US Dividend Miles Buy/Gift Miles 100% bonus - Cheap way for F/J *A Awards

[Oneworldplus2]

There is plenty of availability SYD-SFO/LAX on UA these days (or at least time I checked).

Ok, will look into it.
I haven't been on ANA lately because l don't have any points (so why bother teasing one-self), but that will change this week

 

[bcworld]

Ok, will look into it.
I haven't been on ANA lately because l don't have any points (so why bother teasing one-self), but that will change this week

Just as an example I picked a week at random next June - shows at least 2 seats in J 5 days that week...it generally seems to be zeroed out Sat/Sun I've noticed.

[KVS Availability Tool 7.0.2/Diamond - SNT: Awards/StarAlliance-7D]

SYD  Sydney Kingsford Smith NS AU [YSSY]
LAX  Los Angeles Intl CA US [KLAX]
MON  10 Jun 2013 (10 Jun 2013 - 16 Jun 2013) | 2 Seats


Carrier    Flight  From  Depart    To    Arrive    A/C  St  Availability
---------  ------  ----  --------  ----  --------  ---  --  -------------
UA         840     SYD   13:50     LAX   10:15     744  0   FS-  CS+  YS+
UA         840     SYD   13:50 +1  LAX   10:15 +1  ***  *   FS-  CS+  YS+
UA         840     SYD   13:50 +2  LAX   10:15 +2  ***  *   FS-  CS+  YS+
UA         840     SYD   13:50 +3  LAX   10:15 +3  ***  *   FS-  CS+  YS+
UA         840     SYD   13:50 +4  LAX   10:15 +4  ***  *   FS-  CS+  YS+
UA         840     SYD   13:50 +5  LAX   10:15 +5  ***  *   FS-  CS-  YS+
UA         840     SYD   13:50 +6  LAX   10:15 +6  ***  *   FS-  CS-  YS+

 

[smit0847]

Was thinking something basic like SYD - New York or Vegas (but if there is no direct across the pacific, SYD-Asia-Europe-New York) for 10 days - 2 weeks, and stopping in Asia (SIN/HKG/BKK) for 3-5 days on the way home. I would prefer the shortest and most direct as no miles/points/SC's to chase. F would be fantastic, but l'd be content with J.

That's not a RTW!

SYD-LAX/SFO-NYC on UA, then NYC-ICN/NRT-SYD on the way home. Would be a fairly simple AU-US return with an Asian stopover.

A Lifemiles 3 x one-ways with stopovers would provide enormous possibilities from SYD and by my calculations would cost 270K points in J. You could then come up with something like SYD-BKKorPVG(stop)-FRA-BCN//IST-JFK(stop)-LAS//SFO-ICN(stop)-SYD. Now THAT would be a RTW trip!!

You would have a lot of difficulty booking a RTW trip in F as realistically you would be mostly limited to TG, UA and CA.

 

[Oneworldplus2]

Sorry, after reading Anat0l's + bcworld's posts, l have dropped my RTW theory (and the points cost is pretty high, too high for me).
However, for a RTW, l would have done something like SYD-SIN/BKK-FRA-BUD-JFK-LAS-LAX-SYD.

 

[Stephen65]

They also do a 10 hr day rate depending on the times of the stopover...the price is still relatively steep though.

We did that last time we were transiting through BKK with young kids. We arrived at 6am and our next flight wasn't till that evening so we caught the shuttle bus to the Novotel and took the day rate two-queen bed room. Despite the website saying the day rate is for 8am to 6pm they let us check in at 6.30am. We slept, had a swim in the pool and then headed back to the airport to enjoy the F lounge for a few hours before leaving. The Novotel shuttle bus runs constantly and it's only a couple of minutes drive.

 

[casanovawa]

For the RTW itin, could you pick something like a 120,000 mile J redemption [Oz-transit Asia-Europe destination-US stopover] and then book another 110,000 mile J redemption [US-Asia destination-Oz Stop] and then just not do either of the return legs?? Call 'em up and say you've had a death in the family or whatever excuse even if you feel like giving an excuse so they could cancel the tickets and maybe re-issue???

To me booking two redemptions in J using a stopver and a destination (however you like to tweak them) would get you pretty close to the 16 segment/5 stopover and save you almost 70,000 miles compared to the actual 300,000 mile RTW J redemption??? US Air may not be too impressed however...

