UA AC NH options sea-nrt in j
 

They're all about the same $ though that's not much of an issue. Looking to maximize comfort/service and eqm. Options appear to be: (and yes, sea-sfo is on ua)

ua sea-nrt on 777-200 old style - i try to avoid this plane
ua sea-sfo-nrt on 747 - perfectly comfortable and happy to do it again
nh sea-sfo-nrt on 777-300 - never been on a longhaul japanese carrier
ac sea-yvr-nrt on 767-300 - never flown longhaul AC

any recommendations? there are also DL options but i'm more interested in *a status

Not sure when you are travelling but NH SEA-NRT may be on new 787 in July or August 2012

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/all-n...-routes-2.html

yea, i wish it were later but this is for mid may travel

Personally, I would book NH. I think it is their new business product, "ANA BUSINESS STAGGERED". The same seat as on the 787.

https://www.ana.co.jp/wws/us/e/asw_c...ess_staggered/

Excellent, I didn't know that - i think that's what I'll do. However I can't seem to find the answer easily on .bomb - do NH flights qualify as lifetime miles? i know they earn eqm equally to that of flying ua, but it's not clear if they count towards lifetime.

Lifetime UA flight miles are just that, lifetime UA BIS miles. Starting this year, it includes flights on COPA as well. There was a single adjustment of lifetime miles this March 3 due to differences between the way the legacy OnePass and legacy MP programs calculated lifetime miles.

You can read it for yourself:

http://www.united.com/web/en-US/cont.../lifetime.aspx

d'oh. well maybe i'll end up just taking the ua 747 as it's nearly the exact same time and that's 10k more bis..

Aside from the issue of BIS miles, I'd personally probably pick AC or NH over UA. AC has a good hard product and decent enough soft-product. NH has an excellent soft product and if you get the new biz seating, a very good hard product though if it's the old sloped seating, then UA's new seat is better.

I did a dummy booking before responding and it looks like it woudl be the new seat.

And I agree with you that the UA flat C seat is superior to the legacy NH seat.

In which case, I'd choose NH.

If you don't mind a little backtracking, OZ has great comfort/service via ICN.

i don't mind backtracking, but i consider OZ the USAir of asian carriers - have never been impressed with their j product - though the one time i flew coach i thought they did an excellent job (hnd-gmp - though i think it was >$1k so maybe not the best value)

+1 especially if it's on the 77W.

I believe the SEA-ICN service is a 333 with the legacy business seat. If you wanted the new OZ seat (similar to the new NH seat), you would have to go SEA-SFO-ICN-NRT.

I've only flown OZ in business twice, but I was impressed with the soft product. I flew the older business seat and was not impressed with the seat at all.

yea they occasionally swap in the new biz seat but the old one is not much better than the ua 777 legacy seats. they'll also sometimes swap in a oz 777 but that's rare.