Donna Quan

Hi All,

My sister is getting married next June in Bali. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get 3 kids (8, 5, and 1) my husband, and myself from San Francisco to Bali. I'm not looking forward to the long flight - the farthest we've been so far is Hawaii.

I'm thinking about adding a stopover in Hong Kong or Singapore to break up the flights a bit.

Thoughts on itinerary? Also, not sure if I should try to use miles - I have 170K Chase UR points and 55K United miles. I'm also thinking about opening a few new credit cards to supplement the points I have.

Thanks for reading!

dh01

Best flight is via Singapore and definitely stop off to break the trip. KLM has rights between Singapore and Bali, and often has attractive business class specials.

glennaa11

unfortunately a lot of airlines don't offer free stopovers (if you mean spending a couple of days) - but since there are no direct flights you will need to connect somewhere. Options would include HKG, NRT, ICN, TPE According to Google flights it's not cheap but I've been seeing a lot sales lately to destinations including SE Asia so you might get lucky.

Even with more miles you might have a difficult time finding enough awards on a single flight. Awardhacker.com will show you how many miles each program requires.

invisible

You need to think seriously about logistics and finances involved (if finances are concerns).

I might be wrong, but it will be close to impossible to get four business award seats in one reservation. Then, the miles required for four award seats most will be more than 500K and even with new cards sign up bonuses you won't have enough.

Then, your 1 y/o will be 2 or older next years and regardless of award or revenue ticket you might have buy a seat for the child.

Thirdly - if you never been on a flight longer than 5h to HI, you need to understand that flight time to get to Bali from SFO is minimum 19 hours. If you want to split that time evenly then you should look towards SFO-TYO-(SIN)-DPS or SFO-TPE-(SIN)-DPS. This will further limit your opinions.

Also - plan to arrive minim three days before the wedding so you have enough time to rest and get away from jet lag.

One word of advice- DO NOT transit thru China - regardless how cheap it might be. Not only you might end up stuck 2h or more on transit passport control with three small kids, but in case of IROPS you will be royally screwed- my brother in law last week got stuck inside the plane for 7h with non working aircon and got just two cookies during that period.

TheMadeTraveler

Hello,

For now the best itinerary options for SFO to Bali would be:

• San Fransco to Seoul (1 stop) and Seoul to Bali
• San Fransco to HongKong (1 stop) and HongKong to Bali

The above itineraries are provided by Korean Air & Cathay Pacific airlines respectively.

If you have visited HongKong in the past, you can explore Seoul this time.

mikelazaro

The way we did it was on China Airlines. We booked a Premium Econ ticket which gave us J class tickets from TPE-DPS because they don't sell PY intra-Asia flights. The plus side is they use the A350 from SFO-TPE which is perfect for a family a five since the seating arrangement is 2-3-2 in their cabin. From TPE-DPS which is almost a 6 hour flight, you'd fly on a 777 in their great reverse herringbone J Class seats. Finally, you get lounge access in TPE which is great.

erik123

5 tickets on Cathay business using Alaska miles is possible if booked early enough.

tentseller

On the same flight booked all at the same time?

erik123

Yes - Have done several flights with 5 in June/July. Check BA for availability. Best not wait if that is an option.

OskiBear

I'm actually heading to Bali in the fall with a few others and we ended up with a really inexpensive one-way fare and used miles for the return.

Two of our group have never traveled far and to break up the flight duration, we are doing LAX-NRT/HND-SIN-DPS on Singapore. It turned out that SQ didn't charge for a Singapore stopover and we routed via Tokyo for a slight upcharge on the stopover. If you want shorter segments, ICN or TYO would be better stopover options than TPE or HKG.

If you can swing it, a less than 24 hour connection can break up the journey but without incurring a stopover.

764toHI

I think I would do SFO-SIN-DPS on UA/SQ on a Y award/paid tickets. You need 400K RDM for 5 round trip saver Y award flights so it'll be tough to book this trip on all miles. Also, you will need to call United to book this ticket as SQ award flights will not appear on United.com. I suggest paid Y (or some combination between paid and award) because it's almost 19K PQM round trip which gets you close to Premier Silver on UA notwithstanding the PQD requirement.

The SFO-SIN flight will not be pleasant in Y but you can make up for that with the wonderful food and hospitality in Singapore.

invisible

17.5h non-stop flight with three kids in Y or even worse - Y- for people who never flew longer than to Hawaii?
While Singapore food and hospitality is good, how it will help them with 17.5h flight if they need to continue to DPS?

I think they should be fully aware what they will encounter. I suggested above - split the flight to two shorter, similar length segments.

764toHI

Different strokes for different folks, but this is my rationale for going with the SFO-SIN flight:
- UA often sells discounted Y fares to SIN, especially during the Spring/Summer
- shortest overall travel time and eliminates any misconnection risk
- NRT transfer security is painless, but still a consideration
- SFO-NRT is 11 hours so it's still very much a longhaul flight; psychologically, I feel like there is a marginal difference as the hours add up on these TPAC flights
- most importantly with the kids is the departure time for the SFO-SIN flight; with a 10:50pm departure ex-SFO, they'll be ready to sleep and the flight will end up feeling shorter for them

invisible

Let me guess - you have not been on that flight, correct?

Well, I was several month ago. One word - never again. Despite the fact that I had a seat in E+ section.

17.5h flight going beyond comfort level. At least for me and I am person who can handle SFO-HKG flight with UA without much problem.

764toHI

No, but I do EWR-HKG regularly, which is only 400 miles shorter. I'm not denying the fact these ultra longhaul flights are not pleasant, but I appreciate the convenience, and the shorter overall travel time does help with jet lag in my experience. Like I said earlier, everyone has their own preferences and tolerance levels.