First Time Award Redemption
 

Hi,

I'm going to plan a trip from SFO-stopover-SYD(destination). This will be my first time redeeming miles and as well as flying business class internationally. I only have United Miles!

For the stopover location, Can I have it in Europe(CDG/BCN/MXP?) vs Asia(ICN/NRT/SIN?). I'm not sure how the stopover rules apply. I prefer to visit EU over Asia.

As for award redemption, I know it's cheaper with miles to fly on United metal, but it seems United partners(Lufthansa/Swiss/ANA/Asiana) will offer a better flight service(food and comfort). Which one will be more superior?

Does anyone have a routing or airline they would recommend? I don't think I saw any first class cabin available, but is it worth the extra miles to go in first class if it is available? Like I mentioned, flight food/service/comfort is most important.

Am I able to book a round trip ticket with awards where the outbound is in business/first and inbound is in economy?

Thank you flyertalk community!

First Time Award Redemption
 

Hi and welcome to Flyertalk!

In answer to your questions you cannot route via Europe without purchasing two seperate awards, which would be expensive.

you can fly via Asia. Also you can have a stopover in Asia if ypu would like as well. Open Jaw's are also possible but not on all routings.

in terms of product you are right United Partners have a better quality product. Asiana is probably my favorite partner to fly since their First Class is easily accessible.

Hope that help!

Alex

For Australia, you can stopover in Asia or Oceania. In fact an Oceania (American Samoa, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Vanuatu, Samoa) stopover should usually cause it to price out lower than just to Australia alone. Of course you're likely to find more award availability and stopover options in Asia.

Whether the partner option is worth the extra miles is up to you...research some reviews on the partner(s) in question to get an idea. Same with whether J to F is worth the extra miles - that question is also dependent on the aircraft and how much better the F seats are, in addition to service differences.

Yes, you can book in different classes each way. But United decides which cities are your destination and stopover, so if it's pricing out wrong it may be because you aren't agreeing with United on which is which (and you lose that battle :)). For example, if you want to go to New Zealand and Australia and you fly SFO-SYD in business, stopover, SYD-AKL in business, destination, AKL-SFO in economy; United may consider SYD to be your destination and AKL as your stopover and price you at business both ways. So you'd need to change SYD-AKL to economy to price as you want.

Can't stop in Europe en route to Australia.

Generally you don't have the luxury of selecting the airline you want unless you are very flexible on days. Given the choice I would go with EVA, ANA, or Singapore. Asiana is fine but much more travel time. But if you're paying more for a partner and that's what's making you do economy on the other direction, I'd rather do United business both ways than a partner business one way + economy the other.

Agree with all that, and I would emphasise that, with possibly one or two exceptions worldwide, any business seat > any economy seat.

Thanks for the comment! I will look up the routes and see what kind of planes/service each airline is using.

Thanks! I wasn't sure if Europe was going to work out. I had Asiana as one of my airline of choice to Asia as I've flown NH and SQ before.

I was using United.com to look at award availability. Is it possible to book on Singapore Airlines through United website? I believe I only saw Asiana and Air Canada on United's website.

Thanks. Which routes are the exceptions? Just curious...

With UA miles, I think getting J on Singapore is nearly impossible. Might be impossible. You would need SQ miles to do so.

You can only book J on 777-200 products and even that is rare. No flights on J or F are available from a NA gateway using Star Alliance partner

You have made no indication of a return trip. Note that UA does not permit stopovers on one-way awards.

United.com no longer shows Singapore Airlines award availability, unfortunately. That doesn't mean you can't book a Singapore Airlines award ticket using United MileagePlus miles (although as others have pointed out, it's costly to do award travel in business or first class cabins on Star Alliance partners using United miles), but you have to find the award flights using another search engine, and then call United Airlines to get the flight booked.

Intra-Europe routes on many airlines have "business" seats which are nothing more than economy seats spaced a teeny bit wider plus with the middle seat one each side taken out. In that case, they're not worse than economy, but not that much better either.

But for the worst examples, it's not routes, it's airlines. A few cheap international airlines (original international discounter IcelandAiir and the new NorwegianAir being two examples) have lousy substandard seats they call business class but which are no better necessarily than a nice economy seat (such as on JetBlue), and to some people maybe even worse. And certainly there are airlines which have "premium economy" sections with seats that are definitely nicer than the "business" seats on IcelandAir or NorwegianAir.

Ahhhhh what a bummer. It seems like EVA/Asiana/ANA are the only ones that make sense for now. But I think only Asiana flies to SYD if I'm not mistaken.

I wasn't so much referring to European business seats as long-haul, and I didn't have any particular airline in mind, but think about Air Koryo and you get the idea!