Freeing my Finnish Avios (Greg’s Flying by the Seat of our Points Journal)

As of May 30th (4 days before the challenge kicks off!), I’ve added a new journal entry about the stuff I’ve accomplished so far with my preparations. The big advance was the new ability to move Finnair Avios to other programs. Yay! Otherwise, I haven’t had much time since I’ve been traveling in Sweden and Norway. I’m back now, though, so I’m going to get serious…

May 30th 2024 (4 days before the challenge kicks-off)

Now that Finnair Avios can be moved to other Avios programs (details here), I completed one of my preparation to-dos. I greased the wheels by spreading out my Avios points across each program: British Airways, Qatar, Iberia, Finnair, and Aer Lingus.

Spreading out my Avios wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. First, I ran into errors when trying to link my Finnair and British Airways accounts. After trying again and again, without changing anything, the accounts eventually linked successfully. Next I tried moving all of my Finnair Avios to British Airways and kept getting an error. Finally I reduced the number to move to a few thousand. That worked! After that, I found I could move any number of Avios back and forth without trouble.

The second problem I had with moving Avios around is that BA’s website didn’t work for me for moving points to Iberia or AerLingus. When I pressed the button to combine Avios, the same page I was already on would simply reload. Finally I got around the issue by logging into my Iberia account. There, I was able to successfully pull Avios from BA and push them to Aer Lingus.

My new Avios totals at the moment are:

• Aer Lingus: 25,000
• British Airways: 85,680
• Finnair: 75,000
• Iberia: 75,000
• Qatar: 70,428

I didn’t spend much time deciding how many Avios to put into each program. The real goal was accomplished: I set everything up so that I can now freely move points around as needed. Point transfers among Avios programs happen instantly.

Now that the Avios’ tasks are done, I still need to get moving with these to-dos that I identified last time:

• To Do: Earn more Bilt points on June 1
• To Do: Scour Singapore’s award charts for any remaining sweet-spots (over the years they’ve systematically killed off the one’s I was aware of).
• To Do: Test searching for awards in major programs that I don’t use regularly (I’ve done some work with LifeMiles, but need to especially practice with Asia miles).
• To Do: Make sure that I’ve installed apps (and can log into the apps) for the programs that I’m most likely to use during the challenge.
• To Do: Deep dive into major flight and hotel award search tools.
• To Do: Practice! (I did practice a little recently with my real-life experience: United-ing Divorced Segments with United’s Excursionist Perk)

Other stuff:

• I just now remembered that I have 10,800 Citi ThankYou points expiring in August (due to product changing a card away from a ThankYou card) so it would be great to use those during the challenge.
• More AA and Bilt points credited to my accounts since my last journal entry, so I’ve updated those totals in the Inventory section of this post.

Previous Journal Entries

May 20th 2024 (2 weeks before the challenge)

The 2024 team challenge is starting soon. It’s going to be a whirlwind of nearly non-stop action. I can’t wait!

But now, I need to prepare…

In a team meeting, I suggested that we each post about how we’re preparing for the challenge. Nick and Tim stared back at me blankly. How does one prepare for a challenge like this? We won’t know anything about where we’ll be going nor what we’ll need to do once we get there until about 2 days before we need to get there (wherever there is) and do that (whatever that is). But there are things we can do to prepare. I haven’t yet been actually doing these things (don’t tell Nick or Tim), but I figured that writing this post would be the kick in the pants I need to get going…

There are things that I should be doing to prepare for the upcoming challenge. I just need to actually do them! I can take inventory of the things I have (points and such), grease the wheels (make sure I can log into all relevant programs and apps; study award charts for sweet-spots; test out ideas; make sure I know how to search for awards with relevant programs; and best of all, I can practice…

Taking Inventory

As I write this, the one thing I’ve done so far is to take inventory. I noted down all of the relevant stuff I have: points, free night certificates, upgrade certificates, elite statuses, rental car points or free days, etc. In doing this, I found that I don’t have many Alaska miles. So I went ahead and linked my Bilt account to my Alaska account. That will smooth the process if I need to transfer any points from Bilt to Alaska during the challenge. Also, I don’t have a huge number of Bilt points. I’ll do my best to add to my Bilt total on June 1st (Bilt doubles all points earned on the first of the month for up to 10K extra points).

