Need HELP booking LAX-HKG-DPS-NRT-LAX
 

Hi all,
Before the devaluation of BA miles, we are planning to book a trip to Asia.
For the 1st leg of the trip, LAX-HKG-DPS, I think the best redemption is using 100K BA miles for 2 business seats.
The 2nd leg is the difficult one. I can't use BA single partner award.
So what are your advice on for the best FF redemption. I prefer to use BA miles before the devaluation if possible, but I am open to use other FF programs as well, and we do have miles with AA, UA, DL, AC and MR.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Your best bet is to do LAX-HKG-DPS as a one way award on CX and then pick up a cheap ticket to Singapore and you will have better luck getting a one way JL award SIN-NRT-LAX.
Do it as two one way single partner awards. We booked LAX-HKG-DPS and then SGN-HKG-LAX, using SQ miles for the DPS-SIN-SGN segments.

one of my favorite redemption's so far has been SIN-NRT 10k on UA, of course this doesn't help you with the rest of the trip involving DPS and LAX

Forgot to mention that I would like to have stop-overs in HKG and NRT.
Based on your suggestion, I looked at SIN-NRT-LAX on JL, BA is charging $370 in taxes.

Even though I would like to use only BA miles for this trip, but since BA charges horrendous taxes for JL flights, I may consider this:
1. LAX-HKG-DPS on CX - J using 50K BA miles $174 taxes
2. DPS-NRT on CX - J class : 30K AA miles (or 40K BA miles + 53 taxes)
3. NRT-LAX on JL - J class: 50K AA miles + $51 tax

Do you think this is the best redemption ? or any better ideas ?

also, does any *alliance allow stopover with 1-way award ticket ?
thank you.

I too wanted to try JL on my trip from NRT to NYC, but the $200+ in extra charges made me go with AA instead for the same number of miles.

Unfortunately, AA had a pretty old plane with a pretty crappy AVOD system... put the CX flight I used to go to SEAsia using the same amount of miles to shame.

I don't know of any star carriers that allow stopovers on one way awards. Although UA will now allow an open jaw and stopover with a RT award, which is very nice. You could do an open jaw for your HKG and DPS leg or the open jaw with the cheapest flight. This would allow you 2 stopovers since one will be your open jaw destination.

Without spending more miles, you will have to buy a one way somewhere in your itinerary if you want 2 stopovers.

I believe BMI (BD) do.

One idea is the OneWorld award, using AA miles your trip could be done for 130k miles/person in business. Doesn't help with using up the BA miles, so perhaps your plan is actually better in that respect.

I'm not too knowledgeable on this, just researching myself, but I know the Oneworld awards allow free date changes based on availability, perhaps an advantage? Good info at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...er-awards.html if you're interested.

I'm looking at a similar trip, may consider your idea for using up BA miles.

Certainly look at the One World award. We just did one from the West Coast to Hong Kong, Delhi, Bangkok, Tokyo and home for 130K in biz (each) which was way less miles than it would have cost using a regular AA award. Cost was about $200 in fees and taxes for two tickets. Also, with One World tickets you can change dates (not routing).

Check out the very useful thread on One World awards here on FT.

Wow, that's pretty amazing.
Biggestbopper, can you give me some more details about your flights (i.e the routing and which airlines)
Do you think we can book a similar Oneworld award with BA miles ?
thanks.

Perhaps I'm looking at the chart wrong, but it seems to me that SIN-NRT would be 15k one way, not 10k. Intra-Asia redemptions went up in June.

Don't know when you're looking at going, but if you're looking at August/September 2012, we found base fares of $34 USD for the DPS-SIN leg on AirAsia. This ended up amounting to approximately $50ish including taxes and fees. Try looking up segments with them if you need to bridge awards somehow.

The oneworld award does seem like a pretty good idea, though.