Bitter – Sweet

Of course with the RTW program shutting down I am gloomy about not being able to use this great program in the future. I have booked several RTW trips over the years. Although challenging to find the seats that will work it was always a fun hunt and the value has always been through the roof.

Last year I had transferred points for another trip and then we were not able to get away. So, ANA has been sitting on hundreds of thousands of points - burning a hole in my account “pocket”.

Here we are 4 days away from the deadline and I was able to book a trip for spring of 2025. There is some good and some unfortunate.

Two tickets
ORD-HND (NH) (One in first class one in economy)
UBN-IST (TK) Lie flat Business
IST-SKP (TK) Business
WAW-ORD (LO) Lie flat Business

Only 15,082 miles
105,000 miles for Business ticket and 160,000 miles for the first class ticket
$625 taxes and fuel service charges for each ticket



Some items to note:
- Called about 4:00 central time and I was on hold 3h 45m. I spoke with agent in Japan and he was very good and we wrapped it up including ticketing in 15 minutes. It helped that my CC was still on file so we skipped that “enter your card” process
- Confirmed with agent that if business class opens in ORD-HND OR ORD-NRT I can change up to Business as they consider Tokyo the airport not HND specifically
- I was afraid the long haul Turkish flight would really inflate the fuel service charge but it was not as bad as I suspected
- ORD is basically our home airport for international and this is the first time ever we will fly in and out without adding some domestic or Canadian connection.
- Of course, my wife should have a great experience on the 13 hour ANA first class flight. Please keep me in your prayers I get out of economy.
- Five-hour layover at the IST Turkish lounge is never a bad thing. Falls into that magical 4-9 hour range to use the private suites as well
- I tried to find some “tag on” flights to leverage the 3,000 miles I left in this category but nothing domestic really made sense in date or route
- Alternative Trip was the other direction and involved a long air India flight that would have been one ticket in First and one in Business because they seem to never release more than one seat. I was not very open minded that the business class seat on AI would turn out a good experience. This route also added about three days of positioning, three more flights and a couple 22-hour layovers.
- Hopefully I will find a way to use the last batch of points I have sitting with ANA on a future star alliance flight

Good luck to everyone trying to get one last trip booked. I hope you find the flights and get through in time with an agent.