prolyfik

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could tell me what's the lowest number of miles I might be able to get this routing for?

PEK -> HNL -> SFO -> PEK

If it matters, I'm a PE on Delta and I'm planning to try and do this towards the end of February if possible.

If I had the option to use the United MP program, would that be comparable value?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Evan!

You are a Phys Ed teacher on Delta?!? Is your name Sue Sylvester

Delta is not forthcoming with award redemption rates for foreign origination itineraries. Their on line award redemption chart might give you a ballpark. [at least this is my understanding, perhaps they have started being more transparent and I missed the memo]

You might want to add to your post whether you are looking for coach or biz class. Are you looking for Delta flights only (or as much as possible), specific partner airlines?

While I personally don't have any information for you I know that duration of stopovers (you're not putting HNL on the itin to see the airport only I assume), max trip duration, etc can come into play so the more information you put in your question the more likely someone here on FT will be able to help you. Good luck.

prolyfik

Evan!

In response to your reply...

PE...sorry, old habits die hard, still miss the old worldperks days.

Yes, I'm interested in a stopover in HNL.

Dates are something like this:
2/16 - PEK -> HNL
3/1 - HNL -> SFO
3/6 - SFO -> PEK

I'm just looking for the lowest miles possible for an economy award ticket on any metal.

TTT

I don't know what the lowest mileage on offer is but I just priced your selected itinerary together and it came out at 105,000 and $75 in taxes/fees. I believe US-Asia lowest mileage is 60,000 so it may stand to reason that the opposite is the same or very close.

FWIW, I tried to look at Continental and United for this trip. Continental's website didn't find any flights for the proposed itinerary and UA's website doesn't seem to allow multi-city booking for reward travel.

TTT

I just played around with it a little more. If you are willing to do something like this it will come out to 90,000 miles and $56.90 taxes/fees

02/23/2011 PEK-HNL
03/08/2011 HNL-SFO
03/14/2011 SFO-PEK

Note: all days above were marked as "low" on the calendar.

Evan!

PEK > connect at NRT > HNL > connect at LAX > SFO > PEK priced out for me at 105,000 SkyMiles and $75.20 in taxes for the dates you specified. While it's all in economy and all DL metal I think that's a pretty good redemption rate. With multi-city searches using the award calendar to see Low, Med, and High is not offered. So I don't know where this lies in the 3-tier model but it looks pretty low to me.

Hope this helped somewhat.

For grins and giggles I checked out premium class and got 225,000 SkyMiles plus $75.20 in fees - BE > BE > FC > FC > BE. That too I consider to be a darn good redemption rate. However, the LAX > SFO leg was on SkyWest but it still has a FC (CRJ900).

Now.... how do I position myself at PEK (and return) to take advantage of this?....

opushomes

Your post number six states that 225000 sky pesos is a good rate for this. Nonsense, it should be 120000 at low level including the stopovers. The only deal here seems to be the fees.

You could buy a ticket this month for slightly less than $900 to get to PEK on UA on a W fare from PHX using UA SWUs (plenty available this month for free on coupon connection), so go for it.

Evan!

Really? 120K for international business elite Business Elite on a multi-city itinerary?! So is 105,000 for coach reasonable? Because if that is reasonable then you are saying that upgrading to BE/FC for the all 5 legs should only cost 15,000 miles.

OLYflyer

Evan! I have much respect and I agree with you that if you rely on the DL.dumb engine then yes 105k in Y is good. The true price is 60k in Y or 120k in Biz. This is a Asia-US normal award w/ a stopover in HNL.

If you are even a little flexible you could fly PEK-ICN (using Korean or China Eastern, others and then ICN-HNL via either Korean (didn't dbl check blackout dates yet so might be an issue) or fly Hawaiian Airlines. Then onto SFO using DL, AS, HA, etc. Going back you could fly many different airlines. .

IIRC you don't even have to choose just SFO as a DL award will let you do AS into SJC or OAK and these co-terminals won't count as an open jaw meaning you can still have your stopover.

It all depends upon what is more important to you. If you want ease of use (I use this loosely referring to online bookings w/ DL) then you'll get charged a premium (some would refer to it as gouging) i.e. 225k for J/ 105k for Y. If you can put a little time in researching possible partners and possible routings, spend $10 on EF and then commit 2-3 hours on the phone asking about specific route availability with agents. You can get what you want for the low price.

This is a strategy that I've done and it works. I just finished a Korean Air Biz trip w/ add'l flights on AS for 2 for 120k ea. SFO-SEA-ICN-MNL and back. DL.dumb wanted 300k ea.

opushomes

however as stated above it takes a lot of work and persistence. It also requires that one be flexible.

On January 12, I depart for Singapore on the following routing PDX-NRT on DL with an overnight in Narita. The next morning (1/14) my routing is NRT-ICN-SIN on KE. My return on this ticket is MNL-NRT-PDX. Yes, I have to make my way to MNL. Spending sufficient time, I could have gotten out of SIN at the low level. Please be aware that this is totally in business class at a low level of 120,000. BTW this ticket started out as a low business award terminating in HKG.

Nested into this ticket is SIN-NRT(10 hours)-SPN (2 nights)-NRT-NGO (23.5 hours)-MNL also all in business recently reduced to 52500 miles from 60000. This actually should be an intra-Asia ticket whose theoretical low mileage should be 30000 miles, but DL refuses to publish the actual levels. Even the Diamond agents do not have an award chart for an intra-Asia award originating in Asia and must rely on what the computer spits out.

The two tickets were very recently consolidated into a single PNR--just last week with all the segments still in business. The mess that DL has, I believe, knowingly created is disingenuous. The ethics of requiring the traveler who has amassed a large number of Delta SkyMiles (or even enough for the 25k domestic ticket) are questionable when one must go through such incredible gyrations to get the promised benefits.

But to answer your skepticism, one can get low awards trans-pac with stopovers.

FlirtatiousFlyer

what is a PE?

Evan!

I guess I've been desensitized to the redemption inflation. Or maybe I have too many SkyMiles.

What's that old expression..... abundance breeds waste.

Thanks for heads up!

TTT

Platinum Elite: was NW's designation for what is now termed Platinum Medallion.