Trying out the United Polaris product on my way home from Asia.
How I fly business class
A concrete example of how I leverage my credit card points to travel around the world full-time. For my full guide, check here.
Back in spring 2022 I knew I wanted to go to Asia for year end, now that it had been opening up again post pandemic.
Travel forums like flyertalk sometimes circulate deals where you can get flights or hotels for record low points. This time, it was United that had a bunch of deals starting in the fall for routes between Asia and the US.
While the deals started for August, thankfully they existed through the remainder of the year. Therefore, I could finally experience New Years in Asia like I dreamed!
The cash price for those dates were around $9,000 😱
But the points redemption was only 60k!
Here are the details. You can usually get 60k by getting the spend bonus for a credit card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred, which has a $95 annual fee. I had received the 60k after spending $4,000 in 3 months, on things I was planning to buy anyways. Therefore, I basically just paid $95 for a business class ticket.
I decided to humble myself and take economy on the way to Asia, but take business on the way back.
Economy seats weren’t bad either at 38.5k points.
So once I finalized my dates, I transferred my points over from Chase to my United account, and booked! See screenshots below.
For more info on the cards I use, check this.
Tips
The credit cards I use.
All my travel hacks!
Take advantage of each airline’s alliance, or other airlines they partner with. The best time it’s useful is when the flight requires a lot of point. But if you find the same flight on a partner airline (so, within the same alliance), it could be much less. For example, flying ANA between US and Japan may cost 150,000 points on ANA’s website, but only 90,000 on Virgin Airlines which is one of its partners.
Next step, free hotel stays!