I just finished researching flights for a friend who wants to take a vacation and spend as little as possible (don't we all?). But, the catch is, he wants to maintain his UA status and thus needed the trip to net him 20,000+ miles.

After fiddling around with the UA site, I came up with the following and wanted to get some feedback as to whether or not this is a good deal. Certainly not a mileage run (as it's over 5cpm) but I thought it was pretty good, considering most of my I-don't-care-what-the-cpm-is-vacations come in at over 10...

SEA-LAX (20hrs)
LAX-NRT-HKG (23hr55min)
NRT-SIN(9days)
SIN-NRT(4hr40min)
NRT-HNL(23+hrs)
HNL-SFO-SEA

The total was 6.1cpm (under $2,500 for two). Should I book it, or can I do better? Personally, I thought this was pretty good, but I'd be interested in hearing your take

Wow, that's a similar itinerary to a vacation I'm doing in November on DL @ 3.4 cpm. I'm doing:
LAX-DTW-HND (22 hour layver in HND)
NRT-SIN (6 days in SIN)
SIN-NRT-HNL (14 hour layover in HNL)
HNL-LAX

I got a positioning flight COS-LAX on UA for $110 RT.

That being said if I'm looking for a good deal on a vacation I think anything below 6.5 cpm is a pretty good deal. I think you did well.

Edit: I've also notified the mods to move this to MR discussion.

You did pretty good. Just a small point of confusion for me - do you have an open jaw (into HKG out of NRT)? If yes, you did really well.