Chase Ultimate Rewards program is a fantastic flexible-rewards program that has many valuable transfer partners. Unfortunately, Chase is losing one of them. Korean Air SKYPASS will no longer be a participating transfer partner effective Aug. 25.
Although booking SKYPASS awards is a bit of a convoluted process that involves sending paperwork to add family members to your frequent-flyer account, the program itself is a great one for booking SkyTeam awards. You can book round-trip Delta Air Lines-operated economy flights to Hawaii for 25,000 miles, business class to Europe and back for 80,000 miles on SkyTeam partners, such as Air France and KLM, not to mention great availability in premium cabin on its own metal to South Korea.
The last day to request a point transfer is Aug. 24, but as always don’t transfer your points speculatively. After all, your plans might change or availability might not be there in the future. You don’t want to lock your UR points in one specific program. Having said that, SKYPASS miles do not expire for 10 years, which gives you plenty of time to use them without having immediate plans in mind.
Keep in mind that Ultimate Rewards point transfers to SKYPASS aren’t instant. It can take two to seven days for the transfer to complete.
Chase UR-earning cards aren’t the only way to get your hand on Korean Air miles. You can convert your Starpoints (or soon-to-be Marriott points) to the program at a rate of 20,000-to-25,000 (or 60,000-to-25,000 starting Aug. 18) or apply for one of the co-branded credit cards from U.S. Bank.
At this time, we have no word on whether Korean Air SKYPASS would become a transfer partner of another program or not. We also do not know if and when Chase would add another transfer partner(s) to the program to replace the major void SKYPASS is about to leave for many cardholders.
What is your plan regardless of transferring or not transferring Ultimate Rewards points to Korean Air SKYPASS before their partnership ends?
