RonaldRaygun

Hey all,

After getting approved for Global Entry, there is an event being held in Bangkok early December (8-9) that I would like to attend.

I did some preliminary research on which alliances can get me from JFK, or HPN (Preferred) to BKK and back while maximizing time enjoying various airlines' suites products.

Outbound
Outbound from JFK to BKK, I'm looking to target Emirates Suites and maximize time in Emirates Suites as much as possible.

I logged into AlaskaAir's website to look at award availability, and found a JFK -> MXP -> DXB -> BKK route.

That award will cost me 100k Alaska points + ~$60 in fees.

Inbound
Going from BKK to JFK, I was thinking of using Singapore suites.

Having a look at krisflyer availability shows BKK -> SIN -> FRA -> JFK

I didn't see the ability to book using miles, but hopefully that's more related to the date than anything else. Hopefully I won't have to worry too much about availability. Worst case, I can opt for Emirates in the opposite direction.

I'm not entirely sure how to read the award chart for Krisflyer, so I'm guessing 110k points needed for the trip. Can someone confirm? It looks like I'm traveling from zone 3 to zone 14.

Outbound Miles

Alaska Airlines Credit Card: 25,000 miles.
Starwoods Preferred Guest: 10,000 miles + 15,000 miles after $5,000 spend.

$40,000 of manufactured spend to get the remaining 50,000 miles to book the outbound journey.

Inbound Miles

Chase Sapphire Preferred: 40,000 points after $4,000 spend
American Express Platinum: 40,000 points after $3,000 spend ( wasn't targeted for the 100k point match. )
Citi Prestige / Premier: 50,000 points after $3,000 spend

All together
I will need to spend $55,000 to earn the necessary points to book both flights. (Doable, my normal spending will allow me to hit the bonus spend. Not sure what to do about the extra $40,000 in SPG spend, maybe MS).

Things I'm concerned with
I already have a Chase Sapphire, and earned the bonus for that card way back in 2011, so I should qualify for another bonus from Chase. I have read reports of people with a Chase Sapphire and a Chase Sapphire Preferred. The plan is to get the Chase Sapphire Preferred, earn the bonus, then product shift my chase sapphire, to a chase sapphire preferred, and cancel the newer chase sapphire card. A little roundabout, but what's more important is my average credit history is preserved.

Applying for the American Express Premium, Starwoods Preferred Guest, Citi Premier, and Alaska Air cards should be fairly straightforward.

My present credit scores are:

Experian: mid-700s
Equifax: high-700s
Transunion: mid-700s

I expect them all to hit low 700s, or even high 600s after sending out applications.

Did I make a false assumption in my planning? Or shall I get started sending out applications?

Merlinrnr

Ambitious plan. You'll have difficulty finding SQ suites availability this late and it would be best to have an alternative for the Chase points if that's all you'll have available.

KennyBSAT

Check out the Alaska Airlines card thread. You can get as many Alaska cards as you want in one day, but each must have a credit line of 5K. So, for example, if you apply and get instantly approved for 16K, you can apply for two more, call reconsideration and split that 16K across the three cards. 3 bonuses, one hard pull on your credit report, 3 new accounts on your credit report.

RonaldRaygun

Thank you @Kenny for that tip!

@Merlinrnr,

I had a look through the actual award availability, and you're right. Not much, if at all.

Looking back at my points plan, I'm left with:

40,000 Ultimate Rewards
40,000 American Express
50,000 ThankYou

Not sure if I'll be able to turn that into a first class award going from BKK to JFK. Qantas was quoting 192k miles!

wharvey

Very ambitious... and perhaps unrealistic.

Realize that those awards seats you see now most likely will not be available when you finally get the miles into your account.

Very risky at this late point.

RonaldRaygun

Here is tomorrow's availability on Alaskan's awards search...

http://screencast.com/t/OLR9JkCHmF

Is it still unrealistic to hope for December availability? I'm not sure how much demand varies.

I'm presently looking for business award availability for either JFK -> BKK or BKK -> JFK that allows me to use a combination of Ultimate Rewards, ThankYou, and Member Rewards

RonaldRaygun

Okay, after rereading the various points blogs, and numerous threads on this site, I came up with what hopefully sounds more feasible.

The fixed locations are JFK - BKK. Any other stops in between are flexible.

Outbound
Cathay Pacific First Class from JFK -> HKG

Cathay Pacific has a non-stop JFK -> HKG flight that does show award availability close-in to the flight time.

If I understand AA's partner redemption properly, it will cost me 67,500 AA points to fly in first class. I'll be traveling from Contiguous 48 States to Asia Region 2.

http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/re...tner-chart.jsp

After landing in HKG, I will transfer to Emirates Suites toward BKK--more details on the Inbound side.

Inbound
The inbound flights will ultimately be HKG -> BKK (stopover) -> DXB -> JFK

Alaska Air does show this route available for Emirates for just 100k Alaska Miles. It doesn't seem like a bad route anyway. I get an extra long 15 hour wifi-enabled flight flying from DXB going to JFK.

I could go crazier, and do HKG -> BKK (stopover) -> DXB -> MXP -> JFK. I'm not sure what the benefit of stopping in Milan would be other than qualifying for an additional shower on the flight.

Outbound Miles
Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard. 50,000 miles after $3,000 spend.

I currently have 2652 AA miles earned from my US Airways travel.
I'm expecting 3763 more miles from travel to las vegas at the end of this month for a total 6415 miles. So I would need to purchase 14k more miles at $473.98 to make this award work. Or spend $14,000.


