Many of us in the miles and points world are obsessed with getting the “best” redemption. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve seen countless examples of people touting their successes in how many “cents per mile” their redemptions
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve totally done this before, from my 6.5c redemption on a $6500 family trip or talking about how much my first class trip around the world would have “cost” (as if I’d have ever spent $30,000 on one plane flight!)
But, as I was just saying on the Points With a Crew miles and points Facebook group – the “best” redemption is the one that gets you where you want to go, when you want to go there!
Going to Greece
One of my sons has wanted to take our “long distance date”. He saw his brother go to Sweden last month, and perhaps with too many Rick Riordan books on the brain, wants to check out some of the sites in Ancient Greece
With the recent cheap fares to Athens (still available at the time of this writing!), I decided to book it. I could have bought the direct EWR-ATH Emirates fifth freedom flight, but decided to pay a bit extra to have a stopover (technically a 23 hour layover) in Zurich.
How many miles does it take to go to Greece?
I used Chase Ultimate Rewards to book through the Ultimate Rewards portal.
(SEE ALSO: Why it always pays to check the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal before booking a hotel)
My ~$480 ticket ended up being about 38,400 Ultimate Rewards (*2).
Compare that to the 60,000 (*2) Ultimate Rewards it would have required if transferred to, say, United. Though I do have to still get 2 positioning flights to New York City…
This is another important difference between “cash” points and “points” points and in my mind, one more reason about the fallacy of using miles to book economy tickets.
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Actually the comparison to transferring to united to book is even better than you wrote because you will earn miles on your emirates flights that you would not have earned if booked with miles.
Correct. I actually ended up booking flights on Swiss which I BELIEVE credit 50% to United (so about 5,000 miles RT)
How fun! When are you going?
I just did a trip with layovers on the way there and the way back, and I found them so not worth it. Do you have plans for 23 hours in Zurich?
Next spring. I decided not to do a layover on the way out since I figured I’d be jetlagged but did one on the way back. No plans yet