andreiz

Trip Report: EurAustralAsian Sampler

Background

This trip was conceived in March 2012, booked over a couple of months and executed later that year in September. Caveat legentibus: this is my first trip report. Apologies in advance for volubility, but I am just too excited to share this with a wider audience.

I won’t lie. The inspiration for this trip came mainly from reading many fine trip reports whilst losing prodigious amounts of drool when ogling cabins, food, amenities, sleepwear, and entertainment that some of the top airlines in the world provide to those willing to part with a few miles. I’d flown in BA and AY business previously thanks to op-ups, but First Class had been, alas, out of reach. Until now. Having joined the club of miles & points collectors a few months earlier, I was anxious to try out some of these premium products and live it up a bit “in the pointy end” (hat tip to Moomba).

Planning

My schedule was fairly flexible, but I was limited by the minuscule vacation time American companies allow their employees, as well as a couple of required touchpoints (Russia to visit the family for a few days and then Munich for the Oktoberfest opening). I decided to base the core of the trip on lucky9876coins’s, aka Lucky, TR where he covered 37,000 miles in 2 weeks visiting 4 continents. The plan was fly to Asia via Europe, then to Sydney and back to Europe and Russia again. Along the way I wanted to visit Bangkok, Singapore, Vienna, and Salzburg, thus turning it into what I called “EurAustralAsian Sampler”. Oh, and I had to get back home to San Francisco too. Figuring out how to split this itinerary between airlines and awards was the real fun, but my plan was to try first class on Lufthansa, Thai Airways, and Qantas, which necessitated at least a couple of one-way awards.

Booking

This was quite an involved affair with a certain measure of luck, so feel free to skip to the juicy parts with visual stimulation (and I’m not talking about the Bangkok layover, nope, not at all).

Initially I planned to use 70K United miles for US-Asia award routing via Europe with segments on Lufthansa and Thai Airways – to enjoy the amazing ground services in Bangkok and get an hour-long massage in Royal First Lounge. Right about that time Lufthansa decided they wanted to make money on those F seats rather than give them away to miles hoarders and became very stingy with the award space. *sigh* All right, United Global First to Europe it would have to be. The best itinerary time-wise was SFO-ORD-AMS-FRA-BKK-SIN, with a few hours in AMS and long stopover in BKK. My hope was to switch to LH and a more direct routing a few days before the trip.

SIN-SYD was a simple nonstop 35K AA award in QF J, since I could not locate availability in F.

Next was getting back to Europe from Sydney. I desperately wanted to fly Qantas’s A380 and after many hours of searching inventory via their website, I pieced together a First Class itinerary with SYD-SIN in BA, SIN-LHR in QF and LHR-DME in BA J. 80K AA miles and $425 poorer due to BA’s “fees” and “surcharges” I had the award in my pocket.

To get back to SFO I briefly toyed with the idea of parting with hard earned cash since one way fares from Europe were hovering around $550. Things got busy with work then, and I left the trip as-is until July.


Enter early July 2012. Some of you may remember this as that brief, yet heady time when Singapore Air reservation system was undergoing an upgrade and in the process giving out First Class award space to anyone who bothered to ask. I was in DFW, on my way back from experiencing a gorgeous summer in Montréal, when I saw Lucky’s tweet about the SQ glitch. A quick check on United search engine revealed that FRA-SIN was gone, but MUC-SIN had availability in F. Huzzah!

Seldom have hearts beat faster as I dialed up the United award desk and very gingerly asked if they wouldn’t mind updating part of my itinerary to fly MUC-SIN-BKK-SIN on SQ instead (I had to get back to SIN to continue to SYD). The agent agreed that yes, SQ space was available and she would work on it. This touched me deeply and almost brought a tear to my eye. Meanwhile, the boarding started and ended, but the agent was taking her sweet time and I had to fight off persistent FAs who wanted me to shut down my phone. Don’t you people understand that this might be my only chance at experiencing what is arguably the best First Class seat in the sky and the availability may be gone any minute?! Thankfully, the agent confirmed the change before I could be thrown off the flight and all was good. The initial part of the itinerary stayed the same, SFO-ORD-AMS, but now I had only 45 minutes to connect in MUC. No worries, since I planned to switch to LH later and get a better connection.

Then I got bold.

Back home I thought – if SQ is still in glitch mode, why not shoot for the moon? I dialed up United and casually ventured that I’d like to add a segment to my existing itinerary, the segment being SIN-SYD in SQ F. I don’t know if this agent came from US Airways or something, but instead of laughing in my face, he started futzing around with the computer. I was sitting there with all my fingers and toes crossed while he muttered that the system was acting up and he’d have to find out how to override it, and so on, but in the end he said those magic words: “You’re all set”. I refused to believe it until I refreshed the itinerary window and there it was.

US-Europe-Asia-Australia. For 70K miles. In First Class. With 2 segments on Singapore 77Ws.



Except that 2 days later the reservation was still not showing as ticketed, giving me a more than mild panic attack. I called United again and spent an hour and a half listening to them figure out how why the ticket wasn’t being issued. After scaring me into semi-catatonic state by pronouncing the word “invalid”, they proceeded to much back and forth and finally narrowed it down to incorrect taxes having been charged, but couldn’t get the system to spit out the proper amount. Some poor soul there had to go through the itinerary segment by segment and calculate the appropriate taxes by hand. I owed $70 extra, which I was all too happy to pay. This also obviated the need for the 35K AA award from SIN to SYD, so I canceled it easily.

