What kind of R/T fares are you finding? It might make sense to book two R/T paid seats on either AA or UA and then redeem miles for the two one-way travelers. (Getting an extra 2,000 UA miles quickly should be easy - just read the UA forum if interested.) I was seeing $900 R/T's to PEK and PVG recently out of Chicago...sort of makes you want to hold the miles for another day, especially if you plan to do periodic trips back to Beijing.
Originally Posted by moondog
OP: If I were you, I'd burn 55k AA or 50k BA to fly there in business class... or even 67.5k AA for F on JL, which is very, very nice.
I scoured the entire Oneworld and Star Alliance universes earlier this year looking for business class awards to China for a trip I completed a couple weeks ago. I couldn't find a thing on any airline, looking six months in advance. First and Economy both had reasonable availability, but C/J was nothing but zeroes no matter how creative I got, using all of the tools that FTers like to use to get at hard-to-find awards.
So we flew coach one-way: exit row (31H/J) on an AA777. Good seats but we actually had *too* much room, leading to people congregating at our feet for most of the flight.
We flew First Class the other way, also on AA. We felt like it was a bit of a weak international F service. Not that I loved the experience of 13 hours in coach but I left feeling disappointed that I'd spent 67.5k each for two of us to fly F. I truly believe that biz would be optimal on this route, which is probably a sentiment held by many...hence the difficulty finding award seats.
