Originally Posted by
elliott44k
This is good advice. For most international flights, one way tickets are a bad value (I've been looking for years and have yet to find a good one). I've definitely done it both ways, having lived in the US prior to Korea, but departing from Korea on major carriers is always cheaper on average. I've always wondered how the pricing logic is set on that one.
Can't give any more useful advice without knowing your origin city. I'm assuming you'd be coming from the US in the summer. Do note that Korean students returning to Korea for the summer tend to purchase their tickets really early.
Origin city is San Diego.You are correct that Round trip tickets (paying cash) is better than combining two one-way tickets A dummy booking for June 2020 showed $1500 for round trip and $1000 for one-way via KE . I don't believe it matters if booking with miles though. I do have various currencies to work with. I'm estimating I will have accumulated 400K Chase Ultimate rewards, 100K Amex points, 100K united, 200K Advantage points by 2021.
I attempted some test bookings in June-August 2020 (SAN to ICN) and was able to find some desirable 80K business award seats on various airlines, and assuming a 35K return award seat i'm looking at 575K total miles for 5 tickets. It would be 350K total miles if we flew both ways in Economy. I've heard it's pretty cramped in economy seats, but I do have 2 children so they don't take up too much space if I sit next to them. So i'm torn between settling on economy vs splurging on the business class seats.
The other issue is it was difficult to find 5 award seats for 80k miles in business class on the same flight. I could only find them if I booked close to 330 days out. My mother in law will likely stay in Korea longer than our family of 4. So I'm looking at two separate bookings. One booking for family of four and another booking for mother in law. I would like us all to fly out the same date and same plane (and same class). I don't think it'd be fair to have mother in law in Economy, while we fly in business haha.
Not sure if i'm going off topic or if I should be posting in a newbie forum, but so far found advice helpful in this thread. Thanks in advance.