Hi! I am hoping there are a few opinions you all might share with me. We are looking to fly LAX to VCE (ok with Milan or Rome really) in August/September for a cruise. I have accrued points on UA, US, BA...ready for AOR as soon as I make up my mind which to go with. We think maybe Singapore? Or Cathay Pacific? New upper class on Virgin looks fun? I don't have all the acronyms down...I'd like to be able to watch a movie with my travel partner, so the suites are great but maybe not ideal for a couple. We don't know! This is our first big adventure. I imagine we can each come up with 150-200k miles/points...need help figuring out which program to work toward.
I hope I've posted in the right place and if I have missed a similar thread (I looked for a debate on best first class cabins) I would like to be pointed to it. Thank you so much for your expertise!
PS Aug/Sept might never happen as we are military, but it is nice to have something to work toward...so availability/being behind in planning is not a big concern.
(since you mentioned it, I'm going to use as many acronyms as possible and explain them it)
You're planning on flying CX (Cathay) or SQ (Singapore) to Italy?! Other than routing through JFK for the JFK-FRA on SQ, I'm not sure you'll be able to do that. I can't imagine even US and their geographically challenged agents will let you route to VCE via Asia...
VS (Virgin Atlantic) doesn't fly to Italy, so you'd have to find another way from LHR (London, where they do fly) to VCE and they charge some pretty hefty YQ (fuel surcharges).
Generally, Star Alliance will probably have the easiest availability to Europe with the lowest surcharges. I'd try to earn as many UA (United) miles as possible via Chase and UA itself. The reason is free changes vs US (US Airways) where you pay out the butt for changes. Lufthansa releases their F (first class) space very close to departure, so you want to be able to change to it for free if needed.
EDIT: Actually if you want to be REALLY, REALLY creative, you could actually fly both CX and SQ from LAX to VCE. Use Avios for LAX-YVR-JFK on AS (Alaska Airlines) and CX. Then use *A (Star Alliance) carrier of your choice for JFK-FRA-VCE with the JFK-FRA segment on SQ.
Of course, they won't open up premium cabins on SQ to award redemptions on partners, but you could check their award chart and see how many Amex MR -> SQ miles it would take to fly in business class on that flight.
Such a routing would be many more miles than you had to spend on a flight to VCE, but it would achieve your goal of flying CX and SQ...
Hi! (I thought that YQ covered charges, but what does it stand for?)
I have heard good things about those carriers, but am up for whatever. I suppose I should have not lead the witness - better to have just asked for help from the ground up. Looking for a neat experience, and I have pretty low standards - I thought my one experience in first class US was awesome.
I also figured that if I had to fly economy for LHR to VCE, that'd be ok - it's the long flight from LAX to LHR (Europe in general) that I want to have a nice ride for.
Does this change anything? I am maxed out on Chase cards so I'm looking into hotel cards with transfer options, but that's a story for another thread.
For 130,000 AA miles per person, one could get a distance-based "Explorer" award in Business Class that would permit one to fly LAX-HKG-MXP on CX, and VCE-MAD-LAX on IB, with stopovers permitted (but not required) at HKG and MAD.
I echo guv's point. The distance-based explorer award has some funky rules but you should be able to make it work and it would be a great way to get where you need to go while also trying out some nice products.
You can apply 2x50k AA cards right now to get 100k AA miles each, and if you have any AA miles already that could get you to 130k. You can also later apply for a business AA card at 50k for a total of 150k if you need the miles (or just buy 30k, which I don't recommend).
You didn't mention DL so you may not have the miles, but you could also fly Alitalia from LAX to Rome direct for 100k DL miles r/t. They seem to have a pretty nice business class product and apparently very good catering.
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Hmm HKG is not really on our travel list. I will spend some time looking into this AA Explorer, UA, and DL - I like 100k r/t!! I also need to study up on IB vs first. So many acronyms!
Has anyone flown first in any of the Singapore, Etihad, Emirates, ANA etc luxury cabins?
PS My life would be incomplete without bacon. I wonder if we would share the same taste in catering! Plug - nomeatathlete.com is run by a pal of mine. I shall also check into whether or now I am breaking FT rules!
Has anyone flown first in any of the Singapore, Etihad, Emirates, ANA etc luxury cabins?
Before you are dreaming about SQ, EY, EK and NH's business or first cabin seats, you may be better off to first understand HOW an alliance works and how it would be possible / impossible to redeem premium cabin seats on above airlines.
And most importantly, how an airline's Route Map means. The notion of you are thinking going to VCE with a CX flight, seems to indicate you do not have a concept of route map. Airlines do not fly anywhere all over the world randomly. They have a route map which is governed by many factors, and one of the most common is, most flights would have to be originated from their HOME bases for them to go to other places in the world. CX is based in HKG, therefore if you want to fly CX to Europe you would need to go to HKG to do that...
