whitethunder

Did they completely get rid of TYO-HNL in the future?? In Jan/Feb 2021 it all looks normal to me and I saw a few F redemption dates when I looked the other day....

ALGU

I was thinking of routing via BKK instead of SIN. I remember the last time @therossinator posted the SQ F deal out of AKL, it was possible to also include TG F, but now can’t even find C availability from NRT. Does TG no longer release premium awards to partners? Was thinking of HNL-NRT-BKK-XXX

therossinator

I have had very poor luck finding any TG premium award space recently. I think I've noticed one or two J flights between BKK and ICN, which connect to Asiana (but I really have no interest in spending hours inside of a cabin that looks like a doctor's office waiting room). It used to be that TG J overcrowded my search results when I wanted to go from GUM to Australia and TG F was almost guaranteed if there were any open seats 48 hrs before departure, while SQ J was the mythical unicorn. Now SQ is everywhere and TG availability has vaporized,

My personal travel goal is to try as many premium cabins as I can with miles. In terms of first class cabins, I was lucky enough to get to try the old Singapore Suite and Thai Royal First of all three varieties (the old seat 747 was actually my favorite). Because I cannot arrange my travel to book within two weeks, I can't count on experiencing Lufthansa F, and I don't want to go to China so no Air China (although I'd like to try the lie flat Business Class on Shenzhen's 737). It seems ANA is the only *A F cabin left for me to try. They seem to have pretty reasonable award space and the fact that they fly it to HNL makes it a good value when traveling to/from Australia.

ALGU

Thanks again for your valuable insight! I hope you also get to start expanding outside of Star Alliance if mileage permits.

For your PER-SIN-NRT-HNL, did J show up for SIN-NRT (SQ or NH?) married with the other segments, or did you have to call to get it merged correctly? I’m thinking of going the reverse, but can’t get NRT-SIN to show in J, even though it’s available as a stand-alone.

Alway got excited when I saw your posts back when your location was GUM. Didn’t really see other active flyertalk users from here, which I thought was a pity given how many frequent flyers are GUM based.

therossinator

It all showed up as J, no phone call required. The flight is on ANA.
I usually don't have great luck with calling in to get a segment swapped out when I find that a higher class opens up, Sometimes I can get an agent to swap my flight to one that will remove a layover if my origin/destination are the same and times do not significantly change.

In Guam I did most of my travel for the government and there was a certain Government Desk employee who would do pretty much anything I asked her. I would commonly request to change my routing from MAJ-KWA-KSA-PNI-TKK-GUM to MAJ-HNL-GUM (sometimes even to MAJ-HNL-NRT-GUM with a same day change) in order to accrue more PQM. If I had already confirmed a few complementary PN upgrades on the island hopper (because segments aren't married if done through Gov't booking website), she would book me in PN on the HNL-GUM flight if it was available, despite that it normally would require a GPU or other instrument. Other agents would want two GPUs to upgrade that itinerary because MAJ-HNL "should" also require one.

This woman was pivotal to the best flight of my life, where I flew TG F on the A380 HND-BKK as well as Singapore Suites SIN-AKL on the same itinerary for 60k miles. That routing would have never shown up on United's website when I searched GUM to ZQN.

I've noticed that some SYD-HND-XXX F class itineraries have the SYD-HND segment in economy despite that if I searched for just SYD-HND on the same day it shows that exact same flight with a J seat available. In cases like that I'd book the full itinerary then call to request switching me into J for the SYD-HND.

therossinator

So if I run a search for TYO-BKK I do see some J award seats, but they seem so be all on ANA. If I search for KIX-BKK or NGO-BKK, which TG has the only nonstop flights, there are no J nonstop award seats. It also seems country specific. like Japan, Australia, and NZ, there are no seats, but Korea and Taiwan, generally have TG J availability.

ALGU

I couldn’t get the Premier Desk agents to rebook NRT-SIN in J but surprisingly Twitter was successful. The aircraft has F sold as J, but I couldn’t select seats in the first two rows, any luck for you?

Always a roulette when it comes to agents. For the SQ F deal, I couldn’t get an agent to tag on the TG F successfully. One agent even downgraded my AKL-SIN segment and the F seat didn’t return until 24 hours later so I was absolutely livid and decided to stop trying. On the other hand, I had a JNB-HKG segment get cancelled by SA and an agent opened up award space on UA and rebooked me CPT-EWR-HKG.

But at least it’s a roulette with the premier desk, the general agents are so bad I would just solely use twitter instead. Probably the most underrated perk of status in my opinion.