Posted by Seth on April 19, 2012 under Dining, Flying, Review, Trip Reports | 
Booking my award flight on the non-stop Newark to Singapore flight was a huge win and opened up a ton of opportunities for me. Among them, I had to figure out how to get back home from Singapore within a relatively tight timeframe, and I was searching not too far out from my planned dates of travel, which created some interesting challenges of its own. Fortunately I managed to find several options available, one of which was a routing with Thai Airways via Bangkok and Rome, continuing on Swiss Air from there. My last experience with Thai wasn’t the greatest but I decided to give them another chance. Among other things, the BKK-FCO line was just too fun to pass up.
Getting to the airport in Singapore was reasonably easy thanks to the trains and about 40 minutes after leaving my hotel I was in the check-in lobby of the airport. I also was about 4 hours in advance of my flight – I wanted to check out the lounges – which meant that they were not actually accepting passengers for check-in. Whoopsie. The good news is that there is actually a premium check-in lounge at Singapore’s airport where business class passengers are able to have a seat and go through the process in a much more civil manner than the long queues of the economy cabin passengers. The premium check-in feeds directly into a bypass of another queue for security/immigration, making the entire process rather simple.
From there it was off to the Thai lounge. To say I was disappointed would mean that I actually had high expectations. The lounge was dark and brooding, with a few small snacks. It was quite a step down from the Singapore Air lounges in the terminal or even the British Airways and contract lounges in the same area. I’m working up a full post on the lounges but I would recommend against planning on too much time in the Thai lounge.
Boarding came about soon enough and the 777 was awaiting us for the quick flight up to Bangkok. Getting a long-haul configuration on relatively short flights is much more common in Asia than in the United States. This one had the great seats and IFE systems which make flying up front truly pleasant, though neither system is best-in-class.
The flight was only about 2 hours long but it also included a full multi-course meal service with a choice of entrees. After the snack mix and appetizer I had the prawns with rice; not bad at all.
I also love the way many foreign carriers pay attention to the small touches that make a trip more pleasant. Certainly the orchids in the lav don’t have any concrete impact on the in-flight passenger experience, but they sure go a ways towards trying to make it feel a bit more human at 35,000 feet.
A couple hours later I was on the ground in Bangkok for just long enough to grab a shower, snack and massage and then it was back in the air for the flight to Rome. I had forgotten that the flight was on a 747. I had also forgotten that I booked a seat upstairs. Remembering that as I boarded the plane was quite nice. Walking up a set of stairs upon boarding is always a fun experience.
The seats on the 747 are more or less the same as the business class seats on the rest of the Thai fleet – flat-ish at an angle. Not the best ride out there, but it beats the heck out of coach and these got me home when I needed. Plus, the hot pink and purple is a fun color scheme.
With the longer flight time to Rome there was also the opportunity for a more involved meal service, not that the short hop was particularly skimpy. I started with the foie gras and moved on to the steak. Both were quite tasty.
The cheese plate was not particularly impressive but the chocolates for dessert were. A great finish to the meal.
With that it was off to bed for several hours, waking up just as breakfast was being served.
The fruit was rather disappointing but the noodles were delicious and made for a great base to start the day with the early arrival in Rome.
I mentioned above that the IFE was not the best-in-class. It is an AVOD system with a selection of about 25 movies available. Nothing to sneer at necessarily. At the same time, however, the selection was rather poor and the classifications of the movies were questionable in many cases. "Classics" for movies should not include many works made after 1990. Shutter Island; Monsters, Inc.; Ocean’s Thirteen; Sherlock Holmes; 300; Casino Royale or the new Planet of the Apes are not classics. Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Grease and Goldfinger are. Die Hard is in a gray area, but I’d probably let it slide. Yippie kaiay.
Overall, I think the service was a solid B to B+ effort. The food was on the higher end of the spectrum while the seat and IFE were a bit lower. Ground service was great in Bangkok – I love the pre-flight massage – but not as great in Singapore. Still not the best offering in and out of SE Asia, but they’ve got a lot more award inventory on long-haul flights so there’s something to be said for that.
.
