Feb 8, 2018, 12:08 am
ANA RTW Award Booking Reports/Discussion
Jun 30, 2018, 2:02 pm
#31
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 68
So I've got a bunch of MR and UR points wanting to use (275k MR and 400k UR), thinking about transfering to ANA to book a RTW. Can someone checked and see if this is valid for me?
IAD-NRT/ ICN-BKK-HAN-FCO/ CPH-IAD
or
IAD-NRT/ICN-BKK/ HAN-FCO/ CPH-IAD
I plan to pay for the intra asia flights from NRT to ICN and maybe even BKK to HAN. I've plugged these into ANA site and it all shows there are available flights for the day I want next year, all flights are on Star Alliance partners. But when I get to the last leg to return from CPH-IAD, it error out. I'm thinking one of these legs aren't valid. So which is it? I'm following their rule, flying from east to west and coming back home. Any help is greatly appreciated.
IAD-NRT/ ICN-BKK-HAN-FCO/ CPH-IAD
or
IAD-NRT/ICN-BKK/ HAN-FCO/ CPH-IAD
I plan to pay for the intra asia flights from NRT to ICN and maybe even BKK to HAN. I've plugged these into ANA site and it all shows there are available flights for the day I want next year, all flights are on Star Alliance partners. But when I get to the last leg to return from CPH-IAD, it error out. I'm thinking one of these legs aren't valid. So which is it? I'm following their rule, flying from east to west and coming back home. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Jun 30, 2018, 5:23 pm
#32
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: SF, Japan, YYG
Programs: ANA Pt
Posts: 395
So I've got a bunch of MR and UR points wanting to use (275k MR and 400k UR), thinking about transfering to ANA to book a RTW. Can someone checked and see if this is valid for me?
IAD-NRT/ ICN-BKK-HAN-FCO/ CPH-IAD
or
IAD-NRT/ICN-BKK/ HAN-FCO/ CPH-IAD
I plan to pay for the intra asia flights from NRT to ICN and maybe even BKK to HAN. I've plugged these into ANA site and it all shows there are available flights for the day I want next year, all flights are on Star Alliance partners. But when I get to the last leg to return from CPH-IAD, it error out. I'm thinking one of these legs aren't valid. So which is it? I'm following their rule, flying from east to west and coming back home. Any help is greatly appreciated.
IAD-NRT/ ICN-BKK-HAN-FCO/ CPH-IAD
or
IAD-NRT/ICN-BKK/ HAN-FCO/ CPH-IAD
I plan to pay for the intra asia flights from NRT to ICN and maybe even BKK to HAN. I've plugged these into ANA site and it all shows there are available flights for the day I want next year, all flights are on Star Alliance partners. But when I get to the last leg to return from CPH-IAD, it error out. I'm thinking one of these legs aren't valid. So which is it? I'm following their rule, flying from east to west and coming back home. Any help is greatly appreciated.
And UR are not transferable to ANA.
Last edited by synergypi; Jun 30, 2018 at 5:24 pm Reason: added comment
Jun 30, 2018, 6:05 pm
#33
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Central Wisconsin, USA
Posts: 189
Jun 30, 2018, 7:20 pm
#34
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 68
I like to use this tool Great Circle Mapper Direction looks good to me but perhaps the leg from Bangkok to Vietnam might be backtracking. As synergypi said the ANA tool will error on last leg. Run your dates and add one more like IAD to JFK to check but you have to call to book. If you are seeing availability on the "tool" it should match what agents see.
Jul 1, 2018, 8:47 am
#35
Join Date: Jun 2017
Posts: 22
damn! that messes up my honey moon plans. my wife has MR points but mine are all chase. I guess my only option is to book my wife RTW then transfer my points to United mileage/krisflyer/virgin and look for reward space separately?
Jul 1, 2018, 9:06 am
#36
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Central Wisconsin, USA
Posts: 189
This tool might help you narrow down some options if you have not seen it. Put in your routes and use the "frequent flier program" filter for what you have. It does not show availability but can show you an airline you have not thought of and how many points it would take. You will find some airlines like Singapore, Air France and British that take both. Those airlines you can get awards on partner airlines so if you can find the availability you can put all your points to one place book through one airline and fly on partners. Won't be the value of ANA around the world but you could piece it together in theory.
https://www.awardhacker.com/
Jul 1, 2018, 9:09 am
#37
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Japan
Programs: NH Diamond, JL JGC Diamond, BA Gold Guest List(Gold for life), CX Diamond
Posts: 1,580
I like to use this tool Great Circle Mapper Direction looks good to me but perhaps the leg from Bangkok to Vietnam might be backtracking.
So, IAD-NRT//ICN-BKK-HAN-FCO-CPH-IAD is a valid routing.
Jul 1, 2018, 9:51 am
#38
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 68
That is what I thought, I did put this in the circle map tools and it came out to approximately 18.5k for the whole trip, from ANA chart, that is 115k miles for a business class redemption.
