If there’s one mileage currency I want to burn it’s Delta SkyMiles. Their miles are probably at the highest risk of devaluing soon, so I’m always looking for good ways to redeem them. Previously Air France business class was the best way to redeem SkyMiles given how much award space they released, though since at least the beginning of the year they’ve only been releasing a tiny subset of award space to partner airlines, and in many cases are blocking out availability for months at a time.

Meanwhile the options for redeeming SkyMiles when traveling to Asia and Australia have gotten progressively better.

To Asia, China Southern started A380 service between Los Angeles and Guangzhou last year, and not only do they have an excellent business class product, but they release a ton of award space. Meanwhile as of last October, Korean Air awards can be booked on delta.com. Previously it was a real pain, given that you were at the mercy of SkyMiles agents to both search and book Korean Air award space.

Awards to Australia have gotten much more lucrative as well, because as of last September Delta stopped imposing fuel surcharges on Virgin Australia, the airline that releases the most business class award space between the US and Australia. That’s a savings of about $800 per award ticket.

Anyway, the fun thing about awards with Delta to Australia is that you’re allowed to route via Asia assuming it’s a published routing. So for travel between the US and Australia/New Zealand you can fly Virgin Australia direct to Brisbane, Melbourne, or Sydney, Air Tahiti Nui through Tahiti, China Southern through Guangzhou, Korean Air through Seoul Incheon, etc.

All legal routings between the US and Australia using SkyMiles

Now, to the point of this post — as of October 27, 2013, China Southern will be launching their second longhaul A380 route, with daily service between Guangzhou and Sydney.

The A380 service will operate with the following schedule:

CZ325 Guangzhou to Sydney 9:05PM-9:30AM (+1 day)
CZ326 Sydney to Guangzhou 10:50AM-5:00PM

The first thing that jumped out at me is that they plan on turning the A380 in 80 minutes. Good luck with that, China Southern.

As a point of reference, their A380 service between Guangzhou and Los Angeles operates on the following schedule:

CZ327 Guangzhou to Los Angeles 9:30PM-7:00PM
CZ328 Los Angeles to Guangzhou 11:00PM-5:20AM (+2 days)

So as you can see the connections are timed much better if traveling from Sydney to Los Angeles via Guangzhou than the other way around. So if you’re looking at doing a routing like this, it might be worth doing Virgin Australia on the outbound, for example, and then China Southern on the return. That’s assuming you don’t want a stopover in China, which would require a visa if for over 24 hours.

I consider this to be a pretty exciting new service, and award availability on the whole seems to be excellent, even in peak season. There seem to be up to six or so business class award seats per flight on average, which is excellent, and can be booked for 150,000 Delta SkyMiles roundtrip.

Meanwhile if you wanted to book first class, you could redeem Korean Air SkyPass miles, at the rate of 240,000 miles for a roundtrip in first class. While you could book a one-way for travel on Korean Air, for travel on partner airlines roundtrip travel is required.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that China Southern does impose mild fuel surcharges, regardless of whether you book through Delta or Korean Air. On a one-way that totals roughly ~$170 per business class ticket, which isn’t half bad in my book.

(Tip of the hat to Hack My Trip)

Reader J sent me a link to China Southern’s first class menu, which is providing me my nightly entertainment since the season of Honey Boo Boo is over.

I recommend checking out the entire menu, though here are some of the highlights (and remember, this is “an experience most worthy of expecting!):

Western-style breakfast
You can choose from the mixture of rice crisp pieces and milk, French slippery fried eggs as Well as spaghetti with tomato sauce and chicken sauce.

Cold snacks before the dinner
Nutritious bread, mingled with specially made camembert sandwich, baked chicken, scamp, etc., and poured with various home-made sauce, makes your appetizer more attractive.

Midnight snack
Big bowl of beef noodles of China Southern Airlines: hand-made stretched noodles in intense beef bone soup, covered with pieces of brisket and cowheels, together with parsley flakes, fried pepper circles and fried peanuts; pepper sauce and mature vinegar can be added according to personal flavor.

You can choose Ferrero rocher, mushroom spinach pie, seasonal fruit basket, instant noodles or tuna fish sandwich that suits your taste.

Who’s hungry? And as if the food wasn’t appealing enough:

We also provide Chinese food and Western food, over 8 kinds of beverage.

Eight kinds of beverages? Oh boy, how am I supposed to make a selection with that many options?

As I wrote about in this post, China Southern will be launching Airbus 380 service between Los Angeles and Guangzhou starting October 12, 2012. This is pretty exciting news because they seem to have a very nice business class product on the Airbus 380 consisting of staggered, fully flat seats. China Southern partners with Delta SkyMiles, so this is a great use of SkyMiles for travel to Asia, given that award availability is wide open and can be searched on ExpertFlyer.

Anyway, at the time of my last posting there wasn’t all that much information on the cabin configuration of their Airbus 380, though China Southern now has a dedicated website for the plane, which I recommend checking out. To see pictures of their business class you’ll actually have to select “First Class,” as that’s how they market the product (while the “real” first class is marketed as “Deluxe First Class”). As you can see, it’s a really solid hard product.

Their “real” first class (“Deluxe First Class”) looks pretty great as well:

Anyway, I’m going to make an effort to sample both cabins this year — business class using Delta SkyMiles, and first class using Ultimate Rewards points transferred to Korean Air’s SkyPass program. In the meantime if you’re eying travel to Asia and have SkyMiles to redeem I’d certainly be aiming for China Southern on the A380.

(Tip of the hat to Point Me to the Plane)