Guava

Thanks for this wonderful trip report! I am glad that NH has started to open up their F award seats for miles, hopefully, SQ will change their mind soon re: their new F.

Due to the economy and business downturn, I can no longer fly paid NH F in the foreseable future and am stuck with the horrendous OZ C at least until year end. OZ is heavily discounting its C class fares these days as Korean won falters against major currencies and OZ is taking advantage of that. OZ C catering isn't bad for inter-Asia travel but their transpacific flights out of ICN just sucks and the cabin, almost empty. However, OZ also slashed prices by a lot and if anyone is interested, you can buy the OZ discounted business class fares and upgrade to OZ F. If you fly OZ F out of LAX, they still serve caviar so if NH no longer provides traditional caviar service, the OZ F alternative may still be a viable alternative. Though of course, aside from caviar, NH F is still superior in every other way.

For me at least, I can still use my Bank of America Asiana AMEX to upgrade from OZ C to F for only 20,000 miles each way, which is way cheaper than what NH charges for similar transpac upgrade in miles. It seems to me, the NH F service has degraded somewhat based on what gleff reported and I am eagerly anticipating your inputs. Not sure if it's any consolation for me, the way I look at it is, getting stuck with OZ still the end of year while NH F degrades a little bit probably isn't so bad after all. Not sure I'd be willing to fork 45,000 miles one-way to upgrade a NH C to F these days given what's being reported recently. However, I would kill to have your lucky NH F dealy out of NRT where you got to sit in NH F for an extra 5 hours.