Korean Air Skypass - Newbie w/ some travel help needs!

Hi! This is my first time joining a travel forum, but I have an upcoming trip so I really need your assistance/ideas for the whole trip. I will be traveling to Beijing on a business school trip for a week in the third week of April and plan to stop by Seoul to visit family before returning back to Houston. I don't travel very much so here are my accumulate miles so far:

AA: 5162 miles
Continental: 5137 miles
KoreanAir: 14295 miles/27949 miles (mother)

I know Korean Air allows mileage sharing with family so I can combine her miles with mine. I have read their website but it doesnt seem to be super clear, so here are my questions.....

1) I know Continental currently is the same alliance as KE but i believe that will change soon correct? How does that effect this?
2) How does the mile sharing work? and how many miles do I need to upgrade and/or get a free ticket (I know I'm probably way under, but possibly for future use)
3) Whats the best way to book this flight to minimize my time in the air/waiting in airports? I'm open to any routes but when I use Expedia, almost all my routes use Continental since I am based out of Houston.
4) if I wanted to book through LAX (Korean Air Hubs), how would I book this flight? Should I just say screw it and try to fly another airline?
5) Would this be fairly (within reason) cost effective? Alot of flights to China seem to be cheaper via United....

I haven't been out of the country in nearly 9 years, so I'd like to make this trip as painless as possible given that I have school things to deal with while I'm in China. Thanks sooooo much in advance.

P.S. I think I have a $350 voucher for Continental b/c I missed a flight to L.A. due to work

P.P.S. I hope I posted this in the right forum.

:D

first of all, welcome to flyertalk

don't want to start with the negatives, but you simply don't have enough miles to book a trans pacific trip. And I'll leave the specific Korean Air(KE) questions to the KE experts.

1. Continental(CO) left Skyteam(ST) last week, and just join Star Aliiance (*A) yesterday. So if you were looking to credit miles from CO to KE or vise versa, its no longer possible.

2. According to the KE website, its a pretty simple process, as long as your Skypass accounts shows your relationships, but the upgrade using miles seem to have some fare limitations, so make sure your buy a fare that's upgradeable

3. the easiest route i think would be IAH-PEK on CO and ICN-DFW/LAX on KE -IAH (CO) on the return. But if you want to credit to KE, you might need a few more connections either in NRT on DL or in ICN on KE. As for the PEK-ICN trip, there are lots of fairly cheap flights, but if you had some time to spare, i would take a train to TAO or DLC and hop across the pond, that should save you some money.

4. (for the record LAX isn't a "hub" for KE, ICN is their "hub", LAX is simply a destination) depending on the fares you might be able to get a pretty cheap ticket with DL that with the LAX-ICN segment, so you'd have to do IAH-ATL-LAX-ICN-PEK and back, which isn't really very efficent.

5. Its hard to know without the exact dates, but most likely a round trip IAH-PEK would be cheaper than a open jaw where you're returning from ICN. You might want to find out just how much PEK-ICN would cost, it might be wise to book around trip IAH-PEK and PEK-ICN. However, one option you might have is to try to find a fare that allows stopovers, but that might be hard to piece together. If UA is the cheapest option you can find, it might be a good idea to go with them

looking at your situation, i think i might be wise for you to focus on CO for your future flights, and focus on *A instead of ST.

To enroll in the KE family sharing program, you need to prove familial relationship. In this case, they'll want to see a birth certificate. If you're not willing to send it in, you can usually do it at the customer service desk at the airport.

And no, for some reason KE won't believe that two people with the last name "Kim" (or "Park" or "Lee") are necessarily related without proof. :D

What I would do is:

Buy IAH-PEK(via EWR) // NRT-IAH(direct) ticket through co.com with your boucher. (around 9x0 dollar before using your boucher)
Using your mother's mile, redeem one-way award ticket for PEK-ICN-NRT with ICN stopover using 20,000 miles. To do this, you still have to prove that you guys are one family somehow. (call KE about this) This is not mileage pooling yet, just redeem for other family member.
Don't worry about separate ticket and transfering in NRT. You just call both airlines and let them know you have attached itinerary. Also many people transfer KE<=>CO in NRT everyday because CO does not come to Korea and yet CO sells a lot of ticket from Korea, you won't be alone.

KE has 3-4 nonstops between PEK-ICN and ICN-NRT, so you will have flexibility with others' schedule. (I would concern this part because it's school trip with others(?))

Perfect.

My mandatory dates for China are April 11-17th. I was planning on staying in Korea for a week. Since it is a business school trip, everyone is coming in at different times/cities so being together really doesnt matter. I am still trying to decipher what everybody wrote. Thanks!

Wow, that was a detailed help anyone can receive. Good luck with your trip.

sorry for asking a question.
how to redeem a one-way award with stopover?
i see that it has been suggested to do a
pek - icn - nrt.

is it possible to do a can - icn - hkg
or even scz - icn - hkg for a stopover in ICN?

Thanks.

sorry for asking a question.
how to redeem a one-way award with stopover?
i see that it has been suggested to do a
pek - icn - nrt.

is it possible to do a can - icn - hkg
or even scz - icn - hkg for a stopover in ICN?

Thanks.

I might be possible. You should test it.