henrus
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My latest trip report takes us the long way from Brisbane to Tahiti via the US.
Booking
Back in 2019 when the world was a slightly different place I ended up taking a number of earning star alliance flights in both economy and business. At the time I had Star Alliance Gold Status (and I still do) so earning status was less important and I decided to try and find the best program to earn and redeem points from here in Brisbane (world greatest city and star alliance mega hub - just kidding we’re really limited by Star Alliance options and it sucks).
After quite a bit of studying the award tables, SAS - Scandinavian Airlines seemed to have earning rates that matched most other carriers but also a really good award table in the pacific. In short most of the flights I took earned the same number of SAS miles as a would with United or Singapore Airlines.
At first glance the SAS award table is similar to many other star alliance airlines… a return trip in the Pacific is 25,000 points (in economy) however the way they define a return trip and the pacific is different to most. Take Singapore Airlines for example, 25,000 points will also get you a return economy ticket in the “South West Pacific” this includes Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Samoa, Tahiti, Tonga, Vanuatu.
SAS has a few main differences, first a much larger definition of the Pacific, at the time of writing the pacific includes; Australia (incl. Tasmania), Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia (Tahiti), Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Palau Islands, Micronesia, New Caledonia (Noumea), New Zealand, Niue Islands, Norfolk Islands, Tonga and Western Samoa.
GC Map of all airports within the SAS Pacific zone that are serviced by Star Alliance Carriers.
Secondly SAS allows you to transit any logical route to travel to/from the above destinations (travel is allowed outside of those airports). Thirdly you can have up to 4 legs per direction (4 on the way over and 4 on the way back) with the time between legs only a transit (ie less than 24 hours) and finally you can depart and arrive from different destinations provided they’re both within the region.
With all this in mind and 25,000 points to burn I made a booking in April 2020 to fly from Brisbane to Pohnpei, Micronesia. For 25,000 points I had an economy ticket booked on the 9am departure on SQ to Singapore, ~3 hours in Singapore before the 5pm flight to Tokyo HND on SQ, the plan was the spend the night in Tokyo after arriving in HND at 1am and then leave from NRT the same day at 9:05pm, this would get to Guam at 2am before finally a flight at 8am to Pohnpei (the start of the UA island hopper). From there I'd spend 4 days in Pohnpei before flying an almost identical route back home with ~17 hours in both Tokyo and Singapore. Myself and a friend had booked award seats on these flights paying just 25,000 SK points in Economy and ~AU$290 taxes, obviously all flights were in economy but most were day time services. It took quite a bit of searching to come up with an itinerary and took several hours (pre covid) on hold to SAS to book these flights.
As you can imagine a few months later SQ cancelled flights and as a result the SAS award ticket was cancelled with a full refund of points and taxes back within the week, better than most AU based airlines!
Fast forward a few years and the SAS award chart has remained the same, at this point I was tempted to use the 25,000 points for a Brisbane to Christchurch return during the bubble but decided against and waited until last month (March 2022) to book somewhere in the Pacific. At the time of booking the Pacific destinations had the following restrictions:
Cook Islands - Only open to those who’ve spent the last 14 days in NZ
Fiji - Open but almost no Air NZ flights and no award space on *A
French Polynesia (Tahiti) - Open and plenty of award space
Mariana Islands - Open however requires transit from BNE-SIN-MNL-GUM-SPN (HND-NRT transits are longer possible due to no entry into Japan)
Marshall Islands - Closed since 2020
Palau Islands - 4 day quarantine required at a hotel
Micronesia - Closed since 2020
New Caledonia (Noumea) - No *A flights since 2020
New Zealand - I could have used back in 2021 and I saw this as a waste of points
Niue Islands - Closed since 2020
Norfolk Islands - No *A flights to Norfolk plus I visited using Air NZ credits back in late 2020
Western Samoa - Closed since 2020
As you can see there aren’t many options but French Polynesia (Tahiti) was showing up in SAS searches with SYD-PPT revealing a SYD-LAX-SFO-PPT route, with this knowledge that SAS would accept AU to Tahiti via the US as a logical route I set out searching for the best route to travel to Tahiti over Easter.
