Welcome Back!

Hope everyone is thriving this week - tax day is behind us and nicer spring weather is upon us 🌳 

So I booked some award travel over the weekend! I’ll be going to a wedding in South Korea next year, and I’ve booked my flights 🛫 

In addition to some big news from United, I thought I’d go through the details of my points redemption today - I hope it gives you some insight into how I like to think when I book travel using my points!

In today’s edition:

• 🇰🇷 Korea-Bound! 🇰🇷 

• 🏦 Transfer Bonuses ✈️

• 🌐 United in a Divided Star Alliance? 😭 

• 📰 Other Stories and Deals 💰️

🇰🇷 Korea-Bound! 🇰🇷 

Another great trip booked with points, and for a wedding no less! Let me tell you all about how I booked, thanks to my points & miles.

If you’ve been reading previous newsletters, you’ll know there is a transfer bonus section just below. Well, there is a 30% transfer bonus from Capital One to Virgin Atlantic! 👍️ 

Even better, Virgin Atlantic partners with Korean Air, and charges 37,000 miles + $28.70 in taxes and fees for the nonstop route I needed (JFK-ICN in economy). To my knowledge, this is one of the best ways to get from NYC to Korea in economy using points.

The 30% transfer bonus from Capital One actually means that instead of transferring 37000 miles, I only needed to transfer 29000 miles! So I got a nonstop ticket in economy from New York to Korea for 29000 Capital One miles + $28.70 in taxes and fees 🤑

For the trip back, I booked using cash, because the cash price of the flight was:

Now you may be wondering: Why didn’t I use points for the return flight? Well, it is due to something called CPP, or Cents Per Point (which is what inspired the name of this newsletter, by the way!)

CPP is a value measuring what the value of a point is for a particular redemption. The formula is usually the cash price of your trip minus the taxes and fees, divided by the points cost of the trip:

So in this case, the cash price of my trip is $444, while the points cost would have been 29,000 points + $38.10 in fees (the return route has different taxes). Those numbers in the formula yield a 1.39 CPP, meaning that each point in this redemption is worth around 1.39 cents. That’s not high enough for me, so I just booked cash! 💸 

I hope this has been helpful - taking advantage of a transfer bonus as well as knowing what CPP justifies booking with cash vs points are just some good tips and tricks to know for when you book your next trip using points!

Now just counting down the days till I can enjoy some nice K-BBQ 🍖

🏦➡️✈️ Transfer Bonuses

🌐 United in a Divided Star Alliance? 😭 

Some news on United: As reported by DansDeals, United is blocking award availability from its partners, meaning that in some cases, only United miles can be used to book United award flights. This has huge implications for United’s Star Alliance transfer partners.

Partners like Aeroplan, Avianca, and Turkish previously had full access to award flights on United, while charging less points for them than United does itself. For example:

• Newark (EWR) to Honolulu (HNL) in nonstop economy costs 25k United miles, or 10k(!) Turkish miles 🌴 

• Houston (IAH) to Aspen (ASE) in nonstop economy costs 15k United miles, or 10k Avianca LifeMiles ⛷️ 

Now, however, partners have access to less United award flights, and sometimes don’t have any at all 😭 

Searching for a EWR-HNL flight for Jan. 15th, 2025, for example, shows award availability on the flight (“Saver Award” usually meant that the award ticket is available to partners):

Doing the same search on Turkish, which should show the same flights available, now shows nothing:

As for the flight from IAH-ASE, doing that search for Jan. 15th, 2025 shows three nonstop flights available:

The same search on Avianca, however, only shows two nonstop flights instead of all three:

This does make United miles, and Chase UR points, by extension, slightly more valuable, as they have access to more United award space now compared to other partners. This is also still developing, although when asked to clarify whether this is a bug or a deliberate change, United basically confirmed intent:

For the moment, though, this seems to only affect economy flights, as business award availability is still visible on United and its partners. Hopefully these changes won’t come after business class seats too 🥺

📰 Other Stories 📰

• 🗼ANA is devaluing its program on April 18th (Thursday). They’ve left their Round-the-World pricing intact, though!

• 🏦 US Bank Altitude Reserve cardholders who’ve been having issues with the 3x on mobile wallet purchases, don’t worry: US Bank is fixing the problem, and you’ll receive points to make up for these issues 👍️ 

💰️ Tips & Deals💰️

• ✈️ Have airline status? Maybe consider a status match to British Airways or Virgin Atlantic 🏆️ 

  • 🏨 On the hotel side, Wynn is also running a status match!

• 🧜🦁 Singapore Airlines released its monthly Spontaneous Escapes! Do check out the routes getting 30% discounts 💰️

• 🧳 The Daily Getaways promotion is back for another year, with points & travel packages! 🧳 

• 🌐 United Mile Play is back! See if you are targeted here 🎯 

• 🍦 Did you know today (4/16) is Free Cone Day? Get some free ice cream!

📤️ Spread the Word! 📤️

Thank you so much for subscribing! This newsletter is committed to providing you all with helpful info and tips to maximize your points and rewards, at no direct cost to you! (appreciate you using any of my referral links, though!)

If you do find this newsletter informative, helpful, or entertaining, I’d greatly appreciate you spreading the word about it! If not, please do give me feedback on how I can improve your Sense per Point experience.

Also, if my newsletter helps you to book travel using points, let me know! It’ll make me so happy 😄 

Hope that all makes sense! That’s all for this week’s edition of Sense per Point.

Wishing everyone a wonderful day and week ❤️ 

- Sean Kim

PS: If you want to make sure Sense per Point doesn’t get caught in your spam, you can move this email to your primary inbox, or Reply “Hello!” directly to this email by clicking the link and hitting send 📩