Originally Posted by
BearX220
Before you book UA for the miles you might want to look at this thread on the delay / cancellation record for UA flights to SYD and MEL. It has 1250+ posts in it.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...d-threads.html
The reliability record on those UA flights is something short of sterling. They're old birds and they get sick a lot. Can you comfortably ride out a delay in each direction of one or two days if they occur?
Me, I'd book AC ex-YVR for the newer birds and IFE. They mean more to me than E+.
That's what I did for my November eclipse trip. AC even throws in QF SYD-MEL essentially for free ($7, I think that's just tax).
Beside the old birds issue, another one to consider is outbound SFO weather. The date I was looking at, LAX-SYD was zero on the cheapest class, which was still available on SFO-SYD, but I just can't imagine how early to fly LAX-SFO to avoid misconnecting.
And then I saw AC LAX-YVR-SYD for the same price, 100% EQM and extra miles to bring me just over the status mark (I will already have the minimum 4 segments on UA/CO/CM), and of course the rarity of weather delays for YVR, I took it.