Hello folks! Am starting to type out my very first trip report in the United International First Class Lounge at Chicago O'Hare; I hope I don't disappoint. When you have people like
Short Hair Francis and
lucky9876coins writing such great trip reports on their F class escapades around the world ^ on this forum, one can only be really envious and dream of flying in such manners.
But I digress. About me: I recently graduated from the University of Illinois and am headed home to Singapore. After reading the blogs of Million Mile Secrets and One Mile at a Time, the itch to fly F home was at an extremely unrelievable stage. After getting 1 UA Chase MileagePlus Explorer credit card and having started up a Chase Continental Checking account (back in 2010), I had the requisite miles for a good ol' one way F ticket back home. Oh joy! Putting the plan into motion I settled on an ORD-BRU-FRA-BKK-SIN routing on UA, LH, TG and SQ (in that order); however, reading other travel blogs convinced me not to travel UA F but travel LH F into FRA and depart on LH F to try out the LH FCT. Plus, the UA 972 ORD-BRU flight regularly gets delayed by 1-2 hours (it was delayed to 8.15pm the day I flew out on LH 437, a delay of 2h 8 min). Oh joy. Besides, my friend in Taipei convinced me to go visit him, hence I factored in a <24h overnight layover at TPE to meet him and hit the night markets of Taipei. The ticket change (routing via TPE) was made during the SQ "F Gate" mileage award ticket "fiasco", but I've already flown SQ J on the 77W before and not on LH F. It was a massive sacrifice... Just for the LH FCT
My dad said I was nuts. Who flies such a routing when an ORD-NRT-TPE-SIN in F would suffice? ONLY THE AVIATION GEEKS DO, OH YES!
As I'm not a MileagePlus elite flyer, had to cough up a $25 phone booking fee and a $75 change fee, but heck, I'm going to TPE after all! Final routing:
LH 437 ORD - DUS 23 Jul
LH 79 DUS - FRA 24 Jul
LH 712 FRA- ICN 24 Jul
TG 635 ICN - TPE 25 Jul
SQ 879 TPE - SIN 26 Jul
LH 437 is about to board in half an hour... Pictures and more will be uploaded from the SEN lounge at DUS!