To give you a head start for your research:
SQ and NH belong to Star Alliance - UA is its prominent member in United States. US is also a member but may not be for long.
EY and EK are no member of ANY alliance. Though EY partners with AA so redemption is reciprocated. Except of course you would need to fly to Middle East for your eventual trip to Europe.
EK is partner of AS and the award chart of AS for EK is not up until Jan 16th.
All of the above carriers business class / first class seats are NOT easy to get except for EY if you dont mind to go US-Middle East-Europe, and pay a load of miles for it.
You can pretty much forget about most SQ premium cabin seats originated from US. But you could have a chance from Europe to Asia. If this is your desire to fly SQ, that would be your best option.
PS
Me think you may have read too much bloggers tout on "aspirational" travels - they are achievable but do not come easy and definitely not come in a relatively short lead time (Aug/Sept travel this year) when you have zilch in your miles accounts.
(since you mentioned it, I'm going to use as many acronyms as possible and explain them it)
You're planning on flying CX (Cathay) or SQ (Singapore) to Italy?! Other than routing through JFK for the JFK-FRA on SQ, I'm not sure you'll be able to do that. I can't imagine even US and their geographically challenged agents will let you route to VCE via Asia...
I have to chuckle on this. A friend told me US agent insisted to charge her 90K miles for her trip to HAN... Being new to the mileage game she told the agent that should have been 120K as Vietnam is in SE Asia... But to no avail. The US agent insisted 90K was correct.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DC777Fan
EDIT: Actually if you want to be REALLY, REALLY creative, you could actually fly both CX and SQ from LAX to VCE. Use Avios for LAX-YVR-JFK on AS (Alaska Airlines) and CX. Then use *A (Star Alliance) carrier of your choice for JFK-FRA-VCE with the JFK-FRA segment on SQ.
Of course, they won't open up premium cabins on SQ to award redemptions on partners, but you could check their award chart and see how many Amex MR -> SQ miles it would take to fly in business class on that flight.
You mean do that with 2 BA awards? The LAX-YVR would be relatively cheap but the YVR-JFK on CX would still incur YQ given CX charges YQ on its own program and BA would just happily pass it along... Then there is still the JFK-XXX-VCE to counter with....
Quote:
Originally Posted by DC777Fan
Such a routing would be many more miles than you had to spend on a flight to VCE, but it would achieve your goal of flying CX and SQ...
What a crazy concept to try to go somewhere instead of concentrating on who flies where and what is the least cost / biggest advantage redemption then focus on carriers which dont even fly such routes directly...
OP has read way too much blogs on premium cabins travel without learning any real knowledge on how to achieve such...
OP has read way too much blogs on premium cabins travel without learning any real knowledge on how to achieve such...
fwiw, there *are* good carriers natural for much (maybe not all) of the routing. such as LH for *A and BA for OW. not as comfy as CX and SQ, but i think quite feasible.
You mean do that with 2 BA awards? The LAX-YVR would be relatively cheap but the YVR-JFK on CX would still incur YQ given CX charges YQ on its own program and BA would just happily pass it along... Then there is still the JFK-XXX-VCE to counter with....
Well since BA charges per segment anyways, it shouldn't change the mileage requirement. You'd have to have 2 PNRs to stay within the law since a carrier can't sell JFK-LAX via YVR, but that shouldn't affect pricing much--if at all. Baggage/ticketing agents in LAX might look at you funny if/when you ask your bags to be checked through to VCE on your cockameme routing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Happy
OP has read way too much blogs on premium cabins travel without learning any real knowledge on how to achieve such...
I don't have any commentary to add... just think it bears repeating.
Yeah, OP may have read a bunch of blogs, but at least he's trying to figure stuff out.
OP, you never made clear how many miles you ACTUALLY have. You wrote, "I imagine we can each come up with 150-200k miles/points." You mean, you have zero now and you hope to come up with 150k per person? Or you already have a bunch and will "top off" with a couple of cards? 150k/person isn't an outlandish number (my wife and I do about 500k/person/year) but you need the miles before you can book, which is going to get tricky for summer travel.
Do you already have a cruise booked from Italy? If so, you really do need to get to Italy. If you want to experience a premium cabin, what if you flew somewhere else in Europe, and then bought a ticket to Venice (or Rome, or whatever)? If you can be flexible, you have more options.
100k DL miles for Alitalia is great. But do you have 100k DL miles? There aren't any 50k DL offers, so you couldn't just apply (for instance) for a biz and personal card to hit 100k. Then of course there's the issue of availability; I didn't see anything open out of LAX. (You could connect through JFK, but that requires finding domestic space on Delta, which is pretty tough.)
