Originally Posted by
YouSeeLABruin
Newbie here, so sorry for my stupid questions. What mileage program did you use to get 400k? That trip sounds great for only 135k miles, and seeing as I'm based out of LAX and love visiting asia this would be great. Would it be possible to rack up UA miles using their credit card and doing this exact trip? Just looking online, it seemed like a roundtrip upgrade from economy to business was 60k alone. Are you saying you got first class, round trip, for 135k? That seems like a steal.
Racking up all those miles came from a combination of traveling, putting much of my spending on a credit card, and some luck buying mileage when they offered double offers.
As the Star Alliance reward chart reflects, first class to Asia is 140,000 (they must have raised it a bit since I booked my trip). My experience has been that getting a round trip using all miles is a much better deal than miles for upgrades from paid tickets.
Finding open seats for the trip takes some time and you would need to be flexible but obviously can be done.