• To Do: Earn more Bilt points on June 1

I also found that I have Singapore miles expiring in 6 months. With Singapore, account activity doesn’t renew your miles and I don’t otherwise have a plan for using them. Yikes.

• To Do: Scour Singapore’s award charts for any remaining sweet-spots (over the years they’ve systematically killed off the one’s I was aware of).

I’m also in a weird predicament with respect to Avios. I have 64,000 Qatar Avios which I can easily move around to British Airways, Air Lingus, and Iberia as needed. That might not be enough. But I also have 267K Finnair Avios. Those will become more useful once they enable the ability to move Avios from Finnair to other programs. That capability is expected any day now. But will it happen in time for the challenge? The current Citi to Qatar Avios 30% transfer bonus ends May 31. Should I take advantage of it if I still can’t move my Finnair Avios by May 31st? I don’t think I will. Instead I’ll roll the dice that either Finnair will enable transferring points by the time I need them or that there will be a new transfer bonus to Avios (hopefully from Membership Rewards points where I’m particularly flush with points).

• To Do: Keep checking Finnair’s website for the ability to move Avios to other programs. Once enabled, move points around to make sure it works. Perhaps I’ll even make sure that I have about 70K Avios within each major program so that there may be enough for whatever I need when the time comes (assuming I end up using Avios at all, which is not a given).

You can find my full inventory near the end of this post.

Greasing the Wheels

When the challenge starts, the last thing I’ll need is to find that I can’t log into a particular rewards program; or I can’t figure out how to search or book awards with a program; or I have trouble moving points to where they need to go; etc. My goal here is to make sure I can log into all major programs that I’m likely to use; make sure I know how to search for awards with that program; make sure I can move points around (such as moving Avios from one program to another); etc. Here are some specific things I plan to do:

1. Make sure I can still move Avios from/to Aer Lingus, BA, Iberia, Qatar, and Finnair. For Finnair, I need to wait until they enable that ability (hopefully by the time the challenge starts).
2. Test searching for awards in major programs that I don’t use regularly:
   • Aer Lingus
   • Iberia
   • Cathay Pacific
   • Emirates
   • Etihad
   • Singapore
3. Make sure that I’ve installed apps (and can log into the apps) for the programs that I’m most likely to use during the challenge

Mastering Award Tools

Since I last published updates to my posts on flight award search tools and hotel award search tools, there have been many changes. Authors of these tools and others seem to email me daily with updates. I haven’t been able to keep up!

• To Do: Deep dive into major flight and hotel award search tools.

Practice makes Better

This is probably the number one thing I should do, but I haven’t yet done it. I should come up with multiple possible scenarios so that I can practice finding and booking awards with conditions similar to what I’ll experience during the challenge (e.g. pretend that I have about 48 hours to get to the next location and to check into a hotel).

• To Do: Practice!

Plan for Maintaining Sanity

Once the challenge kicks off, I expect a high octane whirlwind of near non-stop award searching, award booking, traveling, and running around trying to complete random challenges that will be thrown my way. This will be crazy fun, but it will also be exhausting.

My competitors each have a superpower that’s going to make them tough to beat. Nick’s superpower is that he doesn’t need sleep. Not much of it anyway. That’s going to come in very, very handy in this challenge. Tim’s superpower is his iron commitment to working out daily. During our Party of 5 Challenge, Tim somehow managed to hit the gym pretty much every day no matter how exhausted we were and how little time we seemed to have. Regular exercise is incredibly important for keeping one’s physical and mental acuity, but I rarely pull it off when traveling.

