Long Haul Business Class for under $2K (Long Post)

[ThePope]

1 hour ago, Luv2Phuket said:

Two are my positioning flight in -- I snagged back-to-back flights and will hope at least one goes off without a hitch.
The other two are return flights, and I am currently holding 2 different return dates (1 for a 2-week trip; the other a 3-week trip).  I rarely book back-up flights for my return positioning flight, as I figure I'll eventually make it home (no threat of missing my trip).

 

the problem you can run into is your airline will cancel one, or maybe both flights calling them dupes and that its against their terms of service. Usually its just one though, and the one that you actually want

I ran into this problem a lot when booking Thai award flights on aeroplan, as soon as they get a whiff that you cant possibly make both flights (back to back days for example) they would cancel the oldest made booking

Air Canada has a dupe engine too, but i think it usually only triggers if you're in the air at the same time on two flights, as its an extension of their auto-rebooking engine, and doesnt do the auto rebook until close to departure usually. However per AC terms you cant book multiple bookings like that

Were the southwest flights refundable? if they are id get rid of one of them

[Luv2Phuket]

31 minutes ago, ThePope said:

the problem you can run into is your airline will cancel one, or maybe both flights calling them dupes and that its against their terms of service. Usually its just one though, and the one that you actually want

I ran into this problem a lot when booking Thai award flights on aeroplan, as soon as they get a whiff that you cant possibly make both flights (back to back days for example) they would cancel the oldest made booking

Air Canada has a dupe engine too, but i think it usually only triggers if you're in the air at the same time on two flights, as its an extension of their auto-rebooking engine, and doesnt do the auto rebook until close to departure usually. However per AC terms you cant book multiple bookings like that

Were the southwest flights refundable? if they are id get rid of one of them

I might drop one and replace it with AA

I usually do separate airlines, but was lured by the low fares today!  5555

[jmukh]

On 09/06/2024 at 23:42, Luv2Phuket said:

A "heads up" for anyone trying to use Alaska miles from the Western USA to BKK - Alaska is starting to show decent availability on StarLux from SFO and (even more) from Seattle for 85,000 miles each way in Biz. 

Thanks for this. I jumped on an Alaska card a couple of years ago due to all the points and miles blogs raving about how hard it was to get Alaska points and how valuable they were, and I've never been able to find a good use for them (I'm also in DC, so I never fly Alaska). I think I'm sitting on just over 100k points? The only catch is that I'm never able to schedule a trip to Asia a year in advance.

Re: your Southwest post: not sure if this stacks, but can you pay for that offer with a Southwest gift card? If so, Costco has them for ~$450 for $500 face value, plus your usual Costco multipliers (points on a Visa card or 4% back with Costco membership + Costco Citi card).

[Luv2Phuket]

To use a phrase my Dad used to say, when it comes to booking business class award travel to Bangkok, American miles have become as useless as tits on a boar hog.

I just ran searches from:  LAX, SFO, ORD and DFW in March, April, and May of 2025 (calendar goes through May 8 today, I think).  Grand total of business class award flights to BKK (or even just to HKG) over those four airports and three months.....
          ZERO....nada....zilch!

I have started using my absurd stockpile of AA miles for domestic travel (3 award flights to Austin)...Hell, I even used a SWU on a 4th Austin flight because I never see availability to use them.

I think the next time I am in London on business, I will try to combine it with a trip to Thailand so I can finally use some of these fucking miles!  London to BKK has a ton of availability on various Oneworld carriers (generally 75k in Biz), but most are connections (unless I can score the BA non-stops when they are operating).

....sorry....just wanted to vent....

[ThePope]

Optimal length of trip?

My 12th trip is coming up this summer and its 11 nights on the ground. Ive done as many as 21 days and as few as 14 or so, but as ive done it a dozen times i find by day 10 or so my Desire starts to wane

Trip 13 in winter of 2025 is with a buddy and is 15 days on the ground, hes now going 1 time a year and wants even longer but im in charge and know better

Planning trip 14 for summer 2025. Currently have an outbound that's all EVA YYZ-TPE-BKK with a connected layover in YYZ (unfortunately 13h! in the daytime) but that might improve as flights open up for my YYZ positioning flight/ May same day change

I have 3 returns booked so far; 8 nights on the ground 1110 departure BKK-TPE-YYZ on EVA. 9 nights on the ground 0220 BKK-VIE-YYZ (EVA then AC with 2h connection, late checkout etc) and 13 nights on the ground BKK-TPE-YYZ again. The TPE returns require an overnight in YYZ!

