atakam

Did you use your AC miles? If you use UA miles, there is no fuel surcharge. If you use NH miles you get charged almost discount fare. I flew with my family from NRT-BKK on NH using NH miles and actually I saved 10%. I could have bought the tkts on a discount travel agent and get a couple of nights in BKK included. After that I graduated from NH program and now only use UA. *net block might exist but I also found out that some flexible itinerary will get you where you want.

Ichinensei

Yeah I am on Aeroplan (AC)

sushi lover

Carl....

Thanks for the reply. It seems to me that MP is the best option since I will be flying on UA metal at least initially. The nonstop situation is the most important to me...I will be gone enough that I dont want to have to make a connection and be away from the family that much more!

I am curious as to the benefits at MP, I will likely be a 1K within about 6 months. Since I will always be in Biz class, what are the benefits to 1K other than the SWU, which I guess I can use to upgrade to First occasionally. Wont I already have access to the lounges and the priority this and priority that?? I will rarely if ever be checking bags, so that is not important to me. I will probably OLCI most of the time and I never really seem to have a long line in NRT for security.

anyway...thanks again for the help!

CarlTheWebmaster

So to me, the F seat always wins and I upgrade if I have SWUs or miles to spare (and I have been fortunate enough to have plenty of miles when needed).

The SWUs mean 6 legs guaranteed in F (if you plan in advance).

If you can buy all UA tickets on a UA MP visa you get double miles for each dollar spent, meaning that between the bonuses and miles you are flying you should have hundreds of thousands of RDMs to play with.

When in F on UA you get:

Great flat bed/seat.

Occasional fantastic service, usually ok service, sometimes lame service.

Much better lounges to access (IMO) -- NH F lounges are very nice with very nice service -- and if you are on later afternoon flights on UA out of NRT the NH F lounge is often completely empty.

With your spend I would not be surprised if you got GS (12 transpacs in C, perhaps 5k each for 60k spend could get you there -- easily if you are paying much more than that per RT -- a similar level of spend has done it for me in the past.) And then you get better upgrade and reward ticket acces and the GS agents which have always been great for me.

I realize that upgrading with miles (to F or otherwise) is semi-sacreligious on FT [Standard mantra: "Save all miles for partner *A awards, then complain when you can't get them"] but to me it is totally worth it.

But then, I also use my wife's amex points to upgrade NH C seats to NH F at 45k per segment, so I must be crazy.

-C

sushi lover

Carl,


Thanks again for the good info. I wont be buying the tix, so no miles on that end, but I plan on using the SWUs to upgrade on the way back to the states and i will want to sleep. (I will be on the 777 so no flat bed for awhile in C) I have spent enough time in F (ex-UAL employee) to know that I like it there more than C, not sure I want to use miles to get it, but I will see how the miles rack up and decide then.

thanks again...take care

5khours

From the perspective of someone who flies a lot of TPAC and is mostly interested in flying C for as little money as possible, UA is currently a much better choice than NH for two reasons.

1) The C class hard product is much better on UA (except SFO-NRT on the 777s).

2) The mileage program is much better on UA. As an example, assuming I fly 150k on discount economy this year. On UA, this gets me 300k miles (enough for 5 RT upgrades) plus with the DEQM program 12 SWUs (enough for 6 RT upgrades.). The same mileage on NH would get me 2006k miles (70% credit on discount economy) and 40 premium points. This is only enough for 6.5 RT UGs versus 11 on UA. On top of that you can't use the NH UGs on discount economy.

The situation may be different for people who buy mostly business class tickets at their companies expense, but if you are paying for your own tix or your company only pays for Economy, there is no difference.... UA is much, much better.

xlaurens

Remember that you can't upgrade to F on a Z fare....