I reached out to Chase about the removal of Korean Air Skypass as a points-transfer partner.
For many members, Korean Air is too obscure to matter. For me, it’s essential. It’s one of my favorite transfer partners, and something that sets Chase apart from key competitors.
- First class awards have been so darned easy to get.
- There are real sweet spots in their Skyteam award chart
- They offer cheap awards to Hawaii
It’s hard to get a lot of detail over the weekend, but I reached out to Chase and did get a quick note that suggests Korean Air will return as a points transfer partner, although I wasn’t yet given a timeframe.
Chase is not currently processing point transfers to the Korean Air SKYPASS program. We will update the Ultimate Rewards Web site when the functionality returns.
(Emphasis mine.)
So while I don’t like that it’s gone, there were some technical challenges that took these transfers off-line a couple of months ago. I don’t know the details yet behind the removal of the functionality to transfer points to Korean from the Chase website. But it sounds like this isn’t gone for good.
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Looks like there’ll be a run on the Chase UR bank when they fix their issue. 😉
My guess is that they told Korean Air to shape up the booking process a little bit because their customers were complaining…
This points out how fragile banking points with Chase can be. I have several hundred thousand points, but I may revert to SPG for everything other than dining. More airline transfer options (2:1 for UA I believe) such that you wouldn’t be devastated by some business disagreement such as this one.
You lose half the value when moving from SPG to united. Most are one for one plus the 25% bonus when you transfer 20,000 points. With the huge number of transfer partners SPG is a much better choice (unless you need United or Hyatt points).
Dr. C, a few years ago SPG ended their transfer option to Southwest after only 4 or 5 months. To their credit SPG gave a month’s notice of the change and they didn’t promise that the transfer option would ever return.
I don’t regard SPG points are more or less susceptible to changes in the transfer options. I do regard SPG as less likely to hit members with a zero-notice change.
Dr. C you know that UA 2:1 means two spg points per UA mile right? Terrible value!
Well I hope you are right.
Customer service reps are notorious for getting basic shit wrong and not knowing what the hell they’re talking about.
It would be good to know why this happened and whether members will be notified in the future of changes such as these.
One thing is for sure: if Korean Air is gone, I will be gone.
hope it is in fact only temporary glitch…. but troubling that korean air has also removed chase as a credit card partner on its site…
Any update from your sources at Chase? Transfers still not functional, no update on their web site 4 days later. In fact, the web site for new Chase card applications still list KE as a transfer partner!
I didn’t know this situation and I got four Korean air award tickets to go to Hawaii…first time trip to Hawaii! The Korean air rep said that I can transfer chase point to my Korean air account by my reservation date (is it true?), but I only have chase points not Korean air mileages. I checked their credit card offers, but they don’t have any high sign up bonus points to cover my award trip. what should I do?