Newark (EWR) – Tokyo (NRT)
Thursday, Aug 23, 2012
Depart: 11:05AM / Arrive: 1:55PM
Duration: 13hr 50min
Aircraft: Boeing 777
Seat: 8A and 8B (Business)
Earned: 0 miles (6,732 miles flown)
Cost: 120,000 United miles + $79 / person
Redemption Value: 6.6 cents / mile
Lifetime Miles: 23,270
If you know my father, you know he's obsessed with frequent flyer miles and points. But sometimes, his annoying hobby pays off, like the time where my parents and I flew to Tokyo and Seoul in business class to visit my great-grandmothers in South Korea.
The last week of August is usually a slow time of year for New York finance. So in early March, he booked a trip using his United Mileage Plus Miles for the 3 of us to go to South Korea for Aug 24-Sept 2 hoping that since I'd be almost 10 months old at the time, I would be able to handle my 3rd long flight and not piss off the rich people flying up front.
Originally, my father just used the United website search engine to book any reasonable award itinerary that he could find. He didn't find any direct flights to Seoul, so he picked one that that stopped in Chicago flying Asiana Airlines. Basically as long as the routes are served by United or one of its Star Alliance partners, they could be combined to make an award booking using United Mileage Plus miles.
Remembering that United lets you have a free stopover on round trip award tickets, he found flights that would give us a weekend with our friends Beth, Paul and Jack in Chicago and were business class for the long haul segments.
- Fri Aug 24 - Newark to Chicago (United Economy)
- Mon Aug 27 - Chicago to Seoul (Asiana Business)
- Sun Sept 2 - Seoul to Los Angeles (Asiana Business)
- Sun Sept 2 - Los Angeles to Newark (United Economy)
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Over the spring/summer, however, my father started reading more and more about interesting stopover routes that United had access to. While it would have been nice to see my friend Jack again, I had just seen him in February and I heard that Japanese people LOVE adorable things like Hello Kitty so I was sure they'd love me.
So my father kept checking back for award flight availability and in July found a flight to Seoul via Tokyo on United for almost the same dates as the original itinerary, except that instead of leaving Friday Aug 24th (and only missing 1 day of work), it left Thursday Aug 23rd (2 days missed). After thinking about it for a bit, he took the gamble that work wouldn't be that busy in late August and changed the itinerary.
Also, since he was flying back to Newark via Los Angeles (a very popular route for business travelers), they didn't have any first/business class seat availability for the award booking. So instead, he took advantage of United's flexible routing rules and changed the itinerary to fly 50 minutes from LA to San Diego the next morning (9:55AM Mon Sept 3rd) and then get business class seats on the 5 hour San Diego-Newark flight. The reason he could "stopover" in LA was because the layover was less than 24 hours so it didn't count as a 2nd stopover.
Now our itinerary looked like this (almost all Business class):
- Thur Aug 23 - Newark to Tokyo (United Business) - STOPOVER
- Mon Aug 27 - Tokyo to Seoul (United Business) - MAIN DESTINATION
- Sun Sept 2 - Seoul to LA (Asiana Business)
- Mon Sept 3 - LA to San Diego (United Economy) - LAYOVER
- Mon Sept 3 - San Diego to Newark (United Business)
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Since I was flying as a Lap Child, I didn't cost any additional miles, but I did cost 10% of the cash fare - which was going to be a lot since it was in a premium cabin to major business destinations. So my "lap child ticket" cost $800 in addition to the $79 co-pay each of my parents had to pay for their mileage bookings. That implies that each ticket cost $8000 for a total cash price of $16,800 for the 3 of us.
Even deducting the $79 co-pay, the 120,000 United miles per person were redeemed for $7921 of value or 6.6 cents/ mile. Note: anything above 3.5 cents / mile is a great redemption so this was an outstanding one. Nice job, Dad!
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