Inbound Miles
Same as before...

Alaska Airlines Credit Card: 25,000 miles.
Starwoods Preferred Guest: 10,000 miles + 15,000 miles after $5,000 spend.

$40,000 of manufactured spend to get the remaining 50,000 miles to book the outbound journey.

For every additional card I can get from Alaska Airlines, that's $20,000 less in manufactured spend I'd need to make this award work.

That knocks off the need to apply for a couple credit cards.

All together

So now I only need to apply for three credit cards...

Alaska Airlines CC
Starwoods Preferred Guest
Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select

And spend a maximum $48,000. ($28,000 if I get one extra Alaska Air card, $8,000 if I get two extra Alaska Air cards).

Did I misinterpret one of the awards? I'm surprised it's possible to get a $17,000 seat (Cathay Pacific JFK - HKG quote on Google Flights) for a more modest $3500 in bonus spend + buying miles.

One thing I'm noticing is the bonus AA miles can take 8-10 weeks to be credited to my account. First class award booking for cathay pacific tends to be available either 11 months or 4 days in advance, so as long as I hit the bonus spend quickly, I should be fine.

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"If I understand AA's partner redemption properly, it will cost me 67,500 AA points to fly in first class. I'll be traveling from Contiguous 48 States to Asia Region 2.

http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/redeemMiles/all-partner-chart.jsp

After landing in HKG, I will transfer to Emirates Suites toward BKK--more details on the Inbound side."

Since you will be on separate tickets, you will not be protected if you miss your HKG-BKK flight due to IRROPS. For the same 67.5K miles that AA will charge you for JFK-HKG in F, you can fly JFK-HKG-BKK. (I'm not sure, however, if CX offers F on its HKG-BKK flights; you'd have to check.) By using AA miles for JFK-HKG-BKK, you could get an MXP stopover on Emirates, if desired.

RonaldRaygun

Thank you @guv1976 for the correction, insight, and warning.

Google flights doesn't show any first class availability on CX for HKG-BKK.

I went to CX's website and played around with their booking.

Every flight shows a 333/343 making the HKG-BKK connection, except CX701.

CX701 leaves HKG-BKK Saturdays at 3:50pm local time and seems to be the only HKG-BKK flight with a first class.

The flight from New York will then need to be one of the Friday ones so I don't spend too much time in HKG.

This combination should guarantee me first class between JFK-BKK.

If all else looks above board, I'll file the first credit card applications this week.

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

OK, but note that AAdvantage awards do not permit stopovers, only connections. You cannot have more than 24 hours in HKG between arrival of your flight from JFK, and departure of your flight to BKK from HKG.

Of course, you are permitted to take a voluntary downgrade from F to J on an AAdvantage F award.

macdonaldj2

manufacturing 40k in spend for an award ticket 7 months out is a bad idea, unless you know things I don't and if you do please PM me, CX first is nice, I'm not sure if it can compare though to bling air's first class, what about Etihad? or can you not route the Middle east on an Asia award with AA?

RonaldRaygun

The target JFK-HKG flight is CX845 and CX701 with a ~11 hour layover in HKG. I figure that will be enough time to enjoy The Pier.

In an effort to hedge against no award availability on CX for my chosen flight window, premium economy standard costs ~$1400 and has a $50 cancellation fee.

The way I envision it, that's $50 insurance to guarantee I will be on the flight, with an opportunity to use miles to get a business / first award.

Thank you everyone for the guidance in planning this award booking. Now I'm off to execute.

Edit:

@Macdonaldj2,

I'm fundamentally starting from scratch. I have ~8k UR points, and will have ~6K AA points. It would appear my biggest advantage is in the credit card bonuses. You seem to know a better way to use the points I'll have available to me to redeem award flights. I'm willing to trade how I MS.

For what it's worth, if anyone else can offer a better itinerary (I'm looking to maximize lounge time and first class flying, not really see sights) I'm willing to explain privately how I MS in exchange for the details on booking the necessary awards.

RonaldRaygun

So I have gone about the first step of approvals.

American Express Platinum - Approved
Starwood Preferred Guest - Approved
Alaska Airlines Visa Signature - Approved x2
CitiŽ / AAdvantageŽ Executive World EliteTM MasterCardŽ* - Approved

There was something interesting that came up...

I submitted two separate applications for Alaska Airlines Visa Signature, and have screenshot proof of two separate approvals for $13k credit lines. I don't know if this is a fluke within the Bofa application system, but when I applied for a third card online, I was denied. Calling the recon line didn't help as the card application hadn't gone through.

Not entirely sure if I was genuinely approved for the 26k worth of credit line (more likely 1 account, 2 cards). Will need to separate the cards to ensure I qualify for the bonuses.

Either way, the total spend required has dropped down to $28,000 to accomplish the desired award flights. Now it's some 90 days or so I suspect before the points show up in my account.

Purchasing the remaining Alaska Air points is also an option at $739.06 for the remaining balance should I not meet the $20,000 in MS required for the SPG card.

mikelat

Thats a heck of a lot of MS you have coming up. Be careful with it and hope you get the points in time to book.

RonaldRaygun

@mikelat,

Using the methods that I've seen around the forum, I would guess that average ms is in the 5-6k/mo range. Is that close?

Thanks to a special confluence of circumstances and strategies, I should be able to complete my ms needs within one month--two at the most. Granted, I can't do that level of ms every month, spending double my income every month will surely throw red flags with the various credit card companies.