bbriscoe34

So flying in Suites class with my wife is on my bucket list. We have accumulated about 350K Chase UR points and we live in the middle US. I started searching for F awards on the A380 yesterday and became a little discouraged at lack of Saver from or to the US. And my wife has no desire to go anywhere in Asia.

However, if I'm only going JFK to FRA (or the other way), the standard award is 130k, while saver is 78K - right? And I should be able to book the standard pretty much at any time, right? So even standard F award would be affordable given my balance. If you've flown suites, is that worth it?

So what are some good trip ideas/times of year to include Suites out of/back to the US that I can book largely with points/miles? I have 130K DL miles, 50K AA miles, but I'm thinking we could maybe use that for positioning for the JFK flight, then both apply for the United MPE card and earn the 55K miles - I'm seeing decent availability in J saver from say BCN to TUL for a return flight for 57.5k UA miles - or whichever way we don't fly SQ.

We also have 230K HHonors. 50K IHG, and probably 90K SPG pts for hotels. We like warm beaches and historic cities (regardless of temp) and European beer :-).

Are there other SQ/codeshare legs we could add to a one-way for the same number of miles? Also, where/how would we get the best lounge experience? Looks like departing JFK would get us into the Virgin clubhouse. Departing FRA would be something else - Lufthansa maybe?

paperwastage

​​​​​​ideally(if you don't care about TPR at SIN airport)

Sq suites jfk-fra, you get access to the virgin atlantic lounge at jfk and caviar

bbriscoe34

How is the private room vs Virgin clubhouse?

Though I don't think I can get my wife to SIN. There just aren't as appealing vacation spots over there.

Mediterranean and its topless beaches vs Asia?

MrOscarh

There's no comparison. Asia every time.

paperwastage

tpr is just fine dining and exclusivity (lounge within a lounge within a lounge)... Skippable if you don't care that much

HawaiiO

There are plenty of great beaches and top end luxury spots in Asia.

Thailand has a ton of those.
Bali Ubud area as well.

w4rd

If you want maximum suites time, TPR and a 'western' destination then carry on down to Australasia:
JFK-FRA-SIN-SYD/MEL/AKL

You could have some nice stopovers in FRA & SIN with a return. You may need to save a few more miles though.

SMK77

A couple of thoughts from my end:

I have done both JFK-FRA and FRA-JFK and think JFK-FRA is the better flight: full dinner, caviar service and you can sleep for a bit on the overnight flight to give the double bed a try.

Virgin Clubhouse is a great lounge and better then the LH Senator Lounge in Frankfurt.

The Private Room is very underwhelming compared to most flagship offerings of other airlines. I would not recommend to make any effort to include The Private Room in your virgin flight.

tub

My two cents - I also managed to cross it off my bucket list late last year (If you're curious, some pictures from the Private Room + Suites class are here on my blog

If you can wait, I would definitely wait. The Suites class as it is is really outdated when compared to the latest and greatest offerings from other airlines, such as Etihad. Singapore Airlines are due to get new A380s this year and it is highly likely that they will debut the refreshed and refurbished Suites class (or something new altogether).

duomono

Hi all,

Any idea which routes will be covered by the new A380? We've got MEL-SIN-LHR & JFK-SIN-MEL booked for December 2017 and January 2018.

gummibar

Nobody knows. It is a well guarded secret.

However, the milelion has predicted on SIN-SYD-SIN flights.

spk307

+1 for Bali - warm beaches and am sure you'll get European beer

duomono

Thanks! Fingers crossed then.

bbriscoe34

Heineken doesn't count :-/

Anyway, I did a bit of google and several articles state things like - tourists come from all over the world so you can see some topless on the beaches but officially its not allowed, locals never do it, and it could offend someone if you do it wrong. I'm just not sure I'd be into the more conservative culture of Asia vs say Mallorca, Marbella, or maybe Croatia.

Australia could be an option though, but how many miles am I looking at? I guess I could fly J from SFO/LAX to SIN to save some miles if there is a 380 F flight on part of the route into SYD??

FT Guest xyzpdq