With my wife and I living in Australia, her family living in the USA, and our voracious appetite for exploring Europe at this stage of our lives, our annual trips usually end up pretty complex!
This year's example has us flying Q-Suites from Australia to Greece (AA Miles), BA Club World to the East Coast of the USA (QANTAS Points), then back from the West Coast with Fiji Airways - initially in A330 Business Class to Nadi, then QF Business back home (QANTAS Points). We haven't been able to secure a full OneWorld RTW itinerary, but I usually manage to stitch things together with some judicious use of positioning flights. Enter the rub point: our positioning flights, purchased with Delta Skymiles in Basic Economy.
I had a pretty big (and relatively hard-to-justify) stash of Skymiles from a co-branded card I opened while living in the USA, and have slowly been working my way through them to downgrade the offending card and move on to greener pastures. In this instance, I opted for a "Basic Economy" fare vs Main Cabin to save a few thousand miles as my balance was finally getting tight, with the cost coming out at 24,600 Skymiles and $12 USD from coast to coast.
While I'd done well at the time to get my hands on the Fiji Airways seats out of SFO (they were the only business option home in the necessary timeframe), I decided to keep an eye out for a more enticing product. Business is Business and a privilege nonetheless, but I'd always prefer lie-flat to angle-flat. A couple of QF business seats became available for LAX-SYD on the day after our booking out of SFO, with more convenient timings. It would have been a pretty easy switch on QANTAS' end, but I'd hamstrung myself with my choice of fares on Delta. A cancel-to-rebook on Basic Economy would cost me 9,900 Skymiles per ticket - the vast majority of what I'd paid - and leave me without enough miles to book new positioning flights at a reasonable cost.
I know there are already a few older cautionary tales out here about Delta Basic Economy, but figured I should add mine to a mix. Cheap positioning flights are a great way of securing Business availability out of the USA - just make sure you leave yourself enough flexibility should a better option arise!
This year's example has us flying Q-Suites from Australia to Greece (AA Miles), BA Club World to the East Coast of the USA (QANTAS Points), then back from the West Coast with Fiji Airways - initially in A330 Business Class to Nadi, then QF Business back home (QANTAS Points). We haven't been able to secure a full OneWorld RTW itinerary, but I usually manage to stitch things together with some judicious use of positioning flights. Enter the rub point: our positioning flights, purchased with Delta Skymiles in Basic Economy.
I had a pretty big (and relatively hard-to-justify) stash of Skymiles from a co-branded card I opened while living in the USA, and have slowly been working my way through them to downgrade the offending card and move on to greener pastures. In this instance, I opted for a "Basic Economy" fare vs Main Cabin to save a few thousand miles as my balance was finally getting tight, with the cost coming out at 24,600 Skymiles and $12 USD from coast to coast.
While I'd done well at the time to get my hands on the Fiji Airways seats out of SFO (they were the only business option home in the necessary timeframe), I decided to keep an eye out for a more enticing product. Business is Business and a privilege nonetheless, but I'd always prefer lie-flat to angle-flat. A couple of QF business seats became available for LAX-SYD on the day after our booking out of SFO, with more convenient timings. It would have been a pretty easy switch on QANTAS' end, but I'd hamstrung myself with my choice of fares on Delta. A cancel-to-rebook on Basic Economy would cost me 9,900 Skymiles per ticket - the vast majority of what I'd paid - and leave me without enough miles to book new positioning flights at a reasonable cost.
I know there are already a few older cautionary tales out here about Delta Basic Economy, but figured I should add mine to a mix. Cheap positioning flights are a great way of securing Business availability out of the USA - just make sure you leave yourself enough flexibility should a better option arise!