Tags: award, Bangkok, Dining, Flying, IFE, Lounge, Photos, review, Singapore, Singapore Air, SINtacular, Thai Air, Trip Report
Posted by Seth on January 30, 2012 under Flying, News |
Thai Airways has announced the end of their non-stop service between Thailand and the United States. The flights will be reduced from the current daily service to 5x weekly on February 1 and will shift to one-stop service via Seoul starting in May. At that time the route will also shift from the gas-guzzling Airbus A345, the only plane flying today with the range to make the non-stop trip (Update: I forgot the 772LR can make it, but TG doesn’t have any), to a Boeing 777-200ER, which has lower fuel burn rates but also a much more limited range. This new flight schedule will only operate 4x weekly. Additionally, the change means no more premium economy product on the route as the carrier’s Boeing aircraft are not configured with that seating. The connection will also increase the travel time between Los Angeles and Bangkok by approximately 2 hours each direction.
This move doesn’t come as too much of a surprise given the trend in jet fuel prices, but it is still somewhat disappointing to see the option disappear. Then again, when I flew it last July I wasn’t particularly impressed with either the hard or soft products on board. And that was in business class. So maybe it is for the best that it is going away.
If you’ve got a ticket booked on TG 794/795 now would be a pretty good time to call the carrier and get that straightened out.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on November 20, 2011 under Flying, Trip Reports |
I like to think that I have a pretty solid grasp of how revenue and inventory management work together within the airlines to control the price of a flight. I understand fare rules, inventory allocations and routing rules and I can generally figure out what’s going on. Heck, I’ve even built tools that help find the information and distill it to simple numbers. So I was incredibly surprised this weekend when I went to purchase a few "local" flights for our New Years trip to South Asia. Needless to say, the numbers were not playing nice.
I got an award flight into India using my OnePass miles from Continental and a revenue ticket on the return from Colombo, Sri Lanka on a combination of Emirates and British Airways. That part was relatively easy, though I did run into some issues booking one of the return options (now since discarded) via EgyptAir from Bangkok. But that was nothing compared to the crazy I experienced trying to buy the domestic flights in India and the short hop from Chennai to Colombo.
Here’s a screen shot from the ITA pricing engine for one of the flights we wanted:
Pretty simple, really. Based on that we should have been able to get the flight for about $200 without much trouble, right? So I started checking around a few different booking engines. Thanks to the various referral link/rebate options for flight bookings I was checking three different engines, Expedia, Vayama and CheapoAir (n.b. – those links earn me that rebate if you use them). The rebates offered vary so there is some flexibility in figuring out which is best deal but, all else being equal, I should be able to get the published fare from each, right??
Not at all.
For that flight which nominally cost $200 the options I got were $257 or $247 from Vayama and CheapoAir, respectively:
Exact same flight, date, time and fare bucket, but a price that was 25% higher. Zoinks! Fortunately Expedia was able to book the flight at the "correct" price for that one.
For the flight from Chennai to Cochin a few days earlier, however, CheapoAir was about $50 less than Expedia and actually ended up being less than the published price in ITA thanks to a coupon that they had published, a coupon that didn’t work on the above itinerary.
Similarly, for the flight to Colombo the ITA price seemed decent enough, with flights at the right time for what we wanted:
Once again, Vayama was terribly over-priced, even including the click-through rebate earnt:
And Expedia was still showing the published ITA rate:
But don’t forget to check the operating carrier, too. A quick visit to the SriLankan website pulled up this price:
That converts to USD $213 at the current exchange rates, a full $80 less than the fare published in ITA and a whopping $140 less than what Vayama wanted for the exact same rate.
So, is there a moral to the story? Maybe it is this: Airfare pricing is horribly inconsistent and near impossible for mere mortals to effectively and easily compare. It also further enforces my fears of how much worse it could get if the airlines continue to pull information out of the GDSes and move towards their direct sales model. In this case the direct model ended up saving me a few bucks, but only after quite a bit of digging to find the best price.
It really shouldn’t be this hard.
Related Posts:
Tags: award, Bangkok, British Airways, Chennai, Cochin, Colombo, Continental, EgyptAir, Emirates, frequent flyer, India, Jet Airways, Kochi, Madras, NYE2011, points, Sri Lanka, SriLankan
Posted by Seth on October 22, 2011 under Trip Reports |
I’ve been working lately on cobbling together a rather ridiculous series of flights for our winter vacation this year. The plan is mostly South Asia, focusing on the southern tip of India and Sri Lanka, plus a quick stop in Bangkok on the way home. At least that’s the theory.
