Korean Air SkyPass Awards You Might Want To Book [By Region]

I booked
CDG - FCO AF A320
FCO - TPE CI A350 (Stopover)
TPE - SIN CI A330

SIN - DPS KL 777
DPS - HKG GA A330 (Stopover)
HKG - CDG AF 777

All in business for 110000 miles. Paid around 400 USD in surcharges but was worth it.

I flew Korean Air in February from Singapore to Washington Dulles via Seoul. No stopover - just connected straight through. In First. 95,000 miles. It was an excellent journey - fantastic service, great food. I'd recommend taking advantage of this while you still have the chance.

@Tony
Awesome itinerary. Did you book online, via phone? Were you able to build it using KAL website? Or flying blue?

Skyteam RTW 220K without MPM. This is crazy. I've seen one person booked 41000-mile itinerary.

Oh I meant in business class.

I'm planning to move more spend over to Citi. I have too many UR points when I account for the loss of Skypass. It's a good reminder, to not keep all your eggs in one basket. Even if it's a transferable points currency.

@Spencer, I may want to transfer enough UR over for 3 tickets from Vancouver to Seoul to HK or vice versa. Sounds like you said one way is allowed for that. Do you know what types of business class or first class seats ate on that route? Thanks!

Transferring enough to get the fam to Hawaii again, fantastic deal to get us there a few months ago, sad to see UR drop KE

Considering it all in light of this highly informative post, the cheap KE awards were just too good to last once the CSR began filling every knowledgeable mile/point game player's account with huge numbers of UR points.

Providing the cheap award costs to SkyPass members was a great programmatic benefit as a reward for loyalty. On the other hand, it likely no longer made business sense either to KE or to Chase or to both to continue to provide the cheap awards, once the secret was out, to people with loads of UR points who did not actively patronize SkyPass but were only after the cheap redemptions. Sounds familiar? At least KE and/or Chase have decided to do something about it before it took down the company...

Are there easy ways to top off Korean accounts with more points later in case they devalue before I can redeem or for change/cancel fees? Don’t really want to transfer more UR than I need to. Thanks.

DCS,

have you asked lucky to make you a contributor? Your posts will get a lot of comments even if not a lot of support. Lucky should care about chicks and your posts should get many even if just people commenting to shout at you. Com'mon we need you to make lives lively.

@debit - I'll take that as a compliment, but you misunderstand why I post here at all.

G'day.

DCS

Good day

@Pete
The way the online tool works is a bit cumbersome so I checked availability with flyingblue (AF was hit and miss as they don't release as much to KE).
But other than that I did it fully online. You can call if you have a problem but if the tool bumps you it likely means you messed up somewhere.

Can the Emirates flights be booked online via Korean airlines or do you have to call them for booking Emirates and Etihad using Korean Miles? Thanks !

@DCS - since you brought it up, why do you post here at all?

The 120k business route to Africa has some unpleasant surcharges as in the Cairo example in this article. Do you think that’s just because of the stop(s) in Europe and flying with AF/KLM? I wonder if it would be as bad , for example, with the new JFK>NBO direct flight on Kenya Airways

@colleen - Because the site is about travel, which I love to do, and usually because I just feel like posting as one with a uniquely reasoned perspective to offer that might be helpful to those (few) with an open mind. What I am not here to do is to win a popularity contest or "to make lives lively" and help increase the site's circulation.

Now you know...

@Spencer
I have accumulated a few hundred thousand UR points and am considering a speculative transfer. My wife and I are planning to travel to Japan or Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam) sometime during the next 3-5 years, and we generally have some flexibility in making our travel plans, so we are likely to be able to use the Korean Air miles if availability is decent. If we want to travel in Business (Prestige) class, has availability historically been decent enough to make this a worthwhile gamble? Also, how many miles do you think we should transfer? It looks like it would cost 300,000 miles for a round-trip for two to Southeast Asia during non-peak period. How many miles do you think we should add to a transfer in order to have a sufficient cushion for unplanned "extras" or future devaluations?

might be worth noting when is peak and when is off-peak

How long should it take to transfer? It’s been a week.

I don't see India mentioned. Which region does it fall within and would the same factors apply?