Introduction

This adventure started out as a trip to Hong Kong to visit relatives, as I have not been back in nearly 7 years. In the old days, I would have simply fired up any old search engine find the cheapest available flight. It would have been a bonus if I was able to accrue miles. But I’m a FlyerTalker now and I know better. I have opened a checking account here, signed up for a credit card there, and charged everything and anything to those cards. Toss in a few mileage runs in addition to my work travel, and voila I can now travel in style. Of course, this kind of lifestyle does come with scrutiny and ridicule from family and friends, alike.

Friend, “Want to do something tonight?”
Me, “Sure, I land a little before 10. I’m in San Francisco right now”
Friend, “What are you doing in San Francisco?”
Me, “Lunch.”
Friend, “You’re crazy.”

Or

Me, “Wait, don’t use that credit card.”
Another Friend, “Why?”
Me, “Because you only earn X points/miles. Use this card, it earns 3X points points/miles.”
Another Friend *rolls eyes in exasperation* “You’ve got to be [bleep] kidding me. You’re[bleep] insane”

Or

Dad, “You’re in your mid twenties now. If you don’t settle down in one place, you’ll never find a nice girl.”
Me, “I have, they’re just in different area codes, that’s all.”
Dad, “They?”
Me, “Never mind.”

In the words of eightblack, “or something like that.”

Although I have been fortunate enough to fly in domestic premium cabins on a regular basis, I have only been in an international premium cabin twice. Both times were in business class. Business class is nice, but after reading many trip reports about First Class services on many airlines here on FT, I developed a bit of yearning….ok ok obsession…to make that last leap into the true pointy end of the plane. So satisfy my yearning, I decided to book both my outbound and return in First. Scratch 1 item off my bucket list.

I began planning my trip in early February for a departure in December. Since I am based in Dallas, my airline of choice is the airline proud to bear the name American. My tidy pile of AAdvantage miles grew a bit larger after the wonderful DEQM promotions of earlier this year. So naturally I looked to Cathay Pacific to get me to Hong Kong. Using the clunky British Airways award tool, I found a First seat on CX 889 (JFK-HKG) on December 1st. As I was meeting my parents in Florida after my trip and then returning with them to Houston for Christmas, I decided to start my trip in Houston to make the overall logistics a little easier. I was able to easily find availability on AA from IAH to JFK. But why stop at just Hong Kong? Why not explore another country I’ve never been to before. Hong Kong is located in the Asia 2 award zone, which encompasses all of Southeast Asia. No matter where you go in Asia 2, the 67,500 miles are required for a First Class redemption. After some thinking, I decided to go to Bali, as I have never been to Indonesia before and I wouldn’t mind relaxing on the beach for a few days. There was plenty of availability between Hong Kong and Bali, so it's easy to tack the additional segment on. Unfortunately, AA does not allow international stopovers on award tickets so I used an additional 22,500 miles to get back Hong Kong after my time in Bali.

For my return segment, I decided to dip into my Mileage Plus account to experience the best Star Alliance has to offer. Additionally, I would be able to scratch another item off my bucket list: circumnavigate the world on one trip, as United allows crossing the Atlantic to reach Asia on award tickets. I did a good bit of homework on the “new” United’s award booking engine and found award availability on Swiss from Tokyo to Zurich. I was really hoping to find Lufthansa First availability on the transatlantic leg, but Lufthansa had adopted a policy of not releasing award seats to partners until a few weeks before departure. So I had booked Swiss’ Zurich to Montreal service, which was available in First, to hold the award and bide my time until Lufthansa opens up availability. Two flights in Swiss First, a real bummer. Finding flights from Hong Kong to Tokyo and Montreal to Orlando (where I would meet my family) was a breeze. Unfortunately, booking this award ticket wasn’t a breeze as I booked around the infamous date of March 3, 2012. Here is one of the indignities I suffered through:



Yep, true story. But I finally I was able to book it and 70,000 miles and $97 in taxes and fees later I had confirmed my return leg. So I was all set, or so I thought.

In the beginning of June, I received word that one of my uncles had passed away from lung cancer and one of my grand aunts was in and out of the hospital due to colon cancer. I talked it over with my parents and decided to move my trip up as soon as possible so I could so I could spend some time with my grand aunt. Unfortunately, I couldn’t leave until July due to a major assignment at work during June and I would have cut out my jaunt to Bali, as it was high season and everything was ridiculously priced. But family is family. I can visit Bali another time.

Once again, I fired up the BA award booking engine to look for Cathay First availability. But I was unable to find anything. The best option I found was flying AA in business from Dallas to Tokyo connecting to Cathay to Hong Kong. I have seen quite a few TRs lately on both AA international First and Business recently, and I thought it had improved and actually looked pretty good, but it’s still definitely a few notches below Cathay. At that point, I accepted my fate and decided to still depart out of Houston and keep the segment to Bali to avoid the $150 change fee due to a different origination/destination.