To function normally, unlike Nick, I actually need a solid block of 6 to 7 hours sleep. That’s going to be tough to achieve. I also need to pay attention to my eating. When my blood sugar drops, I feel it big time. I get extra shaky and I can’t think straight. Eating healthily and exercising helps prevent that.

My plan to keep my sanity during the challenge is to eat relatively healthily, to exercise regularly, and to avoid drinking too much alcohol. I’m hoping that publicizing these intentions will help me stick with them! These things should help me get solid sleep. But, in case I can’t get enough sleep naturally, I will have some Ambien with me. And if my blood sugar drops, my backpack will be pre-stocked with emergency rations. Let’s just hope that my backpack doesn’t get stolen again. This time I’ll be holding onto it like my life depends on it.

Inventory (Points, Certificates, and Credits)

Last Updated: 5/30/24

Transferable points

• Amex: ~1.3M
• Bilt: ~47K
• Chase: ~500K
• Citi: ~500K (10,800 expire in August)

Airlines

• Air Canada Aeroplan: 126K miles
• Air France / KLM Flying Blue 350K miles
• Alaska Mileage Plan: 46K miles
  • MVP 100K / oneworld Emerald
  • 4 lounge passes
  • 4 MVP® Gold Guest Upgrades
• American Airlines AAdvantage: 622K miles
• Avios
  • Aer Lingus: 25,000
  • British Airways: 85,680
  • Finnair: 75,000
  • Iberia: 75,000
  • Qatar: 70,428
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles: 382K miles
• Delta: 600K miles
  • Diamond Medallion (SkyTeam Elite Plus)
  • 2 Global Upgrade Certs (but should have zero)
  • ~$250 flight credits
• Emirates: 5K miles
• Etihad: 2,500 miles
• JetBlue: 347K miles
  • Mosaic 3 Elite status
  • 4 Mint Upgrades (can be used to book economy and fly business class)
  • Travel Credit $855.98
• Singapore Airlines: 171K miles (expires in 6 months)
• United Airlines MileagePlus: 484K miles
  • Premier Silver status
  • TravelBank: $25 (thanks to my IHG card)
• Virgin Atlantic: ~1M points

Hotels

• Choice Privileges: 125K points
• Hilton: 234K points
  • Gold status
• Hyatt: 230K points
  • Globalist Elite status
  • 4 free night category 1-4 certs
  • 3 suite upgrade awards
• IHG: ~500K points
  • Diamond Elite status
  • 3 40K free night certs: 2 top-off-able, 1 not
• Marriott: ~600K points
  • Titanium Elite status
  • 6 free night certs: three 35K, one 40K, two 85K
  • 4 Nightly Upgrade Awards
• Wyndham Rewards: 105K points
  • Diamond Elite status
• Other hotel related stuff
  • Fine Hotels & Resorts: $200 rebate
  • Chase Sapphire Preferred: $50 hotel rebate

Car Rental Programs

• 1,532 Enterprise points
• 1 National Car Rental free day

Join Team Greg (Subscribe to this Post)

When the challenge begins, I’ll be updating this post regularly. This will be my daily journal where I’ll document my plans, successes, and failures as I go along. I’ll also welcome help. Once we find out where I need to get to, you may have ideas that you’d like to share with me. Perhaps you’ll know a particularly great sweet-spot award to get me there. Or maybe you’ll know a great hotel deal in the destination city. Or maybe you’ll have other advice for the destination city: how to get around, where to eat, etc. If you’re interested in helping me, then commenting at the bottom of this post is how to do it. Also, by subscribing to this post’s comments, you’ll get emailed whenever someone (including me) adds a comment.

Each of the contestants will have a post like this one where everyone is welcome to participate by making suggestions in the comments. You can pick a single team to join (Team Greg, Team Nick, or Team Tim) or, you can click back and forth and help us all. Either way, we’re eager to hear from you!

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