I used a combination of United, Air Canada and SAS sites to search for economy award space. Someone has also created a fantastic site to search the SAS system called award hacks:
In the end settled on two tickets from BNE-AKL (~3hrs transit in AKL) AKL-LAX (~17 hr transit overnight) then LAX-SFO-PPT. 5 days in Tahiti and then return to SFO with a 15 hour daytime transit on the way back before the UA SFO-SYD flight. Annoyingly there was zero Air NZ award space back into Brisbane and whilst technically SAS would have allowed a routing via Asia (SFO-SIN-BNE) I decided to go with the direct into Sydney.
I had to wait about an hour on hold but finally spoke to an agent who was happy for me to just read the flight dates and numbers, they then put me on hold to check economy award space and then finally came back with a cost of just 25,000 SK miles and AU$325 taxes per person (charged in Euros).
In total I ended up with BNE-AKL-LAX-SFO-PPT-SFO-SYD, a total of 24,063 miles travelled which only cost 25,000 SK miles per person return in economy and AU$325 taxes per person, this includes the ~AU$45 fee that SAS charge for all award booking made. To finish the ticket a VA $129 SYD-BNE flight was booked.
Final route:
Pre Departure
After booking departure requirements changed almost weekly. At the time of booking the no test/paperwork was required for a New Zealand transit, a test for entry to the US and finally French Polynesia required a rapid antigen test done 24 hours before departure with another PCR test done on arrival at a cost of 5,000XPF (AU$62) but at least you didn’t have to wait for the results of the PCR. Finally entry back into Australia required a RAT but that was thankfully dropped before travel.
In the end the requirements for NZ and the US remained unchanged with French Polynesia dropping the test on arrival.
This meant because I was on a single ticket and all transits were less than 24 hours, a single Rapid antigen test taken within 24 hours of the BNE-AKL flight was sufficient for arrival into both the US and French Polynesia. On the way back a rapid antigen test done in French Polynesia was needed for entry into the US but no requirements for Australia.
I got the RAT done at Histopath Brisbane Airport, mainly because I was concerned that a supervised rat wouldn’t be sufficient for French Polynesia plus I could upload the test into IATA's travel pass app. In terms of paperwork a US attestation form plus a French declaration was all that was needed (the vaccine and test results on a phone were sufficient).
Leg 1 Brisbane - Auckland - Los Angeles
The first two flights were with Air New Zealand, we arrived at Brisbane airport about 3 hours prior only to be told that even for transit we needed a New Zealand deceleration (99% of passengers had not filled this out) so they had multiple people with QR codes and paper forms both from Air New Zealand contracted ground handlers and NZ immigration staff to help.
Air NZ had 2 check in rows open in Brisbane, I don’t know if this is normal or only because it was about the 3rd day of AU-NZ flights allowed again (with Australians able to enter). This meant there was no wait as over 20 desks open and no one could use the kiosks. The staff did timatic checks for entry into the US and French Polynesia but could only check us in as far as Los Angeles. It did take a good 25 minutes actually at the desk to check all documents. The Air NZ lounge was reasonably busy and switched for breakfast to lunch during our time in the lounge. Unlike the bubble it was back to full self service and you wouldn’t notice any different to food/drinks compared to 2019.
Boarding was almost on time and the 787 taking us to Auckland was basically full (about 2-3 spare seats in Economy). Air NZ premium boarding starts with Elite and Business class first before moving onto Star Alliance Gold plus Premium economy. Both 787 flights were operated by the premium heavy aircraft (known as the 787 V2) this has more business and premium economy seats than the original Air NZ 787’s. Something worth noting is that even on the 787’s the Economy seats are all slightly different in terms of legroom. Seats in the front part of the aircraft have 32.5 inches of pitch, whereas further back this is 30.8 inches, you can hover over the Seat map to see individual seats.
www.airnewzealand.co.nz
Food was reasonable with three meal choices, beef curry, veg pasts or chicken. Flight was uneventful otherwise with the standard Air NZ entertainment. Three hours later we were in Auckland with a 2.5 hour layer.
