Introduction
A 3-year absence from the sub-continent and the joyful occasion of a relative’s wedding required my presence in India.
One of my favorite parts of flying to India from the western United States is the sheer number of routing possibilities.
TPAC, one can fly to Asia, usually a 12-15 hour flight, then continue onward to India, which takes about 6-9 hours, ending up with about 21 hours in the air.
TATL, one can fly to Europe, about 11 hours, then onward to India, about 9-10 hours, culminating in the same 21 hours in the air.
Growing up, I flew several of these routes, through airports like Heathrow, Frankfurt, Charles de Gaulle, Incheon, Kai Tak, Narita, and Don Muang, all on a smorgasbord of airlines, aircraft, and alliances. Lax stopover rules allowed me to see much of the world en-route to the (grand)motherland.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the majority of these trips were funded with miles and points, many courtesy of my father’s business AAdvantage Mastercard. A mysterious letter that came to our house one day, awarding us something called "Lifetime AAdvantage Gold" status, got me thinking more about miles and status.
However, since we were often 3 or 4 traveling at a time, all these trips were in the back of the bus. Boarding meant having to walk past the posh interiors of business class, as the curtains to the first class cabin were already rung up by the time I was lucky enough to board such marvelous jumbo jets.
No worries back then, as just being on a plane was joyful enough -- I could always bug my parents to let me have the window seat, and so spent many hours of my childhood peering out above the clouds (an activity I still enjoy to this date
). Not only that, but flying economy on airlines like Lufthansa and Cathay Pacific was actually a delight back then.
But on my last trip to India, I spent a rather dreadful 36 hours crammed into a small
Delta Economy Discomfort seat from Atlanta to Mumbai on the old DL 184/185, the world’s longest economy class route at the time, just a tad shorter than the fabled all-business SQ non-stops to the U.S. While I had my usual window seat, the flight took off at midnight in Mumbai and landed at 6am in ATL, before the winter sunrise, negating any views. Not only that, but DL ran out of meals. Seriously.
Upon arrival, I left the airport and went directly to class, still in a daze, the usual post-flight high no longer apparent as it was when I was younger. That trip was the impetus to figure out how to leverage my miles and status that I had earned but not yet burned.
Of course, since those were Skymiles, I'd have to figure out another way to save up for a journey to India in a premium class. With various bonuses and promotions, that didn’t take long, especially with US’ grand slam promotion. Some unnecessary Hertz rentals and quite necessary Biscoff spreads later, I had more than enough miles for a relatively small cash outlay.
Brilliant.
I had also been repeatedly asked by relatives in Hong Kong to come visit them, even just for a weekend on the way to India. The US award chart allowed me to utilize a
comical routing to/from HKG for only 120K in F. Of course, my relatives' idea of
"on the way to India" means flying CX and utilizing an HKG stopover. While I have been aching to try CX in F one-way via AA miles, US only allows round-trips. Well, they
allow one-ways, but they charge the round-trip price, and I wasn't keen on throwing away 60K US miles.
My sister has also been bugging members of my family to visit Southeast Asia, so she and I decided to head to Vietnam for a few days after our time in India. From there, I had a few extra days before I could go to Hong Kong, so I decided to visit Thailand for the first time, mainly just Bangkok. I know the country has
way more to offer, but wanted to save those places for when I had more time. US has an amazing box for intra-South Asia, which unlike UA includes India, so I booked an open-jaw for myself and a one-way for my sister in SQ J. Each was 30K US miles … all in all, 180K US miles well spent, although my US coffers are back to 4 digits, so I’m hoping for another Grand Slam soon
.
From there, I just needed to connect my Hong Kong and Bangkok nodes. It’s funny how such opportunities arise. I soon learned that the great Emirates runs a BKK-HKG-BKK flight on the backend of their DXB-BKK service on the Airbus A380, an aircraft that I have yet to experience. While I’m not against flying Y on a stellar carrier, I soon saw that this route had some of the lowest-priced F/J tickets for
any 3-hour route, let alone on an Emirates A380. For those of you not familiar with Emirates’ A380 … the thing has showers in First. Where you can take one. At 38,000 feet. At Mach 0.85.
I elected to book the outbound leg in F, to experience the suite and shower. I’ve never flown EK, and this would probably be the best/cheapest way for me to experience a great airline and my first A380. Normally, I wouldn’t pay such a high price for a 3-hour trip, but when would I ever get this opportunity again?! Not only that, but just the idea of flying a UAE carrier between Hong Kong and Thailand with an American passport on my way to India just seems so worldly.
Thank you, fifth freedoms!
And thank you Alaska Airlines for giving me a worthy account to bank my first ever revenue F ticket! Double miles, too? You shouldn't have!
In the end, I was able to get an itinerary that looked like this, with links to the posts already completed:
Outbound to India:
LAX-SFO-FRA on UA 747 F (
1,
2,
3)
FRA Lufthansa FCT (
4)
FRA-ZRH on LH European J, ZRH SWISS FCL,
ZRH-HKG on LX A340 F (
5,
6)
HKG-BKK on EK A380 F (
7,
8,
9)
BKK-SIN-BOM on SQ J, with a day-long stopover to check out Singapore (
10,
11,
12,
13)
Asia Side-Trip:
BOM-SIN-HAN on SQ J (
14,
15)
5 days in Northern Vietnam (
16,
17)
HAN-BKK on QR Y (yes, Qatar) (
18)
4 days in Bangkok (
19)
BKK-HKG on EK A380 F (
20,
21,
22)
A weekend in Hong Kong (
23)
Return:
HKG-BKK on TG 747 F (old) (
24,
25)
BKK Thai FCL/Spa,
BKK-FRA on TG 77W F Suites (
26,
27,
28,
29,
30)
FRA-LHR on LH European J, with a 23h50m stopover in London (
31)
LHR-LAX on UA 777 F (
32,
33,
34)
15 segments, covering 34,335 miles. A lot of personal firsts along the way. Stay tuned ...