Australia and Asia on Six Airlines: Booked

As you've seen in Kelsey's guest posts (here and here) booking an award trip from the United States to Australia can be one of the most difficult out there. This is one of those true cases that the earlier you can book, and the more date flexible you can be, the easier it will be for you to try and find this award.

For our trip in July we have booked our outbound on oneworld and our return is on the Star Alliance. Kelsey has become a master of the ANA tool to find Star space (I think we should become an award booking service after this trip :p). But we didn't just want to head straight home, we wanted to get some extra value from our trip if we could. Since it wasn't a round-trip we were not eligible to get a free one way out of it, but we were able to use the United rules to our advantage. We found that as long as a stop in another country was less than 24 hours we could make the routing legal without paying more miles.

So...using that logic we have added a full 23 hours in both Singapore and Bangkok with flights on AA, Qantas, Singapore, Thai and United so that our final itenirary looks like this:



 We are so excited for this trip and I hope to pick all of your miles and points brains for the best things to do and eat along the way!

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Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints! Have a question for us? E-mail us at chris@doitforthepoints.com or jd@doitforthepoints.com

How to Book a Dream Trip to P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney, Part 2: Star Alliance Flights

As you read in my previous post, booking a dream trip to Australia takes some work, but can be achieved with time and dedication.  We left off after I had booked our flights to Australia using American Airlines points on OneWorld.  I can’t emphasize enough how beneficial it was to be able to place that itinerary on hold while I planned our return trip.  AA has a very generous hold policy, allowing you to place an itinerary on hold for 5 days regardless of whether or not you have sufficient miles in your account.  This is so important when planning an award itinerary using two different alliances, as it allowed me to grab the Qantas award space on OneWorld and then figure out if I could find Star Alliance award space to work in the same time frame.

So, how do you find award space on Star Alliance?  First it’s important to understand the routing rules for the carrier.  Unlike AA, United allows you to touch into Asia for no cost.  This was a big deal for us since Chris wanted to visit Asia during the trip, so I knew I needed to build in that visit on the return routing.  The key, I found, was making sure the stopover was less than 24 hours.  This is a golden rule with United, as anything over 24 hours (even just 10 minutes) will trigger an additional mileage charge.

Others have written recently that United’s system now pulls in most Star Alliance carriers.  I haven’t tried that, as most of the blog articles I read recommended using All Nippon Airways (ANA)’s website.  You must have ~100 miles in ANA’s Mileage Club to gain access to the site, which fortunately Chris did through a promotion they ran awhile ago.  There are workarounds if you don’t have 100 miles, but I didn’t try any of them since I could just use Chris’s account.  ANA’s site is tricky from the get-go, as it is hard to even locate the award search section (Answer: Click ANA Mileage Club at the top, then For Details under Using Miles, then Application and Ticketing under Partner Flight Awards, then “member’s only function” under ANA Sky Web.  Told you it was hard!).  Once you’re in the system, select Use Star Alliance Member Airlines and the search boxes will appear.

When I searched for the full routing the first time (SYD-WAS), it sent me from Sydney to a US city (LAX, SFO, etc).  This wouldn’t work since we wanted to stop in Asia.  So I checked the Star Alliance route map to see where in Asia I could stop.  Chris had mentioned Hong Kong, but there were no direct SYD-HKG flights.  Singapore was also on his list, and there are direct flights between the two cities on Singapore Airlines, so that was my starting point.  

I went back to the ANA website and started searching leg by leg.  The system is clunky but once you get the hang of it, not all that bad.  You can move backwards and forwards through dates by using the “day before” and “day after” options after you’ve searched for availability.  I recommend choosing the earliest potential date for your trip and then moving forward from there.  You WILL have to play around with dates, and it will take some time.  

The system marks award space with the word OK and a yellow box marked Select.  It’s important to watch for this because sometimes it will recommend a connection on a leg (e.g. Singapore to Washington via Beijing or Tokyo), and you need to make sure there’s award space on both legs.  If there’s only space on one leg, you can note the flight information where there is availability and then search each stop individually (e.g. Singapore to Beijing, Beijing to Washington).  As I was doing my leg-by-leg searches, I noted which days had space, the flight numbers and flight times.  By the end of the process I had filled three pages front and back with potential dates/times/flights, but it was essential in order to keep track of where I had seen availability.

In my case, I knew I wanted to go from SYD-SIN, but was having trouble on the next leg.  I was seeing some availability from SIN-Tokyo, so I then built that into my searches.  For the next leg, instead of searching for WAS, I searched gateway cities into the US (again, using the Star Alliance routemap as a guide).  I wouldn’t sweat it if you can’t find the final flight back to your home city in the ANA system.  You can always go back to the United website and search there (although the results are likely the same), or consider purchasing a one-way ticket back to your home city.  No use derailing the whole trip over a domestic flight.

As I mentioned, I kept a sheet of paper with all of my potential dates and flights just to keep track of when I could string things together.  Once I was able to find a timeframe when things looked like they could all work, I started using the Flight Search option, which allows you to input each leg and then search everything together.  My final search wound up being SYD-SIN, SIN-HND-NRT-SEA.  After putting each of these legs in, the system marked a flight on each leg with OK, indicating that everything was looking good!