Im leaning towards the 2h VIE connection; currently Flightradar24 shows i wouldn't miss that connect any day in the last week or so; which happens to be exact days I'm flying only a year in advance. The VIE connection doesn't require an overnight

All bookings are same points; 103k aeroplan and a few canukisan pesos

BUT is 9.5 days of pattaya enough considering its 30h transit for me each way (in business class but still sucks)

I think what ill do is evaluate on my next trip if i had to leave on day 9.5 how would i feel about it

the MS technique i mentioned seems to be good, so im looking at adding about 150-200k points a month but don't want to get spendy until i have an abundant pool, but might throw a TG F return BKK-LHR-YYZ if it comes up for ~250k points on my summer trip because i really dont want to return through DEL

[Luv2Phuket]

I effectively did a 7-day trip in April -- left late on Fri night; arrived Sunday; left late the following Sunday night....it was fucking BRUTAL!

Because I try not to fly mid-week (to limit when I am unavailable for work), it pretty much locks me in for either 14 or 21 days.  I have never done a 21 day trip, but have alternate returns booked for my November trip that would make it either 14 or 21 days.

I might start looking at mid-week flights, but it's tough.  Leaving mid-week puts me out of touch for multiple days, while returning mid-week means I am a zombie for a few "work" days when I get back.

Back when I was self-employed and didn't mind mid-week trips, a 15 to 17 day trip would have been great.

 

[Luv2Phuket]

Somebody queue up the Blue Oyster Cult....."I'm churnin', I'm churnin' for you"!

Not a great offer -- and a high minimum spend -- but I just locked in another Chase Ink (this time an Ink Business Unlimited, which has 0 AF and earns 1.5X on all spend).  SUB is 75,000 URs with $6,000 minimum spend over 3 months (but the 6k spend will bump it up to 84,000 URs at the 1.5X this card earns on all spend). I can top the 1.5% spend on everything with other cards (AMEX Blue Biz Plus gets 2%), so this card was snagged just for the SUB and the fact that it lacks an annual fee.

Once it arrives, I will shift all spend to it for the next few months (and maybe make a few gift card runs!  555).  My car insurance renews next month, so that knocks off almost $900 right off the bat.  I just had an eye procedure, so I expect some medical bills to start coming in on it over the next few weeks.  It's a Visa, so some Southwest GCs and maybe some Instacart GCs from Costco could be in my near future.

I'm sitting at 4/24 on personal cards (1 comes off in September), but I've snagged 3 Chase Ink cards in the past year (including this one), so the "business cards don't count against 5/24" adage must be true.

[travelling_man]

On 11/06/2024 at 05:17, ThePope said:

the problem you can run into is your airline will cancel one, or maybe both flights calling them dupes and that its against their terms of service.

I had this happened ONCE (on United) and it was because two trips had an overlapping date and that triggered the notice that they would cancel both if I didn't cancel one of them.  

[Luv2Phuket]

On 10/06/2024 at 15:17, ThePope said:

the problem you can run into is your airline will cancel one, or maybe both flights calling them dupes and that its against their terms of service. Usually its just one though, and the one that you actually want

I ran into this problem a lot when booking Thai award flights on aeroplan, as soon as they get a whiff that you cant possibly make both flights (back to back days for example) they would cancel the oldest made booking

Air Canada has a dupe engine too, but i think it usually only triggers if you're in the air at the same time on two flights, as its an extension of their auto-rebooking engine, and doesnt do the auto rebook until close to departure usually. However per AC terms you cant book multiple bookings like that

Were the southwest flights refundable? if they are id get rid of one of them

 

52 minutes ago, travelling_man said:

I had this happened ONCE (on United) and it was because two trips had an overlapping date and that triggered the notice that they would cancel both if I didn't cancel one of them.  