Initially I booked the trip using points for award travel round-trip between New York City and India. Since then the itinerary has morphed a bit so I’ll be changing things up (thank goodness for free award changes as an elite!) but I actually need to get a couple of the tickets purchased in order to make those changes, just in case. And it is proving incredibly difficult to buy at least one of the tickets.
If you had asked me a month ago, before I started all of this, I would have bet that the ticket on Sri Lankan would have been the hard one to acquire. I would have lost that bet. The transaction with them was smooth as could be, handled fully online and it was only a couple days later that American Express called to make sure that I really was buying a couple one way flights from Colombo to Bangkok in early January. It wasn’t even a big enough risk for them to call immediately.
Buying the flight from Bangkok to JFK on EgyptAir, however, is proving to be a ridiculous mess. I started with their website which looks pretty slick, at least for the flight selection search bits. It showed the fare I had seen otherwise online (about $150 less for each ticket than any other channel) and I went through the long process of entering in all our personal data to book the flight. At the final payment screen, however, the transaction was denied. Repeatedly.
My first call was to Visa to make sure my card was OK. It wasn’t, but they cleared that up. Waiting two hours didn’t help; still denied. Another 24 hours later and still denied. Even more strange, however, was that the credit card company didn’t even show the most recent transactions. It is as if EgyptAir never even tried to authorize the card; they just rejected the transaction. It took a couple calls but eventually I got in touch with someone in the EgyptAir ticketing office in New York to try to process the transaction. The first agent saw the reservation and the price I was quoted online. She transferred me to another agent to handle the transaction who promptly informed me that the fare was $300 higher. Ugggh.
So long as I was not going to get the discounted fare I figured I’d try to get some other value for the transaction. American Express offers bonus Membership Rewards points for travel booked through their portal so why not give that a go, right? Apparently their system is not robust enough to handle selling a one-way ticket in business class from Bangkok to New York City:
That’s is simply ludicrous, especially considering that probably a dozen airlines or more offer service on that route with a single connection.
And so I’m essentially left with a bevy of third party online travel agencies through which I can try to book the flight, but now I’m faced with wading through their differing fares and service fees to find the right price. Plus I’m stuck with dealing with one of them for service going forward rather than dealing with the airline directly. What a mess.
It shouldn’t be this complicated to spend money on a plane ticket.
Tags: American Express, Bangkok, Egypt, EgyptAir, India, internet, Membership Rewards, New York City, NYE2011, Sri Lanka, Thailand
Posted by Seth on August 18, 2011 under Review, Trip Reports |
The Thai Airways lounges in Bangkok have been oft regaled. Their first class passengers, particularly, are well spoilt with hour-long massages and excellent dining options. Alas, my trip was only departing in business class so I was relegated to the lesser service. I know that the first class treatment must be nicer but the business class option was pretty darn impressive.
Check-in was handled well, with the added bonus of having seats at the check-in counters rather than having to stand while dealing with bag tags and seat assignments. I would have been happier if they tagged my bags all the way through to my final destination rather than just to Johannesburg, but that ended up not making a difference as I had to claim and drop the bags again anyways after clearing customs. And the private security and immigration facilities just for premium passengers was terrific, not in the least because I was the only one in line as I passed through.
Thai operates a bunch of lounges at Suvarnabhumi Airport covering First and Business Class passengers as well as Star Alliance Gold elite members. But they reserve access to the largest lounge for only premium cabin passengers. The services were, in my experience, nearly identical at the main lounge as in the others. Most notable was the presence of a duty free shop inside the biz lounge. And the dedicated lounge was much larger. None of the lounges were particularly crowded while I was there, but I attribute that mostly to my off-peak departure time (6pm) more than anything else. I can imagine that the *G lounges would get quite crowded at peak departure times.
All of the lounges offered up plenty of beverage options as well as various snack foods, ranging from soup to steamed buns to shumai to noodles. I’m drooling again just remembering them.