So I rang the AAdvantage award desk, and explained the situation to a wonderful AAgent named Kelly. She did a little tapping and said, “Hmmm…Mr. Harrison, I don’t think you really want to lose this Cathay First seat, right? Let me see if I can find something for you in July.” After 5 minutes of tapping, Kelly managed to find one seat on CX 873 (SFO-HKG) that I had apparently missed. Boom! Flights from Houston to San Francisco were found with relative ease, to my surprise, as July is in the middle of the busy summer travel season. At that point, she posed another question to me, “Are you really planning to continue to Bali or will you be terminating in Hong Kong.” That was a bit of d’oh moment for me. I had planned to throw away that Bali segment, to avoid the fee, since it was the last segment of a one way award. But I had mentioned to Kelly at the beginning of the call that my relatives were in Hong Kong. I sheepishly answered it was the latter. She then told me she’d be right back and put me on hold. After 7 minutes, Kelly came back and told me she had talked to her supervisor, who agreed to waive the change fee for changing my destination in light of my loyalty to American and the circumstances that necessitated that change. After a few more minutes, everything was set and sent to ticketing queue. I thanked Kelly profusely and hung up.

I know this is a little off topic, but employees like Kelly are the reason I’m loyal to American. Obviously, there are a few bad apples, but I’ve have significantly more interactions with great employees than I have with the bad apples. Maybe I’m just lucky. Anyways, AApologist hat off. Back to the TR at hand.

Changing my return trip was another chore. Both Swiss and Lufthansa had no availability on the dates I needed. So I settled on Thai Airways First from HKG-ZRH-FRA. Then I would connect to Lufthansa to LHR, where I would have a 23 hour layover before continuing on to IAH on United BusinessFirst. It wasn’t optimal, in terms of maximizing what I could get out of my miles, but I was pleased given the circumstances. So everything was set. Or so I thought. Again. More on that later.

Just like my trip last year, I needed get back to Houston to catch my flight. Independence Day (July 4th in the US) fell on the Wednesday before my departure date. I had planned to go to Houston to spend the holiday with my family and friends, so I requested that Thursday and Friday off. That way, I could just spend the weekend down there and catch my flight on the following Monday. Unfortunately, I got into a little accident in mid-June and my car wouldn’t be ready to be picked up from the body shop (in Dallas) until July 6th. Therefore, I made a run back to Dallas from Houston on July 5th to pick up my car and return the rental and went to work on 6th to tie up a few loose ends. Unfortunately, my car wasn’t ready on 6th. Needless to say, I was pretty ticked off as there was no communication whatsoever. Mais, c’est la vie. I made arrangements to return my rental at IAH and pick up another car on my way back. Crisis averted.

After spending Saturday preparing my place in Dallas for my trip, I drove down to Houston late Saturday night and arrived at my parents’ place just before 2AM, Sunday morning. I was exhausted and fell asleep immediately after I washed up a bit. I woke up around 8 and decided to fire up my laptop to check on a few things. Somehow I ended up on FlyerTalk as well as Lucky’s blog, and my jaw just dropped after I noticed the Singapore Airlines "Award Gate" Threads here and here. After reading through a few pages on both sites, I decided to bite the bullet and pay the redeposit fee (to cancel my original award ticket) and close in booking fee. After all, Singapore F award space doesn’t come along very often and downing a few bottles of Dom would already make for the additional cost. Besides, London will still be there next year and I could take the time for a proper visit then. I gave the Mileage Plus desk a call, and after my credit card endured a $150 hit, 70,000 miles were immediately credited back to my account. Afterwards, I immediately did a quick search on united.com and found I could route HKG-SIN-DME-IAH all in SQ F. After thinking about it for a second, I decided add on one segment to terminate the award in Dallas to save me the drive from Houston to Dallas. That decision turned out to be a huge boon. Anyways, I entered DFW as my final destination instead of IAH. United.com was able to replicate the same itinerary with an additional IAH-DFW leg in UA F. I went ahead and purchased the reservation with the 70,000 miles that were just redeposited into my account and $128 in taxes and fees, and it ticketed within minutes. Finally, everything was completely set.

As far as hotels go, I will talk about that in individual posts.

So my final itinerary looked a little like this:

7/9 AA 3653 IAH-LAX CR7 F
7/9 AA 1798 LAX-SFO 738 F
7/10 CX 873 SFO-HKG 77W F
7/16 SQ 865 HKG-SIN 77W F
7/17 SQ 62 SIN-DME 77W F
7/17 SQ 62 DME-IAH 77W F
7/17 UA 391 IAH-DFW 319 F

Before I decided to move my big adventure up, I had a couple of little domestic trips planned in mid-July and in early August. I decided include those little trips within this report, since 29,000 miles sounds sexier than 21,000. Just a little heads up for y’all who don’t care to read about domestic travel in the United States. Those of you still with me, thank you for reading so far. I promise I’ll get to the good stuff next.

18 flights and 29,061 miles in 4 weeks, here we geaux

Previous Trip Report
Everybody look at me because I'm sailing on a boat (KL J and DL Y)