Whilst technically we could have entered New Zealand we opted to stay in the rather busy Air NZ lounge in Auckland. The rest of the airport was empty with duty free and all food outlets expect 1 closed. There were just two Air NZ 787’s to the US leaving tonight. The Air NZ lounge was disappointing as it was clear they didn’t want to be open, food looked like it had been sitting around for hours, the bar/coffee was closed and as a result it was mainly just some cold options and self service drinks from the fridge. Premium boarding in Auckland was a mess (aka QF domestic style non existent) and eventually everyone was onboard for the 14 hour flight to LA. Food was again 3 options was a reasonable lamb, veg pasta or chicken option. This aircraft was wifi enabled but the portal was broken so it didn’t end up working for the entire flight.
LAX immigration was fast and friendly (no other international flights at the time) meant we were landslide at about 1:30pm ~25 minutes after arrival. First stop was a long walk from TBIT down to United Terminal 7. United have a great program called “Travel Ready” which allows you to upload covid tests, vaccine certificates and other entry forms for pre approval therefore removing the requirement to show these at check in. This therefore allows for mobile check in on flights even when document checks are required. I had uploaded our test and vaccine details to the app and these were approved however they needed to physically see our passport so once that was done we had tomorrows boarding passes from LAX-SFO-PPT.
The United app even updated with mobile boarding passes. Another interesting thing was the offer of upgrades even though the ticket stock was SK, you could pay US$80 for a First class upgrade on the 1 hour LAX-SFO flight. On the SFO-PPT flight they offered Premium economy for US$699 and Business class for $899. Being both daytime flights I decided against the upgrades however if they were overnight flights I would have taken them at this price.
Now with ~16 hours in LAX we booking a room for the night at the Hilton LAX, I had some points to burn so the room rate worked out at AU$40 for the night. The hotel was crazy busy at all time (the website suggests 1234 rooms) but luckily there was no queue to check in and we even got the room about an hour before offical check in time which was great for a quick lie down and shower. In the afternoon we took an Uber down to Santa Monica to have a look at the pier, shops plus some food. Now I paid points for the Hilton at just $40 but if I’d paid the cash rate of ~$250 for the night I’d have been annoyed. Our non smoking room smelt like smoke, the place was dated and there was a party going on down the hall until 2am in the morning. I should have read the reviews as many other complain about similar issues. We had a 6am flight so I couldn’t be bothered complaining or going elsewhere but lesson learnt that airport hotels near LAX are not the best option in the future.
Booking
Back in 2019 when the world was a slightly different place I ended up taking a number of earning star alliance flights in both economy and business. At the time I had Star Alliance Gold Status (and I still do) so earning status was less important and I decided to try and find the best program to earn and redeem points from here in Brisbane (world greatest city and star alliance mega hub - just kidding we’re really limited by Star Alliance options and it sucks).
After quite a bit of studying the award tables, SAS - Scandinavian Airlines seemed to have earning rates that matched most other carriers but also a really good award table in the pacific. In short most of the flights I took earned the same number of SAS miles as a would with United or Singapore Airlines.
At first glance the SAS award table is similar to many other star alliance airlines… a return trip in the Pacific is 25,000 points (in economy) however the way they define a return trip and the pacific is different to most. Take Singapore Airlines for example, 25,000 points will also get you a return economy ticket in the “South West Pacific” this includes Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Samoa, Tahiti, Tonga, Vanuatu.
SAS has a few main differences, first a much larger definition of the Pacific, at the time of writing the pacific includes; Australia (incl. Tasmania), Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia (Tahiti), Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, Palau Islands, Micronesia, New Caledonia (Noumea), New Zealand, Niue Islands, Norfolk Islands, Tonga and Western Samoa.
GC Map of all airports within the SAS Pacific zone that are serviced by Star Alliance Carriers.
Secondly SAS allows you to transit any logical route to travel to/from the above destinations (travel is allowed outside of those airports). Thirdly you can have up to 4 legs per direction (4 on the way over and 4 on the way back) with the time between legs only a transit (ie less than 24 hours) and finally you can depart and arrive from different destinations provided they’re both within the region.
With all this in mind and 25,000 points to burn I made a booking in April 2020 to fly from Brisbane to Pohnpei, Micronesia. For 25,000 points I had an economy ticket booked on the 9am departure on SQ to Singapore, ~3 hours in Singapore before the 5pm flight to Tokyo HND on SQ, the plan was the spend the night in Tokyo after arriving in HND at 1am and then leave from NRT the same day at 9:05pm, this would get to Guam at 2am before finally a flight at 8am to Pohnpei (the start of the UA island hopper). From there I'd spend 4 days in Pohnpei before flying an almost identical route back home with ~17 hours in both Tokyo and Singapore. Myself and a friend had booked award seats on these flights paying just 25,000 SK points in Economy and ~AU$290 taxes, obviously all flights were in economy but most were day time services. It took quite a bit of searching to come up with an itinerary and took several hours (pre covid) on hold to SAS to book these flights.
