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Best way to use United Miles to book a flight to Lisbon

Posted by on

Hi, first of all, is there a way to search topics within a specific forum? I used the Search function on the top of the page before posting my question, but the results were from the entire website, instead of just from the "Portugal" forum, which makes it very difficult to narrow down to relevant materials.

Anyway, my wife and I just booked a Transatlantic cruise in Oct 2025 starting from Lisbon and ending in Port Canaveral, so we will need to book an one-way flight to Lisbon. I have Gold status on United and have lots of points from Chase credit card which can be converted to either United miles or TAP miles. Neither airline has opened the booking window for next Oct, so I am doing my research for now. Does anybody have experience booking flights using miles on TAP? Is it usually less or more expensive than United?

I understand that this may be an obscure topic, so if you know of a better forum for me to get answers, please let me know. Thanks.

Posted by
27902 posts

I've never used miles for a flight on TAP, but I've done it often on United. One advantage with United is that the miles needed for a one-way flight will be half the number needed for a round-trip flight. That is not the case with every airline. If you pay cash (which may be the case if you are using credit card points directly, rather than converting them to miles as an initial step), the cost of a one-way ticket may be really high.

Posted by
21 posts

Thank you both for the responses and appreciate your input. For this topic of award booking, I think I am better off going to Reddit. But I will circle back to post my decision after I complete the booking.

Posted by
5829 posts

If you want specific tips, go to flyertalk and post your question on the United Mileage Plus sub-forum.

In general, I’ve found it fairly easy to book with points on United metal (although sometimes the number of points required is high). It is more difficult to use points on their partners.

Posted by
90 posts

I am in a similar position in terms of points. Lots of United and Chase Ultimate Rewards points and have flown between SFO and LIS many times. The ideal situation for you would be to fly direct from Miami on TAP booking with miles on their Star Alliance partner United. They are pretty limited but, if I were you, I would start early and check regularly. Failing that you will need to book a connecting flight and I have usually found there are options using fewer (Chase) points, especially Air France/KLM connecting through AMS or CDG. I'd love to take one of these Fall reposition cruises too!

Posted by
1600 posts

The UA website is great - you should just go there and do some basic searches. Just search for the next 30 days - and you will see the prices and both UA and Tap show up in the searches. You can also click to see a 30 day calendar. From JFK I'm seeing 40k for a UA flight and 44K if flying on TAP. From ORD, surprisingly, you can get flights for 31.5K miles on certain days

Can't help you with booking tickets with TAP miles. You may need to go to their website and see if they allow you to search for awards without a login. I know some airlines, you need to create an account before they will let you search for awards. Good Luck.

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