- Joined
- Mar 6, 2008
- Posts
- 490
I have gained so much knowledge from this forum. I have immensely enjoyed reading trip reports, honourable mentions to drron, munitalP, Anat0l, simongr (the behemoth series).
This is my first TR, so please excuse any mistakes. Also my camera was out of action for a couple of legs so no photos for those legs.
Prologue
Last year I embarked on a trip to LOTFAP and europe using a mixture of AA / BMI / US air miles. The US air miles were used to book a europe - aus F award. I booked the return portion during easter, figuring the long weekend would give me a chance for a quick visit to europe if I so desired (work and SWMBO permitting). Couple of months ago I checked the booking on US air site and found that I was downgraded to J on the syd-bkk sector, this was to do with the schedule changes forced by bkk floods, a quick call to US air resolved the matter and I was reinstated to F for that leg.
Up untill that point I was not 100% sure that I would utilise the return portion of the trip. Not being the one to throwaway 2 perfectly good F legs, I decided on a quick trip to europe during the easter long weekend. Now that going on the trip was settled, I needed to find a way to get home.
For the journey home, I wanted to experience lh fct if possible. Next was the issue of which miles to use BMI or SQ, now given that LH F redemptions are not possible using bmi cash + miles so SQ miles it was. Now to find the desired award seats I utilised both united and ana search engines. Interestingly united was showing heaps of F availability on the fra-kix sector which as not visible on ana. A quick call to SQ confirmed ana's version. Since then I discarded united and only used ana to search for award availability.
Now given that I had to complete this trip during the easter longweekend (back to work on tuesday), I needed to leave europe either on easter saturday or sunday the latest. The only F availability I found for these two days was on lx zrh-nrt. So theoritically I could connect to this flight from fra and get access to fct, but given that the lx flight left around noon, I had to leave fra by 9am which would give me a couple of hours in fct max. Not ideal but accpetable under the circumstances, plus I could always reroute if a better option opened up. A quick search on the SQ site revealed F availability for hnd-sin-syd.
So with my intinerary (fra-zrh-nrt//hnd-sin-syd) in place I called SQ syd call centre to book the tix. The CSA refused my routing saying zrh-nrt-sin involved too much backtracking. Interestingly she also mentioned that PEK was the furtherst east I go without being considered backtracking. Never the one to give up I called the sin call center who did not find any issues with my routing and booked the ticket.
132000 points & ~$850 in taxes poorer, I begain to moniter ana regularly to see if a better connection would open up. I struck gold two days later when I found availability on lh muc-nrt departing munich at 16:50. Now this meant that I could be in fra fct till 1pm and then also visit muc fcl as a bonus. Overjoyed I quickly called the sin call center and my ticket was changed without any issues, apart from ~50 in taxes and the 20 USD change fee.
I still kept monitoring ana and luckily couple of days later an award onpened up on the direct fra-nrt flight, LH A380 score!!. Quickly I called the sin call center and requested to change my ticket again. The agent adivsed that I was unable to get confimation from LH so could not proceed, however I insisted (gently) that the availability was there and he try again which to his credit he did and was successful in getting confirmation from LH.
So my final itinerary ended up SYD-BKK-ZRH//FRA-NRT//HND-SIN-SYD.
next: sydey to zurich
This is my first TR, so please excuse any mistakes. Also my camera was out of action for a couple of legs so no photos for those legs.
Prologue
Last year I embarked on a trip to LOTFAP and europe using a mixture of AA / BMI / US air miles. The US air miles were used to book a europe - aus F award. I booked the return portion during easter, figuring the long weekend would give me a chance for a quick visit to europe if I so desired (work and SWMBO permitting). Couple of months ago I checked the booking on US air site and found that I was downgraded to J on the syd-bkk sector, this was to do with the schedule changes forced by bkk floods, a quick call to US air resolved the matter and I was reinstated to F for that leg.
Up untill that point I was not 100% sure that I would utilise the return portion of the trip. Not being the one to throwaway 2 perfectly good F legs, I decided on a quick trip to europe during the easter long weekend. Now that going on the trip was settled, I needed to find a way to get home.
For the journey home, I wanted to experience lh fct if possible. Next was the issue of which miles to use BMI or SQ, now given that LH F redemptions are not possible using bmi cash + miles so SQ miles it was. Now to find the desired award seats I utilised both united and ana search engines. Interestingly united was showing heaps of F availability on the fra-kix sector which as not visible on ana. A quick call to SQ confirmed ana's version. Since then I discarded united and only used ana to search for award availability.
Now given that I had to complete this trip during the easter longweekend (back to work on tuesday), I needed to leave europe either on easter saturday or sunday the latest. The only F availability I found for these two days was on lx zrh-nrt. So theoritically I could connect to this flight from fra and get access to fct, but given that the lx flight left around noon, I had to leave fra by 9am which would give me a couple of hours in fct max. Not ideal but accpetable under the circumstances, plus I could always reroute if a better option opened up. A quick search on the SQ site revealed F availability for hnd-sin-syd.
So with my intinerary (fra-zrh-nrt//hnd-sin-syd) in place I called SQ syd call centre to book the tix. The CSA refused my routing saying zrh-nrt-sin involved too much backtracking. Interestingly she also mentioned that PEK was the furtherst east I go without being considered backtracking. Never the one to give up I called the sin call center who did not find any issues with my routing and booked the ticket.
132000 points & ~$850 in taxes poorer, I begain to moniter ana regularly to see if a better connection would open up. I struck gold two days later when I found availability on lh muc-nrt departing munich at 16:50. Now this meant that I could be in fra fct till 1pm and then also visit muc fcl as a bonus. Overjoyed I quickly called the sin call center and my ticket was changed without any issues, apart from ~50 in taxes and the 20 USD change fee.
I still kept monitoring ana and luckily couple of days later an award onpened up on the direct fra-nrt flight, LH A380 score!!. Quickly I called the sin call center and requested to change my ticket again. The agent adivsed that I was unable to get confimation from LH so could not proceed, however I insisted (gently) that the availability was there and he try again which to his credit he did and was successful in getting confirmation from LH.
So my final itinerary ended up SYD-BKK-ZRH//FRA-NRT//HND-SIN-SYD.
next: sydey to zurich