Jul 1, 2018, 10:12 pm
#39
Join Date: Feb 2016
Location: Bay Area, CA
Programs: Eternal Search for LT Club
Posts: 66
Jul 2, 2018, 4:38 pm
#40
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Japan
Programs: NH Diamond, JL JGC Diamond, BA Gold Guest List(Gold for life), CX Diamond
Posts: 1,580
By TC1, 2 & 3 do you mean Zone 1,2 and 3 listed on ANA's website (https://www.ana.co.jp/en/us/amc/refe.../tk/usage.html) ?
TC1,TC2,TC3 are IATA's Tariff Conference.
Jul 5, 2018, 11:34 am
#41
Join Date: Feb 2016
Location: Bay Area, CA
Programs: Eternal Search for LT Club
Posts: 66
Jul 6, 2018, 9:20 am
#42
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Japan
Programs: NH Diamond, JL JGC Diamond, BA Gold Guest List(Gold for life), CX Diamond
Posts: 1,580
At least, one agent's interpretation permits such a routing.
BTW, I realized this is 'Booking report' thread.
So, further discussion had better be in another thread.
Jul 24, 2018, 2:08 pm
#43
Join Date: Apr 2017
Posts: 600
So I finally booked my family around the world tickets on ANA. We are a family of three people and have a cruise in SIN. We also wanted to visit Munich to visit some friends. The trip is in Feb/Mar of 2019. We were open to traveling either east or west as long as we were in SIN on the dates we needed. Here are a few details and thoughts about my experience booking.
- Set up family plan with ANA early. I put 3,000 points into my ANA mileage account but they only took out 1,000 for the registration cost not 1,000 per person
- I started a master spreadsheet of availability as I needed to get 3 in business class for our flights.
- I started my searches mostly with expert flier and tracked what was open not just ideal flights but alternatives as well.
- I then used the ANA award booking engine under the "multi cities/mixed classes" tab. This seemed to verify expert flier pretty well except for domestic united flights that would show up on one but not the other.
- My tracking excel sheet included airplane specs on business class seats and wifi etc.
- As I narrowed down my choices I was having a hard time getting a good flight from Europe to SIN or BKK for all three of us so I had some expert flier alerts made.
- To estimate fuel service charges (different by airline and how ANA handles each one) and taxes departure fees etc. (different by city). I used a couple great tools to estimate this:
- To verify out of pocket when I had it narrowed down I ran the trip through here... Round The World - Star Alliance ....and left out the fuel surcharges and flight insurance and added that manually from my charts above. When I finally booked my estimate was within $30 of actual.
- I had never transferred AMEX points over the phone. I learned one big lesson. They have the power to take your "pending" MR points and make them active! We had to buy some extra points and before you can do that amex makes you transfer everything you have including pending (rounded down to 1,000). I felt stupid I had waited for a big batch of my pending points to post. I could have booked 3 weeks earlier.
- On my wife's amex account I transferred everything except 1,000 points. This strategy paid off. I was on the fence about the trip's total distance ANA award level. In the end I had to come up with 30,000 more points as the trip went over 20,000 miles. If I had I drained my (wife's) MR points to zero I could not have purchased more points until next statement.
- Amex MR points transferred FAST. Within 24 hours not the 5-7 business days the Amex agent suggested it might take
- When I went to book I lost one of three seats on ZRH to BKK but I had my back ups ready and the process went quick. I was on hold for 30 minutes on the front end but then once with the agent she had everything set up and off the phone in 25 minutes.
- She worked well with three digit codes and seemed to want route, airline, date in that order. When we booked my flights separate from wife and daughter she seemed to be able to copy route from first set I booked. Nothing to do with seat selection with ANA I did that after on airline websites directly.
My wife and daughter are flying some earlier dates them me so they ended up...
ORD to CPH to MUC on SAS
Then my first leg is ORD to MUC on Lufthansa
Together we are flying:
ZRH-SIN on Swiss
Sin to KIX on Singapore
bullet train to Tokyo for the experience
HND to ORD on ANA
All of this is in Business class on full lay flat seats and on airplanes that have wifi. (except cph to muc). 20,500 miles. two segments are over 6,300 miles and 11 hours in the air. Most of the segments are overnight flights so we don't waste entire days traveling.
Cost to us was 125,000 points each. Fuel and taxes were just over $400 each but most of that was from having to fly SWISS from Europe to SIN. Their fuel surcharge alone was $187 per ticket for the one leg. We could have saved some of that flying THAI airlines in a 747 but the business class did not look very good for an eleven hour flight.
Value... If I take full retail cost, deduct fuel SC and taxes and then divide by points we got between $.085 - $.172 value depending on where you calculate the retail purchase of all of our flights individually. Google has it at $22,000 cost but star alliance website had it at $11,000. No matter what, considering one economy ticket ORD to SIN would have been as expensive as the surcharges on three business class around the world tickets I think we are getting our value.
- Set up family plan with ANA early. I put 3,000 points into my ANA mileage account but they only took out 1,000 for the registration cost not 1,000 per person
- I started a master spreadsheet of availability as I needed to get 3 in business class for our flights.
- I started my searches mostly with expert flier and tracked what was open not just ideal flights but alternatives as well.