Acutally I had thought this through before, even better for 230,000 miles you could book the OZ-EUR-US ticket then the US-Asia-Oz ticket for one year and then book the return part of the Oz-US ticket for the following year - have a holiday wherever you started the 2nd redemption (say NYC) - and then the return leg of the 1st redemption US-EUR-Asia-Oz etc...

So for 230,000 perhaps get a RTW trip in J one year and then a holiday to the US as part of completing the two return legs back around the world again in J for the following year? Or is that trying to be too tricky???

 

[anat0l]

For the RTW itin, could you pick something like a 120,000 mile J redemption [Oz-transit Asia-Europe destination-US stopover] and then book another 110,000 mile J redemption [US-Asia destination-Oz Stop] and then just not do either of the return legs?? Call 'em up and say you've had a death in the family or whatever excuse even if you feel like giving an excuse so they could cancel the tickets and maybe re-issue???

To me booking two redemptions in J using a stopver and a destination (however you like to tweak them) would get you pretty close to the 16 segment/5 stopover and save you almost 70,000 miles compared to the actual 300,000 mile RTW J redemption??? US Air may not be too impressed however...

You can book one way tickets with US DM; it's just that you'll still cop the same points. So you could theoretically do what you propose without having to make up any tall stories.

You would still only get 1 stopover per itinerary, and you would most likely still be restricted to maximum 5 sectors in total on the entire one-way itinerary (stopover would still need to be inbound via hubbed *A carrier and along reasonably direct routing). Technically, excluding your take-off port, you could have between 3 and 5 stops. Booking two one-ways gives you a "free" open jaw at both the outbound direction and inbound direction (the latter being rather less useful than the former). For example, you could ticket BNE-BKK-IST (stop)-JFK, then the next ticket YYZ-JFK-NRT (stop)-SIN-AKL.

That said, that's a savvy discovery you've made.

An even more savvy (but difficult to organise) method then would be to have 2 normal J itineraries that were intertwined. The outbound of the first itinerary gets you to your furthest "RTW" destination, then the outbound of the second one brings you back (since this is a separate itinerary, it will not be restricted by the first one's routing). Then, the inbound of the second itinerary launches you off again and finally the inbound of the first itinerary brings you home. Basically that's 2 potential pseudo-RTWs there (for the price of.... ). That all said and done, you'd probably be looking at doing both of those within 12 months (2 RTW vacations anyone?) due to the limitations on advance ticketing (US DM won't allow award tix with open dates), and there'd be a high chance that you will be visiting some stops twice.


EDIT: casanovawa, we were thinking the same thing at the same time I'd actually love to try it, but I don't have the cash right now to boost up my points balance (and would need 2-3 iterations of the purchasing deal to get enough points).

 

[casanovawa]

Your right Anat0l, forgot about the one way thing you could do... I went back and edited my post as had thought of all the permutations before to try and turn it into 2 holidays over 2 years and get max value out of it...

I see in your reply you have also tried to get a bit creative...

 

[casanovawa]

Yeah, would need several bonus' offers to get the points required, I have 134,000 at the moment so another bonus and i could try it... Although i'm thinking my next redemption might be a US-Africa one so that i need the extra points for that option...

But still to me more appealing than paying the 300,000 mile official RTW rate, i guess its there to catch people who don't think out of the box or just want a simple packaged solution....

 

[anat0l]

But still to me more appealing than paying the 300,000 mile official RTW rate, i guess its there to catch people who don't think out of the box or just want a simple packaged solution....

That all said and done, there's no description of what the rules are for the "official" RTW redemptions. I can probably think of examples of what could be done with an "official" RTW that you can't do with 2 intertwined bookings, but then I wouldn't be able to justify the "70k premium" for that kind of "additional flexibility".

 

[casanovawa]

I imagine whoever pointed out the rules about 5 stops and 16 segments would be pretty right for the 300,000 mile official RTW redemption, i did a 140,000 OW award last year and those were the rules and I managed to get some pretty good value out of it using it as the backbone of a RTW trip with cheap South American air passes and driving around the North East USA/Canada etc...

