Help in maximizing earning miles on Asia Trip from SFO in Business Class
 

Dear Experts,
I need help understanding how to maximize earning miles on the Star Alliance network. I will be flying from San Francisco to Taipei to Bangkok to Seoul to Singapore and back to San Francisco. Will be in business class.
Currently I am a united mile silver member.
Which airline/airlines would be give the most miles for this trip? Should I stick to United or which other *A flight may be preferred?
Thanks for the help in advance,
Sunny

If you book on *A members thru UA (on 016 ticket number), all miles will be multiplied by fare, which if paid business, should give you decent miles. If booked thru other airline(s), you might get actual miles instead. All broken down under "Earning Miles" on UA website by airline.

This is dependent upon the UA MP account being registered in the United States. OP hasn't stated where she/he is based.

For this trip, you'll need to compare the purchasing cost of and potential earnings for

1) Buying the trip through United on 016 ticket stock and flying partner airlines
2) Buying it through another source not as a United ticket, and earning based on distance flown.

I'm guessing that #2 will be cheaper, and may even earn you more miles (with 150% on some partners for paid business).

Ultimately you should fly what works best for your schedule. Note that going BKK-ICN-SIN is quite a bit of backtracking. If you could switch SIN and ICN that would save you significant time. On this routing, I'd look to do Eva Air SFO-TPE and Singapore SIN-ICN and ICN-SFO.

Your routing comes to 21607 miles (via gcmap: http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=sfo-tpe...cn-sin-nrt-sfo - I put a stop in NRT on your way back to SFO from SIN since you can't do SIN-SFO direct). If you assume paid business on partners (non-016 stock) averages out to 150% mileage credit to keep it easy (some could be higher if it's not a discount business fare, some will be lower - e.g. EVA maxes out at 125%), that would yield 32410. + you get a 25% bonus as a Silver which adds another 5402. So total 37812.

If it were all on 016 stock (which as others have noted could mean a more expensive ticket), the breakeven would be that figure /7, which comes to $5402 (taxes, etc. not included). If you spend more than that amount - which I think is reasonably likely given the number of stops in your itinerary - then booking via United on 016 would yield more miles.

Also, don't forget if based in US and with the fare multiplier, you may also run into an issue with capping out on miles earned. I've had to separate my last flight to Asia since if I ticketed it as one ticket, I would have reached the cap and lost some miles.

Only on UA or NH flights on that side of the world. Most partner flights do not earn elite bonus miles. :-:

No, the earnings are the same regardless of address. All a foreign address gets you is a PQD exemption.

Good point. Just tilts the equation even more in favor of United over partners.

Why does United even have this policy? It seems to be most constraining on the best customers - high ticket price and GS or 1K.

Because if you earned more than 75,000 miles, it can quickly become a buy one get one free system and that's not conducive to earning the revenue that those high value customers produce.

Thanks everybody!