September 15, 2010

My recent Award redemptions(Frustration and Success)

Again, I redeemed many tickets in past few days, all for myself and family. Let me share some again, very interesting work.

1 Flight to PPT from China,  Tahiti is a special place, a place I can not even go with one award. if you read my post few days ago, I tried to use AA miles for the ticket, but unfortunately it will not working for reasons I mentioned in previous post. routing via NRT will be considered Asia 2-Asia 1, then another award Asia 1- south Pacific, total 150000 per person Roundtrip. routing via AKL will be considered as Asia2 -South Pacific+ South Pacific-South Pacific, so 130000 per person R/T. I need to save some of my AA miles, so I give up this option.

Then, I was going to try AA to AKL in business, then US airways from AKL-PPT R/T, that will be 70K for AA+30K on US airways. However, business class award seats on Air New Zealand for AKL-PPT are nearly impossible to find and the flight arrival and departure time is not very good. So I give up this option too.

Then I was going to try 90K using US airways mixed of All Nippon+Hawaii Air, return via AKL, but Hawaii Air to PPT only 1 per week, seats are extremely limited.

Finally, I decide to use my “favorite program-Delta Sky Dollars”. First, I tried PVG-NRT-PPT in business, just same as AA routing, but it priced out 150K per person, the reason was PVG-NRT counted as 1 R/T, then NRT-PPT counted as another one. I know many people don’t remember anymore, although Delta award within Asia are pretty much same, but they are 2 zones in Asia, Japan and Korea is one zone, all else are another. so Japan/Korea to South Pacific is 110K in business, all else are 120K. But we are talking about Delta, 120K to South Pacfic does exist, but again, not routing via Japan/Korea. There is alternative on Malaysia airline, but I was disappointed on my last trip.

After I figure this out, I asked agent to do ICN-NRT-PPT, Return PPT-AKL(stopover)-ICN, now it came up with 110,000 total in Business class. How am I gonna get to ICN? easy, buy a ticket cost $150 for 1 hour flight

2 After spending a lot of time try to figure out Tahiti flight, I successfully redeemed 2 tickets using Us airways miles from  China-Africa, the whole process took less than 30 minutes, most time are calculating taxes, the trip are

CA 930 PVG-NRT, overnight

LH711 NRT-FRA, Airbus 380

SA 261, FRA-JNB, Flat bed

SA 190 JNB-MRU

return open jaw

TK 41 CPT-IST, A330

TK 50 IST-NRT, B77W flat bed

CA929 NRT-PVG

total taxes are $177+50 processing fee

3 Also, I redeemed three tickets using delta miles  for my family go to Japan and Korea in Economy class, the route are PVG-ICN-NGO//KIX-ICN(Stopover)-PVG, total 20K each.

Lots of work, but very happy about outcome with Delta miles.

Posted by Troy under 2010 Trip, 2011 Trip, American Airlines, Award redemption, Delta, US airways | 2 Comments to Read