The itinerary I built gave us an overnight stopover in Singapore, an overnight stopover in Tokyo (which would allow us to change airports since we were arriving at Haneda and departing from Narita), and then an arrival in Seattle.  The SEA-WAS flight was giving me a headache, but I figured if need be we could always stay a few days in Seattle to visit Chris’s family and then pay for the 1-way back.  If we got the rest of the trip for free, that would be a small price to pay!

Then came the fun part: calling United to try and ticket the award.  I called the Silver line and was connected to my first of several grumpy United agents (Note: I always make it a point to be nice to agents because I’m sure they deal with rude, over-entitled customers constantly.  I don’t expect everyone to be a ray of sunshine all the time, but a little customer service would be nice).  During my first call, I realized the stopover in Singapore was 24 hours and about 10 minutes, which was too long and would trigger an extra mileage charge.  There is no negotiating this rule (I did try a bit of pleading, but it was a non-starter).  Back I went to ANA’s website, hoping this wouldn’t derail the whole trip.  Luckily there was award space on an earlier flight (to give credit, Chris found it), so it was time for call #2.  I explained that I wanted to book a 1-way award ticket for two people from Sydney to Seattle in business class, and immediately the agent said “I doubt that’s possible, there’s never award space on those flights.”  I explained that I had the routing and flight information and asked if she would mind just trying it in the system.  With each leg, she huffed and sighed and told me that there was no way this would work.  At the end, though, everything fit together, met all of the requirements, and she asked, slightly amazed, “How on earth did you find this?”  “Lots of time and patience,” I replied.  

Chris and I had topped up our United accounts by transferring points from Chase prior to the call (they transfer immediately which is so handy!) so we were set with miles.  I gave the agent my account information and Chris’s, paid the $140 in taxes, and we were set!

After talking about it a bit more we did call back and add on a leg from SEA-IAD for no additional miles.  The only award availability was in economy, but we’ll be eligible for an upgrade since the rest of the itinerary is in business (and we have lowly silver status).  That flight leaves the day after we arrive in Seattle (but within 24 hours!) so we’ll still be able to visit his family.  The downside: It leaves at 6 AM and goes through Houston.  Despite this, I’m hoping space might open up on a slightly later and/or direct flight.

Since booking we’ve changed our AA flights to a later time (to avoid a super long layover in Dallas before our flight to Brisbane) and changed our return itinerary to go from Singapore to Bangkok to Toyko (with an overnight flight on the Bangkok to Toyko route).  We were considering staying at the Park Hyatt Toyko, but our original flight arrived around midnight and so we wouldn’t have had much time to enjoy it.  The revised itinerary saves us a night, plus both flights arrive/depart from Tokyo Narita.  We plan to check our bags for the day and head to the city for a few hours of sightseeing (unless we change the itinerary again, which is totally possible knowing Chris! :)).

Final routing: DCA-ORD-DFW-BNE-SYD-SIN-BKK-NRT-SEA-IAH-IAD.  We’re also planning to nest a trip to Cannes from Sydney and back to see the Great Barrier Reef (!!!) using Avois points.  We’ve booked all but one hotel night using Hilton and Hyatt points (the Park Hyatt Sydney sounds incredible!), and will be booking the last using Hilton points before the devaluation kicks in.

So, it took a lot of time and planning, but I booked my dream trip.  I never would have thought it would be possible for me to take a trip like this now, but it just goes to show how many opportunities miles and points can provide.  I hope this write-up will help some of you plan the trip of your dreams too.  If anyone has suggestions for things to see or do in any of the cities we’ll be visiting, I would love to hear them!


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Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints! Have a question for us? E-mail us at chris@doitforthepoints.com or jd@doitforthepoints.com

How to Book a Dream Trip to P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney

Today's post is a guest post from my wonderful girlfriend, Kelsey. As you will see she has always wanted to go to Australia and it's been our dream trip forever. Finally she just decided that it was going to be our next trip no matter what. And let me tell you, when she sets her mind to something...she's going to do it. One of the many reasons I love her. 

But the main reason I wanted her to write up this series of posts is because she was able to use a series of tools to book an outbound trip to Sydney on oneworld and a trip back from Sydney with "layovers" (almost 24 hours each) in both Singapore and Tokyo on Star Alliance. So our routing as it looks now is: Washington, DC - Chicago - Dallas - Brisbane - Sydney - Singapore - Bangkok  - Tokyo - Seattle - Houston - Washington, DC. The outbound is on AA and Qantas and the return is on Singapore Airlines, Thai Airways, ANA and United. 

So...I'll let Kelsey take it from here. 

I had the travel bug long before I met Chris.  I was fortunate to grow up with two parents who loved to travel and wanted me to grow up with an understanding of how many amazing places there are across the globe.  When I took my first flight I was only 9 months old.  In eighth grade I went to China and Thailand, in high school to Costa Rica, and in college to Rome and all across Europe.  The trip of my dreams, however, was always to Australia.  Maybe it’s because I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was 5, or because Finding Nemo is one of my favorite movies.  Whatever the reason, it’s always been my ultimate travel goal, and one I didn’t expect to reach for awhile.  Chris and I investigated going to Australia at Christmas but the availability just wasn’t there, so we filed it away for a “someday” trip.

