I agree with this way more than I expected. A lot of people push the “one ecosystem only” idea, but real redemptions don’t always work that cleanly.
Pooling points from Citi, Amex, and BILT to hit 115k Asia Miles for a DFW to JNB business class on the A380 is exactly why flexibility matters. If you’d locked yourself into one currency, that redemption probably doesn’t happen at all.
The overlap in transfer partners plus occasional transfer bonuses makes mixing currencies way more powerful than people admit. Yeah it’s more to track, but the payoff can be huge when you’re chasing specific premium routes.
$18k retail for that flight is pretty wild. Hard to argue with results like that.
0