Originally Posted by
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.
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.