All the talk I’d previously heard about the first class departures spa and massages neglected to mention that business class passengers also get a complimentary treatment. No, it isn’t an hour long nor a full body work over, but you do get a choice of four half hour treatments. I didn’t realize this until I’d already spent an hour – and most of my preflight lounge time – sitting in the dedicated business class passenger lounge. Whoopsie. Fortunately there was just enough time for me to get my shoulder and neck massage prior to the flight. But shame on me for not doing the research I should have.
Following my massage it was time to meander out to the gate area – about 15 minutes away – and prepare for the flight itself. Thanks to the quality of the pre-flight pampering I was afforded in the lounge and the spa I wasn’t too worried about the in-flight experience.
I’ve been in the Lufthansa First Class Terminal and their dedicated First Class Lounges. I’ve been in the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class lounge. And I’ve been in any number of lounges operated by other carriers for elites and business class passengers. Putting aside the cool factor of the drive from the FCT to the airplane, I’m not sure that much out there beats the quality of the pre-flight pampering that Thai offers is pretty impressive. In the heat of the moment, relaxing following my massage with a glass of tea, I was convinced that it was the best ever. I’ve backed down from that a bit, mostly because the dining options that Lufthansa offers for the FCL/FCT are better by far than the business options that Thai has.
But I could quite reasonably argue that the Thai product is the best Business Class option I’ve experienced. Up against Virgin’s flagship Clubhouse in London‘s Heathrow I’d say that Thai does a quite respectable job. Less crowded, easier access to the spa treatments and better tasting food, if not quite the same variety. No waitress service but the open self-service bar didn’t suck.
Related Posts:
Tags: Bangkok, elite status, London, Lounge, Lufthansa, Photos, RTW2011, Star Alliance, Thai Air, Trip Report, Virgin Atlantic
Posted by Seth on August 4, 2011 under Trip Reports |
The Chao Phraya is dirty. There is no doubt about that. The brown, murky water is not something I’m keen to swim in and even getting splashed by it while on the ferries is not particularly pleasant. Still, curling through the heart of Bangkok, there is no doubt that the Chao Phraya holds the pulse of the city. It is a transportation conduit for people and goods at all hours of the day and night.
For our visit to the palace we chose the cheapest – and one of the fastest – means of travel, the commuter ferries. Yes, there is a tourist ferry that runs a bit faster but it is not for me. The price – THB 150 (~ USD$5) for the day – is roughly 10x the going rate for a single ride on the regular ferries. It doesn’t stop at nearly as many places, which can be good if it goes where you want to be but it also cuts down on your options. And you lose the color and flavor of riding with the locals. That’s the biggest downside. There aren’t nearly as many monks riding the tourist ferry, for instance.
Of course, there’s also the challenge of making sure you’re on the correct ferry. Fortunately they all fly flags on the back with the different colors indicating whether it is a local or express. It is also important to make sure that the ferry you are riding is one that goes up and down the river rather than just a shuttle across (unless, of course, you want to just shuttle across). On my first trip to Bangkok five years ago I made that mistake and the ticket-taker was quite confused when we didn’t get off after the quick ride. I nearly made the same mistake this time as well, though I knew to ask and we quickly got off that ferry and into the correct queue. Once you’ve figured out the flag colors riding with the locals is phenomenally easy and generally quite pleasant.
On the return trip we decided to splurge. Partly because we didn’t want to wait for the ferry, partly because there were six of us to split the costs, and partly because we were just silly. We hired a long tail boat for the ride back to the BTS station. At THB 500 (~USD$16) for the trip I’m sure we overpaid and I’m sure it didn’t really matter. We had fun. Well, some of us did.
The long tail boats, so named because of the long drive shaft that comes straight out of the oversized engine to drive the propeller, are loud, not particularly clean, and even lower in the water than the ferries. This means that crossing the wake of other boats or really just being in one is likely to result in getting splashed. Remember how I mentioned above that the river is dirty. Yeah, it is.
Riding towards the front limited the splash effect for me, while some folks in the back resorted to using their umbrella to keep the river water at bay. Sucking down a cold beer and rolling through a pretty awesome bout of jetlag probably didn’t hurt my mood either. The net effect for me was a rather enjoyable ride, though I’m quite certain that others in the group disagree. Definitely worth it for the experience, so long as you don’t mind the dirty and paying a couple bucks more than you should for the privilege.