@ThePope called it!  I got an email last night from Southwest canceling one of the reservations....and NOT the one I wanted them to cancel! 5555

I'll change the other booking to fix it.

As noted above, I already booked a backup on AA.

 

[Luv2Phuket]

On 09/06/2024 at 20:42, Luv2Phuket said:

It turns out, I didn't really have a choice, as the BIGGER issue for me is that my August 85k booking (StarLux SFO-TPE-BKK) took my Alaska account down to 55,000 miles....and their recent 60% bonus offer on purchased miles expired 2 weeks ago.....DOH!
 

In case anyone needs to bulk up their Alaska account to snag some of those 85k award tickets, Alaska is right back with a 50% bonus on purchased miles through June 26.

While I'm not usually a fan of prospective mileage purchases, it can be tough to build up an Alaska miles balance.  The only credit card options I know about are their co-branded Bank of America cards (I've had both) and Bilt. 

Bloggers LOVE to rave about Bilt, but I don't rent, so it has limited value to me.  If Bilt adds the ability to get credit for mortgage payments, I will be on it in a  NY second.

I was about to pull the trigger on the Alaska mileage purchase when I realized OI need to wait for that new Ink card to come in.  Then it will apply towards my latest SUB and kill two birds with one stone.

 

 

[Luv2Phuket]

For those of you who read travel blogs, I just found out about this site - https://www.milesfeed.com

It aggregates the headlines of a bunch of FF blogs all in one place, with direct links to the stories. 

GREAT source of info in one place.

[jmukh]

7 hours ago, Luv2Phuket said:

Bloggers LOVE to rave about Bilt, but I don't rent, so it has limited value to me.  If Bilt adds the ability to get credit for mortgage payments, I will be on it in a  NY second.

I believe Bilt is locked out of mortgages due to the "can't use a debt to pay a debt" thing; if they can find a way around this (like Plastiq, which has operated in that gray area for a couple of years) they'd be the most popular credit card by far. I'd literally pay an Amex-level annual fee if I could pay a mortgage on my card with no fees.

There's some information that Bilt can work for HOA payments, which may be of interest for some. Comments on Facebook have been mixed, with some people doing it regularly and some being told Bilt will allow it as a one-time thing but not again. Since my HOA charges a fee for credit card payments, this would have been helpful, but it hasn't been enough to get me to sign up for a new credit card so far.

[Luv2Phuket]

Yeah, I have heard that about Bilt and HOAs.

I have 2 HOAs (my complex and Summerlin West).  I auto pay one by credit card and the other is an auto bank draft.  They're only about $600/month combined, so getting Bilt just for them doesn't make much sense.  

I know Bilt gets 3X on dining (and double that on the 1st of each month), but that's pretty meaningless to me, as my Citi Prestige already gets me 5X (and Citi transfers to EVA).

 

[Luv2Phuket]

This would be FANTASTIC news - 

https://onemileatatime.com/insights/starlux-airlines-oneworld/?utm_source=milesfeed.com&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=MilesFeed.com

I am scheduled to fly Starlux to BKK in August using Alaska miles, and have read great things about it.

Frankly, ANY new oneworld partner to Asia is good news, as JAL and Cathay do not appear to be offering award space to partners these days.

[ThePope]

Oneworld doesn't serve me well, as there are no primary Canadian oneworld providers, and honestly the country isn't friendly enough to aviation to support 2 well equipped international airlines. There was some teasing about Westjet joining in the past, and they have individual parters with many OW airlines, but now that westjet is turning into a defacto "better than taking the bus" airline i cant see that happening

I have some alaska miles, I dont really go as aggressive with obtaining them as i could because they are hard for me to use.

One time i had about 60k Alaska miles and no way to easily use them so i used one of those mileage broker services "sell rewards points" or something like that (now defunct) and booked a flight on Cathay for a guy EWK-HKG-BKK for 55k miles and $50. The flight happened... the mileage broker said they would wire me the money ($1200 i think) and it never showed up and they went dark... Lesson learned

If Patrick C is reading this, no hard feelings but id love to know what you paid for these flights

[Luv2Phuket]

I steer clear of mile brokers -- they may work for some, but I don't want to get burned.

