Originally Posted by
pinniped
I surrendered in my quest to use Alaska miles for CX J seats to Asia. So I changed tactics and grabbed Y seats to Scandinavia for late spring 2023. Was able to get 5 together, on Finnair, with minimal junk fees, 30k each way per seat (ex-ORD). There was also pretty wide availability for BA in Y, but with lots of fees.
Early June should have decent weather, lots of daylight, and we're a little ahead of the July/August crowds.
At some point we'll make the Singapore trip we had booked when Covid hit, but we'll probably just do paid seats. Sometimes I see decent Premium Economy sales to Asia...I have a hard time doing TPACs in plain ol' coach.
Just picked up JFK-SGN, HAN-JFK for January about $3100 on JAL through AmEx IAP. Was even cheaper as r/t - and a nice discount from ~$3800 or so it was available elsewhere.
That's roughly 100K MRs each way, plus the credited miles (plus some tax considerations that make it an even better deal in my case), on great airline.
Hard to beat deals like that. I love the flexibility of an award ticket (used AmEx's new cancel for any reason insurance, which added to the cost slightly), but it's also nice not having to search for days for availability that might never come...