Originally Posted by
mheals16
Hey all,
Thanks to everyone for all the help and suggestions, this is my first major award booking (involving multiple flights and airlines) so everyone's help was extremely appreciated.
Going off the advice from many of you, since there was availability on the dates we needed, in business class, I decided to book the following:
MEL>PEK on CA in I on their 330
@Duke787, thanks for the info on CA A330s. I am sure we will enjoy our flight.
PEK>EWR on UA in I on the 777.
We decided to try United so we can get a taste of Air China and United (I haven't flown UA in over 10 years). I've heard mixed things about their service but their new business first 2-2-2 config looks pretty nice. Either way, I've heard they have a better IFE system, it gets us to the east coast, and the direct flights are great.
I'm pretty happy with what we have. Over $14K in flights for 160K UR points I think is a great redemption value, better than what we got with AA on the outbound flights.
I might monitor EF for flights on airlines with better reviews, but I'm pretty excited that we have Business class all the way home, and get a nice 9-hour stopover in PEK to hopefully see a bit of the city.
Thanks again for all the help, this is going to be a once in a lifetime honeymoon!
If you have time still, i would look out for award availability on Air New Zealand for PPT-AKL-SYD. The cost would be 35K Singapore Krisflyer Miles for TWO business class tickets (not each). You mentioned you used 70K AA miles for two tickets (i believe its 60K?) so you'd be getting business class flights for much fewer miles (all things being equal). Since there is no lie-flat business class on any airline flying AKL-PPT or the reverse, you aren't really losing much moving from Air Tahiti Nui (which is the airline i'm assuming you are flying PPT-AKL) to Air New Zealand for that flight, and Air New Zealand also has a lie flat product on AKL-SYD depending on the airline and flight you choose, so it should be competitive with the Qantas flight AKL-PPT (which again i'm assuming you are flying). There's also the added plus of the food/drink on Air New Zealand which is hear is terrific.