I'm looking at a trip to asia next summer, but am pretty flexible with my dates. I want to fly business class, and can do so at 60k points on United from LAX to NRT. This would leave me 20k points to help cheapen the cost of any flying in Asia I might do. Then, I would just purchase a ticket back (like I said, my schedule is very open).

It seems like it's more efficient this way then if I was, to say, buy an economy ticket and then try to upgrade. The Y ticket, with the surcharge, is around 1400 and then I'd need to spend points to upgrade. Was wondering if any of the more experienced flyers have any thoughts on this?