- I then used the ANA award booking engine under the "multi cities/mixed classes" tab. This seemed to verify expert flier pretty well except for domestic united flights that would show up on one but not the other.
- My tracking excel sheet included airplane specs on business class seats and wifi etc.
- As I narrowed down my choices I was having a hard time getting a good flight from Europe to SIN or BKK for all three of us so I had some expert flier alerts made.
- To estimate fuel service charges (different by airline and how ANA handles each one) and taxes departure fees etc. (different by city). I used a couple great tools to estimate this:
___1. For fuel charges by airline I made a reference table in my excel based on chart here... https://www.pointswithacrew.com/ana-...hensive-guide/
___2. For European taxes and fees by airport I referenced here https://www.pointswithacrew.com/comp...rt-taxes-fees/
___2. For European taxes and fees by airport I referenced here https://www.pointswithacrew.com/comp...rt-taxes-fees/
- To verify out of pocket when I had it narrowed down I ran the trip through here... Round The World - Star Alliance ....and left out the fuel surcharges and flight insurance and added that manually from my charts above. When I finally booked my estimate was within $30 of actual.
- I had never transferred AMEX points over the phone. I learned one big lesson. They have the power to take your "pending" MR points and make them active! We had to buy some extra points and before you can do that amex makes you transfer everything you have including pending (rounded down to 1,000). I felt stupid I had waited for a big batch of my pending points to post. I could have booked 3 weeks earlier.
- On my wife's amex account I transferred everything except 1,000 points. This strategy paid off. I was on the fence about the trip's total distance ANA award level. In the end I had to come up with 30,000 more points as the trip went over 20,000 miles. If I had I drained my (wife's) MR points to zero I could not have purchased more points until next statement.
- Amex MR points transferred FAST. Within 24 hours not the 5-7 business days the Amex agent suggested it might take
- When I went to book I lost one of three seats on ZRH to BKK but I had my back ups ready and the process went quick. I was on hold for 30 minutes on the front end but then once with the agent she had everything set up and off the phone in 25 minutes.
- She worked well with three digit codes and seemed to want route, airline, date in that order. When we booked my flights separate from wife and daughter she seemed to be able to copy route from first set I booked. Nothing to do with seat selection with ANA I did that after on airline websites directly.
My wife and daughter are flying some earlier dates them me so they ended up...
ORD to CPH to MUC on SAS
Then my first leg is ORD to MUC on Lufthansa
Together we are flying:
ZRH-SIN on Swiss
Sin to KIX on Singapore
bullet train to Tokyo for the experience
HND to ORD on ANA
All of this is in Business class on full lay flat seats and on airplanes that have wifi. (except cph to muc). 20,500 miles. two segments are over 6,300 miles and 11 hours in the air. Most of the segments are overnight flights so we don't waste entire days traveling.
Cost to us was 125,000 points each. Fuel and taxes were just over $400 each but most of that was from having to fly SWISS from Europe to SIN. Their fuel surcharge alone was $187 per ticket for the one leg. We could have saved some of that flying THAI airlines in a 747 but the business class did not look very good for an eleven hour flight.
Value... If I take full retail cost, deduct fuel SC and taxes and then divide by points we got between $.085 - $.172 value depending on where you calculate the retail purchase of all of our flights individually. Google has it at $22,000 cost but star alliance website had it at $11,000. No matter what, considering one economy ticket ORD to SIN would have been as expensive as the surcharges on three business class around the world tickets I think we are getting our value.
Jul 24, 2018, 3:04 pm
#44
Join Date: Apr 2017
Location: Central Wisconsin, USA
Posts: 189
On Swiss I was only considering ZRH-BKK (only could get 2 biz) and ZRH-SIN. It was my second choice due to high fuel surcharges but I lost 3rd seat on VIE-BKK on Austrian and switched to ZRH-SIN on Swiss. If we had booked to BKK for a couple days there was several biz class available on SQ from BKK to SIN.
John
Jul 24, 2018, 7:53 pm
#45
Join Date: Apr 2017
Posts: 600
Thanks. I Think the question is was SQ available when I booked and yes and 51 weeks out when I started looking. Going from Singapore to Japan there was always availability from or to Singapore if you used a NON TOKYO airport. My chart below I have only shown flights I was tracking between Singapore and Japan on SQ. You can see in the left red column the date I first searched and found availability (or when it was updated). The number or "X" under "wed 27" etc columns are the number of seats in business class showing available.
On Swiss I was only considering ZRH-BKK (only could get 2 biz) and ZRH-SIN. It was my second choice due to high fuel surcharges but I lost 3rd seat on VIE-BKK on Austrian and switched to ZRH-SIN on Swiss. If we had booked to BKK for a couple days there was several biz class available on SQ from BKK to SIN.
John
On Swiss I was only considering ZRH-BKK (only could get 2 biz) and ZRH-SIN. It was my second choice due to high fuel surcharges but I lost 3rd seat on VIE-BKK on Austrian and switched to ZRH-SIN on Swiss. If we had booked to BKK for a couple days there was several biz class available on SQ from BKK to SIN.
John