Turns out, that someday may be much sooner than either of us thought!  We just finished booking our trip to Australia, Singapore and Tokyo for July.  The planning started on a whim, as I wanted to take a big trip over the summer before I start graduate school in the fall.  I asked Chris about Australia, but he scoffed and said it was unlikely we could pull that off. (Editors Note: I don't remember scoffing, but she's usually right so I probably did ;)   He did say that if I really wanted to go that I would have to plan it.  Challenge accepted.  Oh and one more thing, if we were going all the way to Australia, we needed to visit Asia too.  No big deal, right?

Now I’m not a points expert by any means, I just pick up things here and there from being around Chris and JD.  When I want to do something, though, I’m stubborn and persistent.  Turns out these are essential to planning a complicated, ambitious award trip to a place like Australia.  In this set of posts I’ll tell you what I did with the hope that it will help someone else plan their dream trip.

Overview

The very first step to plan any trip is to identify how many points you need.  We wanted to fly business class, which is 67,500 each way on Star Alliance (United) carriers and 62,500 on OneWorld (AA) carriers.  We didn’t have enough points in any one program for a round-trip, so I knew we would need to book two one-way itineraries.  While this takes more work, it also provides a little more flexibility.

The next step is to make sure you have all of the points you need for your intended trip.  Chris and I were close on both United and AA miles but wound up needing to transfer some Chase points to United and purchase some AA miles, which we did using the bonus miles promotion that started at the beginning of February.  It’s important to note that we didn’t transfer the points until I knew all of the routing would work.  There’s no sense in transferring or buying points only to find out that your trip won’t work.  Both United and AA allow you to put itineraries on hold.  United requires you to actually have the points in your account, but fortunately Chase points transfer almost instantaneously.  AA is more generous and allows you a 5-day hold without having the points in your account.  If you purchase miles it takes up to 72 hours for them to post.  This wound up not being an issue for us because ours posted in about 24 hours, but if you’re in a pinch an agent can ticket your trip if they see you’ve purchased the miles.

Now that you know what you need and what you have, you can start searching for availability.  For a trip like Australia that has very limited award space, it’s essential to be as flexible as possible with your dates to maximize your chance at finding something.  I knew we needed to go before August and was aiming to find options in July.  I was hoping to find space in early July to take advantage of a free day off work, but knew it wouldn’t be a dealbreaker if I couldn’t.

I also found it to be helpful to list out all of the gateway airports to Australia from the US and vice-versa.  Airline award tools will not build the whole route for you in one search (e.g. DCA-SYD), so it’s better to go leg by leg.

Now for the details.

Booking a OneWorld Award

I started my award search on AA, but found that Qantas has a better award search tool.  After searching various dates and city combinations both to and from Australia, I found a great itinerary on Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong.  Fabulous, right?  We would leave from Cairns after visiting the Great Barrier Reef, have a brief stopover in HKG, and fly back to LAX.  Sounds great!  Well, it does if you have 125,000 miles lying around.  Lesson 1: OneWorld charges continent to continent, so my aforementioned itinerary would cost me the price an award ticket from Australia to Asia and Asia to the US.  Since we were a little short on 62,500 AA miles, there was no way 125,000 would work.  After learning this lesson via a chat with a stern AA agent, I went back to the drawing board.

Having learned my lesson about not touching into Asia, I started searching flights that went from cities such as Dallas and LA directly to Australia.  This spanned several days.  Then, I saw it: I was searching AA’s website and found a Qantas flight from DFW-Brisbane (BNE), then on to Sydney.  Thanks to AA’s amazing hold policy, I was able to quickly put it on hold.  After grabbing it, I got to work on the return routing (more on that in the next post).  After I worked that out, I went back to AA to figure out how we could get to DFW.  The only award space I could find went from DCA-MIA at 7 AM, MIA-DFW at 11 AM, and arrived in Dallas at 1, 9 hours before our flight to BNE.  Not ideal, but at least we could work with it (we’ve since switched on to a 2 PM flight to ORD that gets us to DFW around 7 PM, much more manageable).

After finding the availability, I had to call AA to get them to add the DCA-DFW leg before we booked the tickets.  The agent initially insisted there was no award space to DFW, so I had to tell him the exact flight numbers I was seeing on the AA website.  This is common, so always go into a call knowing exactly what you want, down to the flight number and times.  In the end he was able to finalize our itinerary and even saved us a booking fee of $25 each by suggesting we wait to book it online when our purchased miles posted.  In the end, we got our flights booked in business on Qantas for 62,500 miles and about $35 in taxes.

My AA experience was pretty straightforward, especially with the flexibility of being able to place an itinerary on hold while I worked out the details of the return flight.  As you’ll see in my next post, the United/Star Alliance booking process was much, much more difficult.

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