At the same time, I remembered that I still had no ticket back home from Europe. A search on ITA revealed that the one-way fares for September were above $900 now. *gulp* Since I saved 35K miles on getting to Australia, why not add a few more and fly back home in style? Air Berlin had a few TATL J seats available, so I used 50K AA miles and the international gateway rule to create a stopover in SFO before continuing to Hawaii a few months later (MUC-DUS-SFO-LAX-HNL). Total outlay was 45K miles because I had the Citi AA Visa card which gives you 10% rebate on awards.

I was meeting family in Krasnodar (KRR), but getting an award space on S7 was a pain, so I just bought revenue tickets to fill in DME-KRR-DME and DME-DUS-VIE. Vienna-Salzburg and Salzburg to Munich were done on trains.

Done? Almost. It still bothered me that I didn’t maximize the SYD-DME award and had to pay those expensive fuel surcharges. Another A380 flight for SYD-SIN segment would have been lovely, but there was no availability. I kept poking and prodding Qantas search engine for a few days and finally a space opened up on A380 for MEL-SIN route. EXP desk helpfully changed the itinerary to start with SYD-MEL-SIN and refunded me $250 in fees, but the only available J seat from SYD gave me less than an hour in MEL and I wanted to experience the QF First Class lounge that I heard much about. I knew that QF flies that route almost every half hour, so something was bound to open up. ExpertFlyer to the rescue. I set up an alert for a few possible flights and sure enough, one of them triggered a few days later, but for an economy seat. Still, I'd have almost 3 hours in MEL. As a bonus, I was also able to switch the LHR-DME segment to be on BA F.

Fast forward to a few days before the trip. My days were filled with work and preparation, and nights with visions of dancing bottles of Dom. The only remaining task was replacing the TATL UA segment with LH one. United engine showed award space for the date I needed, but then LH, with uncanny and precise German timing, announced the upcoming strike. I called United anyway and the agent confirmed that space was available, but after a few minutes of slow typing informed me that the system would not let the change go through as-is, because my itinerary was “very wrong”. How dare they call my little miracle “wrong”! The agent said that if I wanted the change, it would be charged as two awards – US-Asia and Asia-Australia – and I would be forced to pay extra untold number of miles. I hung up and called again, but the result was the same. Faced with the prospect of screwing up the existing award and the possibility of LH strike screwing up the flights anyway, I decided to stick with my existing UA Global First seat. There would be other LH F flights in the future.

As for the hotels, my goal was to stay at Starwood properties as much as possible since I completed the Starwood Platinum challenge in June 2012 and was ready to enjoy the perks. The hotel planning process was somewhat complicated as well and I’ll share the details in the individual installments.

Summary

This would be a trip of many firsts. First time on Singapore Air, Qantas and S7. First time on A380. First time visiting Bangkok, Singapore, Vienna, Salzburg and Sydney (adding a new continent to my list). First time at Oktoberfest. First time in international First Class.

Now, where were we? Oh, I had 40000 miles to fly and 2 weeks to do it. Let’s go.

Final Itineraries

SFO-ORD-AMS-MUC-SIN-BKK-SIN-SYD – 70K UA miles, UA F, SQ F/J
SYD-MEL-SIN-LHR-DME – 80K AA miles, QF F/Y, BA F
DME-KRR-DME – S7 J (revenue ticket)
DME-DUS-VIE – AB/HG Y (revenue ticket)
MUC-DUS-SFO – 45K AA miles, AB J



Installments

1 - Flight: SFO-ORD UA F / Lounges: UA FCLs
2 - Flight: ORD-AMS UA F
3 - Flight: AMS-MUC CL Y
4 - Flight: MUC-SIN SQ F
5 - Flight: SIN-BKK SQ J / Lounge: SQ Private Room
6 - Hotel: St. Regis / City: Bangkok
7 - Flight: BKK-SIN SQ J / City: Singapore
8 - Flight: SIN-SYD SQ F
9 - City: Sydney / Hotel: AirBNB
10 - Flight: SYD-MEL QF Y / Lounge: QF Business
11 - Flight: MEL-SIN QF F / Lounge: QF First
12 - Flight: SIN-LHR QF F / Lounge: BA/QF First
13 - Flight: LHR-DME BA F
14 - Flight: DME-KRR S7 J / Lounge: S7
15 - Flights: KRR-DME S7 Y, DME-DUS-VIE AB,HG Y / Lounge: Hugo Junkers
16 - Hotel Imperial Vienna, Starwood Luxury Collection
17 - City: Vienna
18 - Train: Vienna-Salzburg / City: Salzburg/ Hotel: Sheraton
19 - Train: Salzburg-Munich / City: Munich / Oktoberfest
20 - Flight: MUC-DUS AB Y, DUS-SFO AB J

Photography

All photos were taken with Sony RX-100, which is excellent for portable low-light photography, and iPhone 4S. Processing was done in Lightroom 4 with some Photoshop touch-ups here and there. I stole a few ideas on placing and formatting photos from stevieed's wonderful trip report. Full trip photos - especially additional menu pages - that did not make it here can be found in corresponding Flickr albums, available in this collection.