The thing no one's saying about that new CapitalOne card

This week everyone was surprised when Capital One announced that they were going to allow their points to be transferred directly into airline points programs. It's been interesting to see all of the various blogs doing their analyses without ever really bringing up the fact that no one knows if this is going to be an instant points transfer (like with Chase and Amex) or a multi-day process (like with SPG/Marriott points).

What's a bit irksome for me about the mainstream blogs' coverage is that they seem to have forgotten how normal people use their points. Given how few airlines let you put tickets on hold (Korean and Virgin Atlantic both come to mind), a slow transfer like SPG's means that you risk marooning your points if you transfer them and the award vanishes by the time your points show up. This has actually happened to me and it's stressful and irritating.

UPDATE (Dec 2018): The first real-world tests of transfer times are coming in, looks like a few of them are instant!

If you're The Points Guy, you won't really care if you've transferred, say, 160,000 points over to Cathay Asia Miles and your seats are now gone, because you've probably got several million more in your Amex or Chase account to use for your backup plan on another carrier. Furthermore, you can probably figure out some work-related use for the 160,000 marooned points. But the rest of us, we've likely completely screwed our current vacation because there's no way to reverse a points transfer, and few of us have a large enough stash of points for a backup plan.

At that point you either move your vacation to whatever dates you can find seats, or pay cash for the current trip and then eventually try to spend the marooned points by learning the foreign carrier's partner redemption procedure and spending those points for other travel before they expire or get devalued.

So if Capital One's new program ends up being an instant transfer, none of this is a problem. But if the transfers aren't instant, your options are:

• transfer to an airline that allows you to hold award reservations (best option), or
• transfer to an airline that has wide-open award availability (ok option), or
• transfer to an airline where you can still use your points even if your seat vanishes (worst option)

Here's the list of their transfer partners:

• Aeromexico
• Air Canada Aeroplan
• Air France/KLM
• Alitalia
• Avianca
• Cathay Pacific
• Etihad
• EVA
• Finnair
• Hainan
• Qantas
• Qatar
• Emirates (added Dec 2018)
• Singapore (added Dec 2018)

The first thing you'll notice is that none of them are domestic USA carriers, so there's no option to top off the account where you're already accumulating points from your domestic travel.

Now let's look at award holds. Being able to hold a seat until the points show up is the ideal situation for a non-instant transfer. AirFrance/KLM Flying Blue offers a 3 day hold via their call center. But do note that Flying Blue points have hard expiration dates that cannot be refreshed by new account activity (i.e., your marooned points will die there after 2 years). Alitalia offers a 7 day hold via their call center, but they've been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy for a while, so I don't know that I would book award travel with them more than a couple months out. Cathay offers a 48 hour hold, but only when you have 70% of the needed miles in the account so that's not really useful in this case. None of the rest of these partners offers holds.

※ Note to self: American Airlines, while not a Capital One transfer partner, offers 5 day award holds.

Aeromexico used to have some sweet spots in their chart but they've taken a page from their partner Delta's playbook recently and there's very few award seats yielding above 1¢ per point now. We've switched to using the "mexican reach-around" to buy the tickets with cash, but are trying out JetBlue's super cheap service from JFK to Mexico City in early 2019.
(Link 1, Link 2)

Aeroplan was spun off from Air Canada, then completely cut off from Air Canada, then put up for sale, and then bought back by Air Canada. The dust hasn't settled yet, so I personally wouldn't want to maroon any points there until that's figured out.

Avianca routinely has sales where you can buy their LifeMiles for a very discounted price. This might be an interesting option since you could top off the account (if needed) with money and use marooned points for another Star Alliance partner redemption.

EVA is a great way to get to Asia from North America and their Sanrio planes are a fun option for intra-Asia flights. Their miles have an un-refreshable 3 year expiration date, and they don't offer award ticket holds. Unfortunately their web booking system is fairly low-fi, so you can submit a request for a reward ticket on the web, but it's issued as "pending availability", so I'd say just call. Reports are that they have much better availability on EVA flights for their own members than what they share with their Star Alliance partners. Reports also say that their phone agents are terrible at booking Star Alliance partner rewards with EVA miles.

Etihad is in OneWorld and also accepts incoming transfers from Amex and Citi. It sounds like you still have to call in to make partner rewards, and their points also have a 3 year expiration.

Finnair is in OneWorld and offers holds on purchased tickets, but not on awards.

Hainan is not part of any alliance. They have airline partners for earning miles, but they don't seem to allow partner redemptions yet. Their website seems to say that every single seat on the plane is available for awards, so unless the flight is completely sold out, you should be able to book a seat with points.

Hmm... I hope that's true!

Qantas. It's basically impossible to get a Business Class award seat from North America to Australia on Qantas. Unless you have some other domestic Australia or intra-Asia trip planned with them don't bother. 

Qatar has been making lots of noise recently about leaving OneWorld, so I wouldn't risk marooning points over here, either.

So What Would Brian Do?

1. I'm thinking our next trip to Asia is going to route thru Chengdu and Hainan now offers non-stop service from JFK, so I'll do some research and see how realistic that "every seat" claim is.
2. Wait for all the mainstream blogs do their "real world tests" to see how long each of the transfers takes and then use the FlyingBlue hold to book travel to Europe if the transfer can happen during the hold window.
3. Scour the FlyerTalk forums to see if, in fact, EVA has much better availability for members of their own program versus partners. I love going to Taiwan so much that I'd risk marooning points there since I go every year or two and EVA is a fantastic airline.