Posted by Seth on August 2, 2011 under Dining, Flying, Review, Trip Reports |
Los Angeles to Bangkok – non-stop on Thai Airways – seemed like a good idea at the time.Yes, the flight is blocked at just over 17 hours, making it one of the longest commercial flights in operation. But I’ve flown other very long flights previously, several times in coach, and I’ve survived all of them and even enjoyed some of them. Yes, I knew going in that the seats in use on the Airbus A340-500 are not the most comfortable. Still, business class for that long a journey should be pleasant enough, right? And, yes, it meant a 14 hour travel day just to get to the point where I could start the trip. But that was worth it for the joys of making the super long flight, putting the cool line on my flight history map, right?
Not really.
Boarding for the flight was conducted via one of the bus gates at LAX’s TBIT terminal. This is the first time I’ve ever had a departure from the terminal and I was rather surprised just how awful the experience was. Not nearly enough seats for the number of passengers boarding, overlapping announcements that confused pretty much everyone and nothing resembling proper amenities once you got out to the bus area. Pretty pathetic for a major international gateway. Still, I got on the bus and made the long ride out to the far stands where our aircraft was waiting, hoping things would be better once on board. After all, as I joked to a woman I was crammed against on the bus, "We’re flying business class; this is the closest we have to be to anyone for the next 18 hours."
Pre-flight included a glass of bubbly which was nice for keeping me awake and getting ready for the dinner service. And the dinner was pretty good food, though not the best I’ve had in the air by any stretch. There were a couple interesting quirks to the dinner service that made me wonder just how deep the budget cuts in catering were. The warm nuts, for example, were quite the pathetic presentation. Yes, I took this photo before eating any from the bowl.
The starter was a scallop, with a mango chutney of some sort. Not bad, but certainly a small portion and not particularly amazing either. Of course, I often find scallops to be that way when served out so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
For the main course I chose a fish. Sure, I’ve seen Airplane about a few dozen times but it still seemed like the least offensive of the options available. Plus, I was asked to make my choices for all three meals before departure (not a fan of that at all) and it seemed like a decent way to approach the menu. It was not offensive but also not particularly amazing.
Cheese course, drinks, dessert, drinks and before I knew it 2am PDT had arrived and it was definitely time to stretch out the seat and see what I was in for as far as sleeping was concerned.
The seat was, as anticipated, mediocre. I knew going in that it would not be a fully flat bed. Still, it was supposed to be flat enough at an angle that I’d be able to get some sleep. Especially combined with the fact that I’d been up for so long once I finally got on board, sleeping should be easy. And it actually was, even though the seat didn’t even seem to be flat at an angle when fully extended. I slept pretty well for 7 or 8 hours after the dinner service. The problem was that there were still about 7 hours left in the flight and the seat was pretty bad for just sitting in. There is nothing quite so disappointing in flight as waking up after a long, restful sleep and realizing that there is still the equivalent of London to New York City or more left to fly.
And so, with about 7 hours to go in the trip I wandered back to the galley to find out when the next meal was. Only 90 minutes away. This is actually my largest gripe about the service on the flight: the timing and ordering of the meals was wacky. When I’m taking a long flight and adjusting to a new time zone I try to switch my body over as early in the trip as possible, making it so that I’m as close to the local time as I can be when I land. The schedule of meals on this flight worked quite a bit against that.
Sure, a dinner just after take-off makes sense. And having it as a three-meal flight is great. But the second meal, served approximately 11-12 hours into the flight and at approximately midnight local time in Bangkok was breakfast. It was a good breakfast, but having it at that time rather than having another lunch/dinner course a couple hours earlier makes no sense to me. I had the shrimp congee option:
The third meal, served only about 4 hours later and only an hour prior to the 6:30am local time arrival of the flight was another lunch course. Again, decent food (though the shrimps were not as good on this one as in the congee) but it was the wrong meal at that time of the flight.
The A345 does offer one of my favorite bits of airplane silliness: a window in the lav. I’m not quite sure why, but I crack up every time I see it.