As you can imagine a few months later SQ cancelled flights and as a result the SAS award ticket was cancelled with a full refund of points and taxes back within the week, better than most AU based airlines!
Fast forward a few years and the SAS award chart has remained the same, at this point I was tempted to use the 25,000 points for a Brisbane to Christchurch return during the bubble but decided against and waited until last month (March 2022) to book somewhere in the Pacific. At the time of booking the Pacific destinations had the following restrictions:
Cook Islands - Only open to those who’ve spent the last 14 days in NZ
Fiji - Open but almost no Air NZ flights and no award space on *A
French Polynesia (Tahiti) - Open and plenty of award space
Mariana Islands - Open however requires transit from BNE-SIN-MNL-GUM-SPN (HND-NRT transits are longer possible due to no entry into Japan)
Marshall Islands - Closed since 2020
Palau Islands - 4 day quarantine required at a hotel
Micronesia - Closed since 2020
New Caledonia (Noumea) - No *A flights since 2020
New Zealand - I could have used back in 2021 and I saw this as a waste of points
Niue Islands - Closed since 2020
Norfolk Islands - No *A flights to Norfolk plus I visited using Air NZ credits back in late 2020
Western Samoa - Closed since 2020
As you can see there aren’t many options but French Polynesia (Tahiti) was showing up in SAS searches with SYD-PPT revealing a SYD-LAX-SFO-PPT route, with this knowledge that SAS would accept AU to Tahiti via the US as a logical route I set out searching for the best route to travel to Tahiti over Easter.
I used a combination of United, Air Canada and SAS sites to search for economy award space. Someone has also created a fantastic site to search the SAS system called award hacks:
In the end settled on two tickets from BNE-AKL (~3hrs transit in AKL) AKL-LAX (~17 hr transit overnight) then LAX-SFO-PPT. 5 days in Tahiti and then return to SFO with a 15 hour daytime transit on the way back before the UA SFO-SYD flight. Annoyingly there was zero Air NZ award space back into Brisbane and whilst technically SAS would have allowed a routing via Asia (SFO-SIN-BNE) I decided to go with the direct into Sydney.
I had to wait about an hour on hold but finally spoke to an agent who was happy for me to just read the flight dates and numbers, they then put me on hold to check economy award space and then finally came back with a cost of just 25,000 SK miles and AU$325 taxes per person (charged in Euros).
In total I ended up with BNE-AKL-LAX-SFO-PPT-SFO-SYD, a total of 24,063 miles travelled which only cost 25,000 SK miles per person return in economy and AU$325 taxes per person, this includes the ~AU$45 fee that SAS charge for all award booking made. To finish the ticket a VA $129 SYD-BNE flight was booked.
Final route:
Pre Departure
After booking departure requirements changed almost weekly. At the time of booking the no test/paperwork was required for a New Zealand transit, a test for entry to the US and finally French Polynesia required a rapid antigen test done 24 hours before departure with another PCR test done on arrival at a cost of 5,000XPF (AU$62) but at least you didn’t have to wait for the results of the PCR. Finally entry back into Australia required a RAT but that was thankfully dropped before travel.
In the end the requirements for NZ and the US remained unchanged with French Polynesia dropping the test on arrival.
This meant because I was on a single ticket and all transits were less than 24 hours, a single Rapid antigen test taken within 24 hours of the BNE-AKL flight was sufficient for arrival into both the US and French Polynesia. On the way back a rapid antigen test done in French Polynesia was needed for entry into the US but no requirements for Australia.
I got the RAT done at Histopath Brisbane Airport, mainly because I was concerned that a supervised rat wouldn’t be sufficient for French Polynesia plus I could upload the test into IATA's travel pass app. In terms of paperwork a US attestation form plus a French declaration was all that was needed (the vaccine and test results on a phone were sufficient).
