Ok, so, you all know me by now (I hope), I have been on FT for about 6 months or so and thanks mainly to You, Lloyds, Tesco and Amex (in that order) I have about 800K Avios, possibly 900K-1M by the time we book this trip, my BAPP 241 (expires 11-Jan-2014) and Mrs P's BAPP 241 which will kick in shortly.
So I was thinking, what should we do with all these Avios?
Then I saw a post recently (can't find it now or remember who posted it) which said it was possible to book an open jaw 241 redemption for something like LHR-NRT LAX-LHR, as the distance between NRT-LAX was shorter than LAX-LHR, so if you could make arrangements for flights between NRT-LAX then we would have an RTW trip, which got me very interested
Our situation, as many of you know is there are 3 of us including a 2 yo daughter who is due to start school in September 2014.
After that we will be tied in to school holidays where redemptions become virtually impossible to anywhere interesting and hotels tend to be a lot more expensive during those times. So I figured we might aswell burn them now before it's too late and we loose the travelling opportunity or they get devalued. Easy come, easy go
So I have priced up the following routing which doesn't look too shabby and is within budget Avios wise, also use of a 241 would lower the points cost even more.
LHR-NRT on BA = 90000 Avios each in F 270000 + £1127
NRT-HNL on JAL = 40000 Avios each in J 120000 + £473 (J seems to be the highest cabin on this route)
HNL-LAX on AA = 37500 Avios each in F 112500 + £20.10
LAX-LHR on BA = 75000 Avios each in F 225000 + £832
As there are 3 of us, this would come to 727,500 Avios or 562500 Avios with use of a 241 and about £2452 in Taxes total.
This isn't bad at all, but I would be interested to hear any suggestions of decent partner flights with lower taxes originating from other european destinations which we could reach using reward flight savers, even if it means we can't use the 241's on long haul as we won't be flying BA.
I'd rather save on the cash cost than the points as I would prefer put that cash towards the considerable hotel bills we are going to incur on this trip rather than "taxes and rip off fuel charges". (OMG, I'm starting to sound like a Ch… , oh never mind
)
I'm not really obsessed about going to LA or Tokyo though I'm sure they are very nice places to visit but HNL is somewhere I have always really wanted to go so I'd really like it to be on the trip somewhere if possible, but would consider somewhere else equally as beautiful if it made sense for the trip.
I'd quite like to start and end the trip in F, but I would also be ok with downgrading some flights to J (as long as it's still flat(ish) bed) if it meant we could visit a few more places, though I have heard really good things about CX F on here and would really like to try it.
We would like to spend 3-4 weeks on this trip with time split fairly evenly between the places we visit.
Timing is not really an issue as long as it's before September 2014, although I don't think we will do it this year as we already have some travel plans in place, but maybe some time towards the end of 2013. I don't mind booking a year in advance.
Any ideas, comments, suggestions, help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
PanGalactic