I just completed this trip recently and have been working on the report, but on the last leg someone decided they wanted to cough for the 11 hours, so I am feeling under the weather. I will be updating this with photos and the following segments:
Background and planning
IAD-FRA – 747-8i
FCT and FRA-MUC in LH C
MUC-ICN and MUC FCL – New LH F
ICN-NRT on OZ 744
Tokyo – Including Park Hyatt Tokyo
NRT-BKK TG Roulette 747 new new F?
BKK-
SIN
DPS
and The W Bali
The return
portion
Background:
Honeymoons are supposed to be a relaxing experience where you enjoy one another, however in our case some very close friends decided to get married in Europe and included my wife in the wedding party. We had originally planned on going to Bali but those plans were quickly axed due to the wedding plans. For our honeymoon we ended up seeing many parts of Europe via Easy Jet, the final routing for the trip was something like IAD-ORD-AMS-FCO-VCE-BCN-AGP-BCN-ZRH. We spent the better part of two weeks on our feet exploring and site seeing. When we finally got the Malaga we had to get ready for a wedding, even though it was a resort on a beach, weddings are not relaxing, and those Spanish can PARTY. A few too many Fanta Limon y Vodka and before I knew it the sun was coming up. When we got back into the US we vowed to get to a beach sometime soon.
Planning:
Back before I knew what flyertalk was I would have never cared what plane I flew, route I took or hotel I stayed at. I know for a fact I would have complained about sitting in Y on long-haul but I would be excited about seeing a new place. So back in July of last year I started planning this trip, or in FT terms “Ages ago”. I’ve been reading up on UA award routing rules about OJs, stopovers vs. layovers, and 15% over MPM.
I fired up the computer and unlike most of you I went without the scotch and or insert favorite libation “here”. Figured out a decent routing keeping my rules in mind, I worked backwards as LH F would open up eventually. I found TG F space from BKK-FRA and then pieced a trip off of that. The first iteration of the routing was IAH-FRA-NRT-BKK-DPS-BKK-FRA-IAH, simple enough. I called up and I was all booked relatively quickly.
Then I started reading Flyertalk more, the Mrs. would have preferred me not doing that. I then started reading about how QR would be dropped from *A in the future so I saw an option from SIN-BKK in C on their 77W. So I changed my routing to now include a layover in BKK and then in SIN as well without sacrificing Tokyo or Bali. Now the routing turned into IAH-FRA-NRT-BKK-SIN-DPS-BKK-FRA-IAH. Countdown to T-14 because LH enjoys torturing people, I had confirmed C from IAH-FRA-NRT and then FRA-IAH. At what I soon found out T-15 LH releases F award to *A members, I had alerts set up on expertflyer and Wandering Aramean tools. However at 5pm at T-15 I was watching ANA like a hawk. I knew I wasn’t going to get new F ex. US, I came to the realization of my first world problem and looked at some lesser loved LH cities, DFW, MCO, DEN, ATL. I wanted to grab the 744 out of DEN, but expertflyer said f2 on the date I needed, next was MCO at f4 (sigh) then DFW and ATL were my options. ATL opened up so I jumped, so I had to include a UA Y segment in there, I tried HARD to not actually fly UA on this trip, but oh well, on the bright side it makes you enjoy LH F even more regardless of old or new. Now I had a major issue as I planned on departing a day earlier, there was nothing to get me to NRT. I had to add an additional connection and a night in MUC, again first world problem, but I’d be spending 5 hours in the FCT in FRA. I’d been monitoring MUC-NRT as well as MUC-ICN (just in case), so another call, another routing change. Everyone still with me? At this point the Mrs. was none too happy with me as I had been spending more time on ANAs site than listening to her. The following day and I had to place another call to UA to get F ex MUC, I decided to fly through ICN instead of playing the A346 roulette with old F ex MUC to NRT, doing this also scored me the OZ C segment from ICN-NRT. Happy with my new, new, new…lost count routing I focused on the planning part of the trip, an email to the hotel in Tokyo solved the problem of what to do there. We’ll meet up with some friends in BKK and SIN, and do nothing in Bali, after all it’s a vacation right?