Using points for Cheap Flights to Asia

How did I score cheap flights to Asia and pay only $138 for TWO roundtrip tickets?

I wanted to visit my family in Cebu, Philippines next year. However, I also did not want to pay thousands of dollars in plane tickets.  The solution?  Pay my tickets using points.  Here’s how I did it:

I had a targeted offer from the Chase United credit card for 60K points with a $95 annual fee which is not waived in the first year for my offer.  Luckily, you can get the value back by using the $100 credit for Global Entry and 2 United club passes. Therefore, I’m not counting this fee as a cost to my flight due to the credits/passes.  With credit card offers, you need to take action almost immediately if you want to take advantage of the offers as it could disappear in a few weeks or months.  The 60K points is A LOT of points compared to the usual offer of 40,000. The United credit card offer as of December 21, 2018 is 40K points plus 25K points if you spend 10K in the first 6 months.   Tip:  Add an authorized user to get the extra 5,000 points. 

Now, using the United website, I searched how many points it would take for two one-way flights to Cebu, Philippines.  The search indicated 80K points for two tickets.  That means, I only needed 15K points to get to my essentially FREE tickets (the taxes/fees were $11 for two). I gathered the 15K points from the few points I had from my previous travels, additional points earned from the required $2K spend for the first 3 months to get the bonus, and transferred the remaining points I needed from my Chase Ultimate Rewards points to United mileage, which is transferred immediately. 

Now, I needed points to get back to San Diego from the Philippines. haha!  I looked at the American Airlines (AA) website and see where in Asia I could use my points. The result indicated I needed 35K points each for a flight from Hong Kong to San Diego and $127 in taxes/fees .  Yessss! Depending on the month/day you are flying, it could cost you as low as 32.5K points each.  Since I already had 70K points from previous travels, credit card opening, taking surveys, this didn’t cost me additional money. 

I recommend opening up AA credit cards if you don’t have AA points. Read my blog on Using Points for a trip to Jamaica to know which credit cards to get AA points  (click here). Overall, I’m super excited to visit my family and I’m so glad I only paid $138 for two round trip tickets. Asia, here I come! 

Tell me how you use your points to book a trip or score a cheap flights to Asia, comment below…

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