Thursday, December 29, 2011

New Years Trip Ver. 2

As we approached 1 week prior to travel, new award space opened up and I ended up changing my New Years Trip Itinerary a bit. TG F space opened up on FRA-BKK so instead of routing through Osaka I elected to take this route and save a couple hours. It doesn't hurt that I also get to try out the First Class Lounge in BKK. Hopefully, they will let me in. So as of now my Itinerary is as follows(I'm probably going to make a couple more changes to the return).

LH457 LAX-FRA First
TG 921 FRA-BKK First
TG413 BKK-SIN Business
SQ828 SIN-PVG Economy
UA878 PVG-LAX Business

Thursday, December 22, 2011

New Years Trip booked!!!


In early December, I got the itch to travel again. Checking my schedule, I could only get off work 12/29-1/3This of course is the busiest travel period of the year and I had little hope of getting anywhere.

I would check KVS tool every now and then for award availability and low and behold availability was there for NZ C class for LAX-LHR. And, what do we have here?? Availability on wet leased TG 777 from FRA-SIN? And wow, return availability on UA C from PVG-LAX. So I pieced together my itinerary. The timing worked out perfect and I called up Continental to book the following C class itinerary for 120k miles and about $110 in taxes.

NZ 2 LAX-LHR Business
LH 907 LHR-FRA Business
TG923 FRA-BKK Business
SQ977 BKK-SIN Business
SQ828 SIN-PVG Economy
UA878 PVG-LAX Business


Couple days go by and what do we have here, LH F space opened up from LAX-FRA. Although Air New Zealand tops the list of airlines I wanna try, I have been dying to visit the Frankfurt First Class Terminal so without hesitation, I called up Continental(Continental allows you to change award levels without re-doing the whole itinerary) and booked the available F space and was able to find availability in LH F from FRA-KIX and C availability on SQ for KIX to SIN. Best of all, I would arrive in Singapore a couple hours earlier. So here's what my final itinerary looks like. 130k miles plus ~$85 in taxes.

LH457 LAX-FRA First
LH 740 FRA-KIX First
SQ619 KIX-SIN Business
SQ828 SIN-PVG Economy
UA878 PVG-LAX Business


There might be a bit more tinkering as I am crossing my fingers that C space would open up for SIN-PVG. Also, since I only get about 3hrs in LH FTC, I might route through HKG instead of KIX, this would allow me to have close to 7hrs. But, as of now, only Y space is available on HKG-SIN. But, overall, I am pretty proud of this itinerary considering the last minute nature of the booking. Trip reports will definitely follow...