Originally Posted by
robyng
I guess it all depends how you like to travel - and how far and how many hours you're willing to go out of your way. What is your total flight time from Miami to Stockholm? And I assume you wouldn't be flying home from Moscow unless you wanted to include it as part of your trip - right? Robyn
Before you start to comment on others itineraries, you may want to READ the map and understand other's intended trips first. There is a surface sector between ARN and SVO. And yes, why would we start our inbound portion from SVO if we have no intention to visit Moscow? Such an elementary question...
To answer the other elementary questions:
1) The ONLY direct flight is JFK-ARN on DL metal which is at 300K miles level...
2) Anybody has half a brain would not pay the 300K price because there are DL JFK-CPH available and a flight between CPH-ARN can be bought on Norwegian is below 50 euro, everyday during Jul / Aug. Even AMS-ARN is only 80 euro on Norwegian.
3) This also mean even if I am brain-dead and willing to pay that absurd price -
we would need to travel MIA-JFK, and in order not to risk missing flight, we would need to get to JFK a night before. That would mean at least one night stay at JFK.
4) In case you do not know, there is NO good option for an airport hotel in JFK - so you would need to take the train/metro to the city... (not to mention the high cost of NYC hotel.
5) Oh, there is yet another small details, as everybody already knows well, the DL domestic hop is almost never at low level... So the moment you attach a mid-level domestic hop to the International itinerary, your low level TATL goes out of the window and suddenly you are looking at a 200K level.
May be you have no ideas of the above little details why people choose their itineraries not based on the direct flights and time needed to travel? Because you always seem to only judge an itinerary being convenient only by the time you fly.
In our case, the direct JFK-ARN would actually cost us much more time (how about a good 14 to 16 hours?) due to the overnight at JFK, and far more cost due to A) overnight hotel at JFK at least on the outbound. B) Either pay 200K or pay additional to get a separate ticket MIA-JFK-MIA to cover our going and coming MIA-JFK in order to go TATL.
So what is the problem / issue you see for the direct flight MIA-FCO? No forced overnight at JFK and only a few hours late to get us to ARN while we enjoy lounges at every layover, have much better business class seat on AZ than on DL?
For your rant on your difficulty to get to Japan, may I suggest you look at OneWorld option? But of course you so look down on AA miles in our previous discussions over a year ago, I gather you never care to collect any AA miles because it is so inconvenience for you to fly out of Jacksonville...
A week or so ago in my curious search of CX First availability to HKG I actually saw several JL F / J availability going to Japan from BOS and ORD... but again you would need AA miles or BA Avios to do that (BA Avios would cost you an arm and a leg both in Avios and Cash but of course you sure can afford it.)
125K AA miles, AA F and JL F suite all the way, all legs included, about $60 in taxes. Free to change everything from dates to routing except the Origin and Destination. I dont see what is not to like.
For an additional 10K you could go CX F to HKG.
Finally, the reason why this thread is heavily skewed to awards to Europe, is because it is much easier to find premium cabin seats to Europe using DL miles, at least up to 2 months ago before AF changed its policy. While using DL miles to Asia you would have to 1) dodge KE's embargo dates which are A Lot. 2) pay YQ on all the DL Chinese partners. 3) It is much more difficult to find low level award on DL metal to Asia then to Europe.
Know your programs' strength and weakness and use them to your advantage instead of insisting you only want a single program based on some really narrow-view or outdated perceptions - that is that much I can say.