Ultimately the flight got me there in relative comfort and without too much trouble along the way. But the timing of the meals meant that when I landed I had been up since midnight local time. This made it rather difficult to get through the day fully coherent (or as much as I ever am). Fortunately I had some good friends around on the ground who helped drive that and kept me entertained as we toured Bangkok. But it was one of those friends, over dinner, who shared the following observation of this incredibly long flight:
I’ve taken it several times in each of the three classes of service available. I’ve had incredibly mediocre flights in business, rather pleasant flights in premium economy and surprisingly enjoyable flights down the back. It isn’t that the economy service is better than business; it just does a better job of exceeding expectations.
At the end of the day I must agree. The flight in business class was fine but it certainly didn’t live up to any of the great expectations set by tales of great in-flight experiences from the Asian airlines. Not bad, really, but not up to the expectations. Should I need to get to Bangkok again from the east coast I’ll almost certainly favor the flights via Europe or the Middle East. Roughly the same travel time and arguably better timed in-flight services. Definitely better premium seats available.
Related Posts:
Posted by Seth on June 26, 2011 under News |
I’m going to be in Bangkok at the end of July for a couple nights and recently was looking for a hotel room for that stay. I was excited to see that Accor was offering up a pretty good sale for summer bookings. Sure, the program isn’t incredibly good for awards but they’ve got a pretty solid portfolio of properties in Asia, Africa and Europe and I spend a lot of time in those areas so getting a few points for my effort doesn’t suck. Combine that with an "up to 50% off" sale and I was clicking on the link without hesitation to find a deal.
And it was a pretty good deal. I filled in the search form and came up with a good range of rates, from $25-200, according to the display. I narrowed it down to a couple options based mostly on location and price and that’s where things started to fall apart.
The Novotel Bangkok Fenix Ploenchit was a leading candidate for my stay. Average room rate starting at $63/night according to the search page and a solid location near a SkyTrain stop. I was ready to book it and be done with that part of my trip planning.
So imagine my surprise when I clicked through to the booking link and discovered that the price was double that advertised:
Needless to say, I was not amused.
I called in to figure out why the pricing wasn’t working. The agent I spoke with was quick with an answer, informing me that the price on the first page is a monthly average, not specific to the dates I entered in the search parameters. So why have the dates there at all? He could not say.
Even more interesting to me was that the "average" price was always lower than the rates I was seeing. I did not check the full month on each of the 15 hotels listed but I checked enough that I should have been able to uncover at least one room somewhere close to the reported average starting price. I could not.
So that Accor hotel would not be receiving my business. Moreover, it seems unlikely that any Accor hotels are going to be getting my business in the near future, at least not through their own website. I’ll still consider them if the price and location are correct, but I’ll also likely be booking them through Hotels.com where I get better returns through the Welcome Rewards program and more accurate pricing information for my specific dates.
Posted by Seth on March 8, 2011 under Flying, frequent flyer, points |
In part one of this report I recounted a great award booking – even though it was all in economy and on small planes – to the Canadian Maritime provinces. Part two will cover my exploitation of the bmi Diamond Club program and their quite flexible routing and award zone rules.
It all started with plans to visit Bangkok in July for a friend’s wedding. With Thai Air still operating their incredibly long LAX-BKK flight I figured it would be nice to get a change to fly that route. Plus I have never been on the Airbus A340-500 so that’s an added bonus. It turns out that Thai has had a TON of award inventory available for westbound travel but nothing available coming back east. Turns out that isn’t much of a problem for me as I’ve turned a long weekend in Thailand into a RTW ticket adventure.
By sheer coincidence a friend of mine is going to be in Capetown, South Africa the week after the wedding. And I have the points available so why not? Even better is that the award cost from Thailand to South Africa is pretty cheap with Diamond Club. Oh, and I am flying via Mumbai, flying in on Thai and out on South African Airways. South African operates the A340-200 on the route which is also new to me.
And then I needed to get home from South Africa. This is where the Diamond Club rules become VERY favorable if you’re willing (or wanting!) a bit of an adventure. Most carriers only permit North Atlantic crossings for that award. Diamond Club permits South Atlantic crossings, too. So I’m taking one. Award seats form Johannesburg to Buenos Aires and Sao Paolo are pretty readily available.