But for me, while the scope of opportunties would be a bit less, the 230,000 miles/2 redemption option would give you one RTW holiday allowing you to skip around 3 continents after which you could use cheap internal LCC or Y flights to spread out from your main arrival cities to any other close cities on those continents (as many people have said intra continental J flights in Europe/US/Asia are little better than economy flights most of the time anyway) plus with this you get another RTW flight within 12 months (ok the second is only in name as only get one stop but maybe a couple of 24 hour transits as well) as opposed to the 300,000 mile RTW option just getting you 1 set of flights in 1 year and for the extra 70,000 miles you could probably get close to a J Oz-Asia redemption for the 3rd year...

 

[smit0847]

An even more savvy (but difficult to organise) method then would be to have 2 normal J itineraries that were intertwined. The outbound of the first itinerary gets you to your furthest "RTW" destination, then the outbound of the second one brings you back (since this is a separate itinerary, it will not be restricted by the first one's routing). Then, the inbound of the second itinerary launches you off again and finally the inbound of the first itinerary brings you home. Basically that's 2 potential pseudo-RTWs there (for the price of.... ). That all said and done, you'd probably be looking at doing both of those within 12 months (2 RTW vacations anyone?) due to the limitations on advance ticketing (US DM won't allow award tix with open dates), and there'd be a high chance that you will be visiting some stops twice.

It doesn't even have to be that complicated or involve that much backtracking. Say you book a AU-US redemption + a separate Asia-EU redemption. That would be 120 + 80 = 200 K miles in J and you simply pick an Asian city as your 'link' city and you get this:

AU-US = SYD-SFO-NYC (dest) - ICN (stop)
The during your stopover you do your Asia-EU - ICN - LHR (dest) - IST (stop) - ICN
Then you finish off your AU-US by completing the final ICN-SYD.

You wouldn't technically be flying 'around the world' because you wouldn't cross the Atlantic but hell, you would have 4 stops for 200K (5 if you consider you would visit ICN twice).

The 'link' city would need to be a *A hub city, so could choose BKK, NRT, PVG etc.....

 

[anat0l]

It doesn't even have to be that complicated or involve that much backtracking. Say you book a AU-US redemption + a separate Asia-EU redemption. That would be 120 + 80 = 200 K miles in J and you simply pick an Asian city as your 'link' city and you get this:

AU-US = SYD-SFO-NYC (dest) - ICN (stop)
The during your stopover you do your Asia-EU - ICN - LHR (dest) - IST (stop) - ICN
Then you finish off your AU-US by completing the final ICN-SYD.

You wouldn't technically be flying 'around the world' because you wouldn't cross the Atlantic but hell, you would have 4 stops for 200K (5 if you consider you would visit ICN twice).

The 'link' city would need to be a *A hub city, so could choose BKK, NRT, PVG etc.....

That's awesome.

Now... I wonder if an itinerary can be created to "maximise" the F experience(s)... that would just rock the world (no pun intended :mrgreen

 

[MEL_Traveller]

That's awesome.

Now... I wonder if an itinerary can be created to "maximise" the F experience(s)... that would just rock the world (no pun intended :mrgreen

that would be fairly easy provided you could secure UA for AU-US in F. Then US-asia on CA F, then OZ F, then back TG F then back to AU either in business or F to SYD

 

[burmans]

that would be fairly easy provided you could secure UA for AU-US in F. Then US-asia on CA F, then OZ F, then back TG F then back to AU either in business or F to SYD

Are UA and CA really maximising the F experience (that's a question not a statement).

 

[Aussie_flyer]

Are UA and CA really maximising the F experience (that's a question not a statement).

the UA F hard product is quite good really. it's just the soft product that lets them down, although it's not atrocious either, but nothing compared to most Asian and some european carriers

 

[Oneworldplus2]

Whats UA J like?

 

[kpc]

Just booked a flight to Icn from Syd using miles. How do I check the itinerary using the OZ booking reference? "Check my trip" and "Sabre virtually there" don't seem to work. thanks

 

[casanovawa]

If the flights to and from the US weren't so great in F options you could just do J on that redemption and do the F for the Eur redemption, lots of options...

 

[anat0l]

If the flights to and from the US weren't so great in F options you could just do J on that redemption and do the F for the Eur redemption, lots of options...

That's what I was thinking. Rather than UA F, do NZ J. Then you could even contemplate SQ J from EWR or LAX.

Yeah - I know - I've just selected two of the most rarely offered award seats possible in *A......