Just secured my second ever US Airways "insanely great deals" Dividend Miles flight.
Flying:
MEL-SYD-LAX (Stopover) UA 747-400 Flat Bed in J
LAX-EWR (Destination) UA 737 in F
EWR-ORD-LAX-SYD-MEL UA 757 in F (EWR-ORD-LAX) UA 747-400 Flat Bed in J (LAX-MEL)
110,000 points
$106.18 (tax) + $50 (fee)
All on United in Business Class.
Estimated all up with taxes and buying points only cost me $1800 (counting 10,000 odd miles I secured via the grand slam)
I was chuffed finding some J class United Australia - USA because for a while there I looked like I was going to have to go via Asia.
Very happy with my final routing, thank you again to all of you 'US Dividend Miles enthusiasts' who have helped me! What a great deal.
Each to their own, while I appreciate the idea of going direct has it's appeal in my recent SYD-ICN(OZ), ICN-SFO-EWR (UA), EWR-YUL (UA) and YUL-YVR-SYD (AC) itinerary everything UA did turned to **** and I far preferred the OZ/AC segments.
SYD-ICN (J), OZ were just brilliant, great seats, superb food and wine. I'm a bit of a foodie and wine buff, the food and service were equal of many of Sydney's top restaurants and the wine would be in top half dozen or so I have tasted (anywhere) this year. Probably spoiled me for the UA experience to come.
ICN-SFO-EWR (J booked) - here the fun(?) started. After the 90 minute trip from Seoul we discovered our 5 pm flight was cancelled. We could have found this out if we had checked email but then email said flight delayed until 2pm (delayed to 2pm for a 5 pm flight??) and come to airport anyway. We met a number of people who had been at airport since 12 (i.e. they left Seoul at 10:30 or so) only to be told flight was cancelled until 2pm the NEXT day. UA did not organise transport until 5pm to hotel (interestingly I heard the agent say they were in long-term dispute with hotel over transportation). Also when my wife mentioned this was a hectic day aganet said "oh not United are late or cancelled 20 days per month!"
Went to the hotel Intercontinental COEX, nice hotel but was in downtown area of Seoul (i.e. another 90 minutes drive) where there was not much going on though opposite one of Seouls largest temples and next morning was Buddha's birthday. Nice hotel and got a good room (as you'd expect in J), gave us a vegetarian meal - unsure why we all got this except I did find out one traveller was a vegetarian (but is this a reason for us all to get the same meal?). Went for a walk but not much going on in this area so not much chance to see Seoul. We were finally told of UA's plans via a note slipped under the door that we would be woken at 8 am for breakfast and then bus to airport at 10am. So far so good but when we got on bus heard from another passenger apparently the flight wasn't leaving until 5pm. UA took a full 2 hours to check us in because they didn't know how to change our ticket (transpired later they had cancelled and reissued to EWR only, more on this later). In compensation they gave us $11.47 food voucher, I kid you not but we did manage to find a good Korean restaurant. Then spent a fair bit of time trying to contact my NYC hotel and transportation plus one tour the next day to tell them I'd be arriving a day late.
My main complaint here was
a) very poor communication. We could have spent time exploring Seoul but because UA were so hopeless in communication we were never aware we had time to spare
b) the kicker, when we checked in and they searched for SFO-EWR flights they told us, "oh sorry, business class not available". My response was so if you knew we were delayed yesterday, why did you not book us into Business then.
OZ lounge was good, UA flight OK. Beds and IFE were good, service very chummy but not a patch on OZ. Food average, wine well there is a story. looking at the menu, "oh, we don't serve what's on the menu, it's whatever they load". One choice was cabernet called "The Cab", wine itself was OK but interesting marketing to serve what looked like a cleanskin to business class passengers.
SFO-EWR yes we were in economy plus. To put in context I would say Qantas economy is better than UA economy plus, no food or personal IFE. Not happy but at least we on the way to New York, no offer of compensation.
EWR-YUL day before we looked to book online, tickets showed as cancelled, rang up & first person wanted to charge us a reinstatement fee as we had cancelled and wasn't prepared to discuss the fact that it wasn't us who had cancelled them (and was very hard to understand). Rang again and got a very good agent who sorted but we had to spend an hour and a half on the plane waiting. However I had lost my preferred seating for which I'd paid $50 (for 2), no compensation offered.
Arrived for 7.45 flight (i.e. had got up very early), had checked in and just arriving at gate when we heard flight cancelled. Fortunately we had a 5 hour turnaround at YUL so they were able to get on next flight but did have 3 hours at a very grotty EWR (can't think of a worse airport I have recently visited). Arrived at Montreal and UA had lost our bags.
By this time really over UA so was happy next segment was on Ac, even in Y. Spent 7 hours in Vancouver, visited the city (looked a very nice city & much better infrastructure than NYC as an aside) then the AC lounge. The flight back to Sydney in J on AC was again very nice, probably not quite as good as OZ but very close. Great beds, service good, wine very nice, food just OK. Slept for about 9 hours on 15 hour flight.
In summary for me UA was a bit of a disaster and my wife has said never again (though sure I can change that). On the upside I did get UA FF membership so I could track flight and assign seats, and based on a tip had changed the UA segment to reflect the UA rather than US numbers. One of my flights did earn points (only 4K but better than nothing) plus were were offered 17.5K points each for the ICN-SFO flight being 1 day late. Nothing offered for the other two disasters though!
Or are you booking J first, then changing award if F becomes available during the 14 day window...
All up, with the infant ticket it's probably about 10% more than the QF price, but I'm more than happy with that.