Seats from there back north are a bit harder but I found some availability with Air Canada from Santiago to Toronto. Getting from Toronto to New York City is pretty easy with a ton of frequencies and a couple airports to choose from. To get from Buenos Aires to Santiago there is really only Star Alliance routing. It just so happens to leave 40 minutes before the flight from Johannesburg arrives. So I have a 23 hour 20 minute connection in Argentina. That’ll be fun.
So I’ve made it back to New York City and I’m home. That’s the end, right? Not for me. Diamond Club considers Puerto Rico part of their South America/Caribbean zone. And award flights from South Africa to South America are less expensive than those to North America. Based on straight geography that sortof makes sense – it should be fewer total miles flown – but getting to Puerto Rico can only be done via North America with the existing partners and routes. So I have a stopover in New York (one stopover is free on the bmi award) and then, two months later, a flight in first class from Newark to San Juan. It was actually many fewer miles to take the extra flight. Plus, I’ve been looking for a good excuse to get back to Puerto Rico, possibly in daylight this time. Given that the flight down there is better than free, I see no reason to skip that bit.
Put it all together and I’ve got this 31,586 mile masterpiece:
And all the flights save two short ones are in business class. All but one of the lines are new and a few of the aircraft are, too. All for under 200,000 Diamond Club points. I could’ve done it as cash & points for even fewer but I’m trying to use up my stash and this is a great way to do it.
The booking process was bit more frustrating than I generally enjoy, partly because my Skype connection was flaking out but mostly because the agents at the Diamond Club call center don’t have the best grasp of geography nor of the rules of their program. They initially tried to charge me 5 separate awards rather than the three I booked and all at higher rates than I should have paid. Fortunately I was able to eventually get a supervisor to understand and put it in correctly, but that was two extra hours of annoyance on the phone that I didn’t really need. Still, at the end of the day, completely worth it for this trip. Retail value on the ticket is somewhere north of $10,000; getting it on points for the routes and dates I wanted is just phenomenal.
Related Posts:
Tags: Africa, Air Canada, Airbus, Argentina, award, Bangkok, bmi, Canada, frequent flyer, New York City, points, Puerto Rico, RTW2011, San Juan, South Africa, Star Alliance, Thai Air, Thailand, Toronto
Posted by Seth on October 28, 2010 under Trip Reports |
A few months ago I was ecstatic after securing an award ticket to New Zealand for this coming December. It wasn’t just that I got seats on the dates I wanted. And it wasn’t just that they were in premium cabins almost the entire way. And it wasn’t just that I was able to get one of the longest possible routings along the way to maximize my time in the big comfy seats (and lounges). OK, maybe it was that last one.
Unfortunately, however, the reason I was going to New Zealand changed around a bit. And it looks like we’re going to be spending a couple weeks in India at the end of December, No reason I cannot combine the two trips, right? Apparently Continental felt that was actually going to be a problem.
It seems there are two ways for the airline to issue award tickets and mine was originally set up with the method that requires the agents working on the ticket to manually verify the details. Based on what the agent I spoke with today explained, it seems that a small detail was missed during the original, manual booking of my award. It wasn’t a legal routing according to their system. Oopsie.
Of course, I wasn’t really ready to give up on what was an absolutely awesome award trip, despite their suggestions that they could convert it to an Around the World award for only 120,000 extra points (75% more than the 160K I originally redeemed). Ummmm, no thanks. After a bit of discussion we agreed that, while it might not actually be valid in their system, I shouldn’t be penalized because someone misunderstood the rules a couple months ago when issuing it. So I was permitted to make my change – and I was still able to find seats on flights I wanted within a couple days of my ideal – and to keep the ticket.
So I ended up with this little bit of awesomeness:
![map[1]](http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thewanderingaramean/files/2010/10/map1.png)
I get a new carrier (Swiss) as well as my first experiences in the Lufthansa and Thai Airways first class cabins. Only the segment between Auckland and Melbourne is in coach; the rest are all in the highest class of service available on the flight. I tried to mix Air Canada in for one of the transatlantic segments but couldn’t make that work. And I gave up the chance at a first class suite on the Turkish 77W, but those are apparently less consistent these days anyways so it wasn’t a sure think even if I did keep that route.