Leg 1 Brisbane - Auckland - Los Angeles
The first two flights were with Air New Zealand, we arrived at Brisbane airport about 3 hours prior only to be told that even for transit we needed a New Zealand deceleration (99% of passengers had not filled this out) so they had multiple people with QR codes and paper forms both from Air New Zealand contracted ground handlers and NZ immigration staff to help.
Air NZ had 2 check in rows open in Brisbane, I don’t know if this is normal or only because it was about the 3rd day of AU-NZ flights allowed again (with Australians able to enter). This meant there was no wait as over 20 desks open and no one could use the kiosks. The staff did timatic checks for entry into the US and French Polynesia but could only check us in as far as Los Angeles. It did take a good 25 minutes actually at the desk to check all documents. The Air NZ lounge was reasonably busy and switched for breakfast to lunch during our time in the lounge. Unlike the bubble it was back to full self service and you wouldn’t notice any different to food/drinks compared to 2019.
Boarding was almost on time and the 787 taking us to Auckland was basically full (about 2-3 spare seats in Economy). Air NZ premium boarding starts with Elite and Business class first before moving onto Star Alliance Gold plus Premium economy. Both 787 flights were operated by the premium heavy aircraft (known as the 787 V2) this has more business and premium economy seats than the original Air NZ 787’s. Something worth noting is that even on the 787’s the Economy seats are all slightly different in terms of legroom. Seats in the front part of the aircraft have 32.5 inches of pitch, whereas further back this is 30.8 inches, you can hover over the Seat map to see individual seats.
Boeing 787-9 V2
The extraordinary new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner is a revolutionary aircraft with a focus on cabin comfort.
www.airnewzealand.co.nz
Food was reasonable with three meal choices, beef curry, veg pasts or chicken. Flight was uneventful otherwise with the standard Air NZ entertainment. Three hours later we were in Auckland with a 2.5 hour layer.
Whilst technically we could have entered New Zealand we opted to stay in the rather busy Air NZ lounge in Auckland. The rest of the airport was empty with duty free and all food outlets expect 1 closed. There were just two Air NZ 787’s to the US leaving tonight. The Air NZ lounge was disappointing as it was clear they didn’t want to be open, food looked like it had been sitting around for hours, the bar/coffee was closed and as a result it was mainly just some cold options and self service drinks from the fridge. Premium boarding in Auckland was a mess (aka QF domestic style non existent) and eventually everyone was onboard for the 14 hour flight to LA. Food was again 3 options was a reasonable lamb, veg pasta or chicken option. This aircraft was wifi enabled but the portal was broken so it didn’t end up working for the entire flight.
LAX immigration was fast and friendly (no other international flights at the time) meant we were landslide at about 1:30pm ~25 minutes after arrival. First stop was a long walk from TBIT down to United Terminal 7. United have a great program called “Travel Ready” which allows you to upload covid tests, vaccine certificates and other entry forms for pre approval therefore removing the requirement to show these at check in. This therefore allows for mobile check in on flights even when document checks are required. I had uploaded our test and vaccine details to the app and these were approved however they needed to physically see our passport so once that was done we had tomorrows boarding passes from LAX-SFO-PPT.
The United app even updated with mobile boarding passes. Another interesting thing was the offer of upgrades even though the ticket stock was SK, you could pay US$80 for a First class upgrade on the 1 hour LAX-SFO flight. On the SFO-PPT flight they offered Premium economy for US$699 and Business class for $899. Being both daytime flights I decided against the upgrades however if they were overnight flights I would have taken them at this price.
Now with ~16 hours in LAX we booking a room for the night at the Hilton LAX, I had some points to burn so the room rate worked out at AU$40 for the night. The hotel was crazy busy at all time (the website suggests 1234 rooms) but luckily there was no queue to check in and we even got the room about an hour before offical check in time which was great for a quick lie down and shower. In the afternoon we took an Uber down to Santa Monica to have a look at the pier, shops plus some food. Now I paid points for the Hilton at just $40 but if I’d paid the cash rate of ~$250 for the night I’d have been annoyed. Our non smoking room smelt like smoke, the place was dated and there was a party going on down the hall until 2am in the morning. I should have read the reviews as many other complain about similar issues. We had a 6am flight so I couldn’t be bothered complaining or going elsewhere but lesson learnt that airport hotels near LAX are not the best option in the future.
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