<prompt> Human: Could someone explain to me why transferring rewards points to frequent flyer programs ex. Chase Sapphire Ultimate Rewards - Virgin America is valuable? This seems to be something people talk about a lot, but I dont understand why this is better than say, booking a flight through Chases travel website which gets 20 extra value in points...  <response>: Heres a really simple example.Lets say you want to travel from San Francisco to Tokyo in November -- one way, just to keep the numbers simple.On United, that ticket costs 771 or 35,000 miles in economy class. So you have three choices:1. Pay 771 to book the flight.2. Use 61,680 Ultimate Rewards points to book through Chases website.3. Transfer 35,000 Ultimate Rewards points to United MileagePlus and use that to book the flight.There are much better redemptions than that, but that should show how transferring points can beat booking through the website.Why is option 2 61,680 points rather than 28,000 points? Because the 20 extra value is relative to redeeming your points for cash at 1 cent per point, rather than to the award valuation which is not necessarily related to the cash price of the ticket in any way. 