QUOTE(dctravels @ Dec 22 2015, 08:17 PM)
Sifu
tishaban, I would be grateful if you can share strategies for J redemption for the whole family (I have four kids, like bro Gen-X but slightly younger lol). Also, any chance of me getting a US based CC while based here?
First, strategies change with time as airlines adapt, so as usual YMMV.
You have to choose the correct airline. For OW I primarily look at CX and to a lesser extent QR or JL. If the schedule fits, MH works too. For *A I used to check primarily TK but it's far harder to get premium seats now.
Next decide on where you want to go. There are 5 daily HKG-NYC CX flights for example, but far fewer flights to EU cities.
Airlines release different numbers of premium seats. CX will release up to 5 J and 2 F up to a year out, JL and QR will release 4 J and 2 F a year out too, but I've booked 5 seats on JL J before. Read up flyertalk and you'll get some details on the other airlines.
Closer to departure date, between 3 weeks to the day of departure, some airlines eg. LH or CX will release most of their unsold seats so you can easily get all 6 seats in J. I've even seen 5 CX F seats open once upon a time. For example, Dec 24th shows CX J wide open on HKG-JFK/EWR and JFK/EWR-HKG is wide open in CX J on Dec 25th.
There are other things that you learn from experience, eg. JL J SAN-NRT used to be wide open, KUL-DOH is really hard to get but SIN-DOH and BKK-DOH are typically much easier. You can technically get BKK-AUH-CDG on the QR A380 with 2 in F and 4 in J.
FWIW I'm planning for another trip to the US east coast probably towards the end of 2016, I'm targeting potentially QR J KUL-AUH-BCN then BCN-NYC-xxx on AA Y returning on CX or JL J NYC-HKG/NRT-KUL.
QUOTE(dctravels @ Dec 22 2015, 08:17 PM)
Also, any chance of me getting a US based CC while based here?
There are options, but none are easy or quick. To just earn miles through credit card spend, I can easily give you a card as an "employee" but the earning rates on the Maybank Premiere cards are significantly better.
To earn miles via sign up bonuses means you need to have a credit history. You need to have a US Social Security number or Tax ID number to have a credit history, so even though you can get a Tax ID number through various ways, it'll take a year or so of spending and paying your card to build up credit history. A typical sign up bonus is 50k miles after $3k spend in 3 months. Exceptional ones go up to 100k or more. So again you'll have to decide if it makes sense or not.
QUOTE(dctravels @ Dec 22 2015, 08:17 PM)
Sometimes when I am short of miles, I will "purchase" miles by charging certain transactions with merchants and paying the 1.x% on their behalf. At our current exchange rate and based on my research on flyertalk, this is the cheapest way to "purchase" miles. Malaysia Boleh!
I should ask you where you're doing this, but offline of course
I haven't had the need to do it recently, have done it before but the avenues have closed for me recently.
This post has been edited by tishaban: Dec 22 2015, 10:49 PM