I am trying to understand how the complex world of frequent flyer systems work especially with partners airlines, in this case Star Alliance. I love the PH team and community as an invaluable knowledge bank and I have been using amex and flybuys rewards for my main points collection towards VFF and Krisflyer with the intention of all going to KF. That was until I recently read ANA is great for star alliance award searchs, so i plugged in my 2 X business class MEL-CDG return flights and it finds 2 award saver seats with Thai for 132,000 points. Krisflyer bookings on Singapore would cost 190,000 points now and 210,00 if i book after 7th Dec.
What I don’t understand is, if I book via ANA for a flight on Thai does ANA charge me their 132,000 rates using my KF points or do they charge me the KF rates at 190,000? Or is it something else that i’m missing?
You won’t be able to transfer your Amex MR pionts to ANA, so that won’t be possible.
Also you can’t book via ANA unless you’re using their currency, they don’t “accept” krisflyer miles. You can upgrade across the *A group, but can only get outright award seats via the native ‘currency’.
Amex MR can be transferred to Thai miles though, so you should look into booking them them to see if it’s cheaper (I don’t think so though, I think its 170K Thai miles).
Another thing to consider is the Velocity transfer bonus that’s on right now, and see if you can use them to book on Singapore airlines (not transferring, booking through velocity). If there is availability when you want to travel, you can get them for effectively 120K (139K regular, but with the 15% bonus it brings it down to ~120K)