I am not complaining one bit, even if I did have to trade a boondoggle in Singapore for an overnight in Bangkok.
Related Posts
Tags: Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Auckland, Australia, award, Bangkok, Continental, India, Lufthansa, Munich, Thai Air, Thailand
Posted by Seth on December 13, 2009 under News |
The negotiations of the USA-Japan open skies treaty have been ongoing for quite a while now. This latest round of talks, held last week, was actually extended by a day to allow for the final details to be ironed out since they were so close. And ultimately the deal that they struck seems to be a very fair and very good one for the airlines and for customers.
Tokyo Service
With the exception of Tokyo all destinations in Japan are now accessible with unlimited frequencies by all American and Japanese carriers. That is a significant step forward. The Tokyo market, however, is key to pretty much all service to Japan and the agreements reached on that front are quite interesting. Both airports – Haneda and Narita – will remain slot controlled due to the significant demand for service to those airports. And the number of slots that US-based carriers have at Narita will actually decrease a tiny bit. But there’s a good reason for that.
Tokyo’s Haneda airport – the more convenient and desirable destination for most passengers headed to Tokyo – is opening up to more international flights starting in 2010. Some of those flights will be potentially operated to the United States under this deal with as many as four daily flights permitted. That is going to be a very significant benefit for whichever carrier manages to secure those slots. There are a number of restrictions on the new Haneda slots, including late night departure times which aren’t particularly ideal. But it is better than nothing.
Anti-trust Immunity
There are some other interesting nuggets that came out of the agreement as well. Anti-trust immunity (ATI) will be permitted on the US-Japan routes for the first time ever. While there will still be specific applications required for such operations the ATIs will permit coordination of schedules, service and fares for partner carriers on routes between the two countries. The Star Alliance carriers of ANA, Continental and United Airlines are best position to take advantage of the ATI opportunities and they’ve already announced their intentions to do so. The three carriers expect to be able to better coordinate their offerings and streamline operations. In addition to the Star Alliance three, JAL will likely take advantage of the ATI opportunities once they figure out which suitor they’re going to dance with in the bankruptcy/bailout recovery effort. Both Delta and American Airlines are still pursuing the carrier aggressively and being able to apply ATI policies to the operations following whatever deal might be reached will be rather beneficial to whichever partnership comes out of that deal.
Extra Freedoms
Finally, both countries will be removing restrictions on fifth freedom routes. Fifth freedom flights are some of my favorites because the routes seem strange when viewed out of context. They are flights operated between two countries, neither of which the airline is based in, where the airline is permitted to sell seats only on that route. There are a number of such flight in Asia particularly, such as Air France flying between Bangkok and Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City. And there are a few in the USA, like Cathay flying from Vancouver to New York City’s JFK airport. As part of this agreement fifth freedom flights will the permitted without restriction by Japan or the United States. This is great for carriers that want to grow their route maps onward from Japan or the USA. These “add-on” segments generally help to make flights that might otherwise not be profitable happen, so there is an increase in service between markets. Plus there is the opportunity to grab the “other” flight generally rather cheap and have some fun flying on different carriers.
The loser on this bit is most likely Delta which acquired a number of route authorities ex-Tokyo when they bought Northwest Airlines recently. That purchase gave them a number of slots and authorities from Tokyo and now all the other carriers who desire such will be able to get in the game on those flights, assuming they can find the slots. Also, the third country will still need to approve the fifth freedom flights so it isn’t completely open, but there are many more opportunities now for many more carriers.
Mostly good, but potential gotchas
Overall, agreements such as this are generally a good thing for passengers. The increased opportunities for carriers to provide service generally means that where they think there is a market airlines will try, at a lower cost than if they had to buy route authorities to provide such service. The ATIs are always a bit of a toss-up as they essentially permit collusion and price-fixing between partners. As long as there are enough non-partnered carriers in a market that generally isn’t a problem but it is something that always causes a bit of apprehension as it can lead to higher prices due to less competition. Still, there’s a lot of potential good news out of this agreement. Now we just wait to see how it actually plays out.