In fact your best option may be:
LAX-YVR using Avios to fly AS (Alaska)
YVR-JFK-LHR using AA miles (100k r/t in business class, assuming you can find availability). You can fly YVR-JFK in CX's great new business class product, and JFK-LHR on AA in business. (Don't fly BA, which charges huge surcharges).
Then once at LHR, buy ticket on a low-cost carrier for the final hop to Italy.
This may be the best way for you to get to Venice.
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Actually, I see that AA does have a flight to Milan (MXP) and Rome (FCO).
So you could fly LAX-JFK-MXP/FCO on AA for 100k.
I think you can fly LAX-YVR-JFK-FCO, FCO-JFK-YVR-LAX, all for 100k. (The only reason for this longer routing would be to try out CX's new J (business class) seat. I did this a few months ago and it was really nice.) I'm not 100% positive if AA will allow that routing though -- I haven't thought about it very hard -- but if not you can always use Avios for LAX-YVR-LAX
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fwiw, there *are* good carriers natural for much (maybe not all) of the routing. such as LH for *A and BA for OW. not as comfy as CX and SQ, but i think quite feasible.
Sure there. But you have left out the small details which are not too trivial.
BA is going to cost you a cash fortune thanks to the YQ. That is why BA flights to Europe are so easy to get while AA's own metal are so hard to obtain. Unless you are willing to shell out several hundreds of CASH out of pocket each way... then of course fly BA premium cabins would be better than AA's... though it is hardly a comparison to CX's due to BA's hard products are pretty old (the new F is just for cosmetic uplift, not a substantial improvement from the old F seats which were in existence for probably over a decade by now.)
LH first class is going to be tough to get for multiple seats, and need to be last minute booking which with UA miles, would be subject to the fee that booked within 21 days for most people except the UA top elites (1K and GS). Since OP is neither, suggest this to OP is of little value because it would be very tough for him to pull off.
100k DL miles for Alitalia is great. But do you have 100k DL miles? There aren't any 50k DL offers, so you couldn't just apply (for instance) for a biz and personal card to hit 100k. Then of course there's the issue of availability; I didn't see anything open out of LAX. (You could connect through JFK, but that requires finding domestic space on Delta, which is pretty tough.)
The availability of AZ is very tough even if you do not need DL for the domestic hop. I just booked one before X'mas for Summer travel - there were exact ONE single date on the outbound MIA-FCO and ONE single date on the inbound FCO-MIA that had business class seat availability. On the outbound it had 3, on the inbound it had 2. Now not any more since I took 2 each.
Quote:
Originally Posted by crimson12
In fact your best option may be:
LAX-YVR using Avios to fly AS (Alaska)
YVR-JFK-LHR using AA miles (100k r/t in business class, assuming you can find availability). You can fly YVR-JFK in CX's great new business class product, and JFK-LHR on AA in business. (Don't fly BA, which charges huge surcharges).
Then once at LHR, buy ticket on a low-cost carrier for the final hop to Italy.
This may be the best way for you to get to Venice.
In theory, yes. In reality, good luck in finding availability on AA's own metal to Europe. It is very scarce because of 2 factors:
1) AA does not release much seats on its non-stop flights to Europe.
2) Many people trying to avoid BA's YQ, therefore there are a lot more people clamoring for a very scarce supply.
That said, AA miles probably are the easiest to get a meaningful amount in short time thanks to the double apps of Citi AAdvantage cards.
It sounds as if OP starts from 0, and thinks he could earn 150 to 200K miles in a jiffy for his potential cruise in Aug / Sept...
Now OP has mentioned they are in military... this may post some problems because all these reward cards carry minimum spend to meet in 90 days in order to earn bonuses... If OP is suddenly deployed while he is in the process of getting cards for the bonuses... he may have an issue meeting those spend requirements.
Quote:
Originally Posted by crimson12
Actually, I see that AA does have a flight to Milan (MXP) and Rome (FCO).
So you could fly LAX-JFK-MXP/FCO on AA for 100k.
I think you can fly LAX-YVR-JFK-FCO, FCO-JFK-YVR-LAX, all for 100k. (The only reason for this longer routing would be to try out CX's new J (business class) seat. I did this a few months ago and it was really nice.) I'm not 100% positive if AA will allow that routing though -- I haven't thought about it very hard -- but if not you can always use Avios for LAX-YVR-LAX
FCO is seasonal service. Better check the schedule to see when is the last date of service.
Again, getting AA's own metal to Europe is going to be an uphill battle.
Alaska would be neat.
