slam.

Matt B.
LAX

Chris G – EWR

Aeromexico Club Premier Kilometers can also be redeemed for LAN.  

http://clubpremier.com/us/use-your-kmp/airlines/lanNo differentiation between Santiago and Easter Island.  Their award chart has no listing for USA to South America 2, but only Mexico to South America 2.  Just called for a dummy booking Mexico City to Easter Island, and the agent quoted 64,000km for economy and 128,000km for business.  Amex MR is a transfer partner for Aeromexico.

Also, there is some confusion with transfers from MR, as the MR site states 1k MR = 1k CP Miles, though they use Kilometers.  Agent confirmed that US-issued Amex transfers at a rate of 1 point – 1.6 “miles” (really kilometers).  So 40k/80k MR for LAN business Mexico-Easter Island.  I’m sure similar rates originating from the US.  Sure beats using Avios.

If you have a Visa Signature card and book hotel stays at visasignaturehotels.com, you can receive a 4th night free and $75-100 in dining credit at certain Fairmont Hotels including The Plaza for a limited time. 

Deniz O. JFK