Ditto with "buying clubs."

[ThePope]

yep 55k points that i woulda used to book $400 of hotels... not a real loss lesson learned

there is some talk about buying clubs in Canada, usually for amazon purchases, but i dont want to be involved as if/when that blows up i would be left holding the bag, and the time commitment in learning and administering that isnt worth the points per hour i would get
 

The canadian scene for churning isn't too bad... our banks have really bad IT infrastructure that is easy to exploit...

one bank lets you product switch every month and gives you a "small" bonus on the new switch.... i have 3 cards with them

one bank basically accepts every application you do (every 3 months), and gives you points for a minspend but doesnt take the points back if you refund... so its free points that you can basically take out of an ATM for cash... When i do this bank i feel like im robbing them blind but dont worry they make billions a quarter

Amex isnt too picky here either, a lot of the things they shut down in the US isn't a problem here: multiple apps, buying giftcards

the typical sign up bonus here is about $300 per credit hit, but there are a few in the $400-$500 range. Thats direct to cash... If you value points at 2cpp then the airline miles offers are about $600 each for no annual fee

[ThePope]

Summer 2025 trip locked;

I have a few options booked that I'm liking now, going to decide over the weekend and lock in the time off work;

i don't really know how many days off i get a year; I'm in the mode of "if I'm home I may as well be working, because every dollar i make brings me closer to FIRE" I feel i can probably be away from home more than i currently am/ or slow down at work now and just work a few more years.

I think i have a scarcity/prepper mindset from growing up "almost poor"; i didn't have enough money to go out with friends, small shitty house so couldn't have friends over, I was anxious people would see where i live. Dressed 'poorly'... but i don't want to see a psychologist because i like who i am now. Never starved but definitely poorest kid in the class

I think in terms of "if the worst case happened to me; severe injury where i couldn't work AND my long term disability didn't pay, how long could i live a good life"

Today was a weird day... last day of work until a 3 day weekend... finished work in 3hours because there wasn't much work to do... most people would be happy about being off at 1130am on a Friday but im going sturr crazy and had to find a way to spend my time in an economically feasible way so i worked on the house and explored some churning stuff (rat brain to the max)

So my summer 2025 trip will likely be 8.5 nights on the ground; 8 days booked off work and give me a buffer of 1 whole day before i return to work

outbound YYZ-TPE-BKK EVA J where i can probably work the day of departure as long as the evening positioning flight opens up. Return BKK-VIE Eva J then AC VIE-YYZ-home. No horrible layovers

[jmukh]

11 hours ago, Luv2Phuket said:

Frankly, ANY new oneworld partner to Asia is good news, as JAL and Cathay do not appear to be offering award space to partners these days.

I was just coming here to post this 😁 I'm on the East Coast, so I'm curious to see if this happens and how well this will integrate with AA. Since I've got both miles on both AA and Alaska now, it'd be nice to finally be able to use them (and I've never seen Taiwan, so it'd be a great foodie stopover in either direction).

[ThePope]

 

[ThePope]

I booked a flight that has a 0.1% chance of happening

On my summer 2025 trip for the return i have 3 options. BKK-VIE-YYZ on Jun11 on EVA-AC 103.5k aeroplan, and same again on Jun15. More likely than not ill take the Jun13 option but not sure yet... might keep it hoping for a timechange that will allow me to rebook to something different

Today i booked a 3rd return; BKK-DEL-YYZ-Home for 143.5k aeroplan. Its Airindia BKK-DEL in J a320, then DEL-YYZ in F (old 777300er), and has YYZ-Home in J. I dont really want to take this flight... but i noticed that award availability for the DEL-YYZ opens up with AI187 and also AI189... But AI189 hasnt flown in years... they operate a once daily 777-300ER as AI187 but haven't had the second daily flight since at-least pre-covid...

So i booked it knowing it'll probably get rebooked and ill probably get bumped out/ an invalid booking. That will give me the option to rebook to basically any F itinerary that opens up regardless of price.