This is the start of our new Community Stories series, where readers can submit their own stories, and they'll appear in the Reader-Stories section of the site.
After 2 connections, they all start to run together. It looks a lot more fun on paper than it is in practice.
@AVEnthu88 -- What a fun itinerary! Yes, it's a lot of intra-Europe flights, but I love the sense of adventure and desire to try new products. I'd be curious to hear what you ended up booking instead.
No I see no value there. I love new routes and lines and airlines but not as much as I love time exploring a new location. The opportunity cost of such a trip would be huge in terms of missed time on the ground.
Not to mention that it's not actually super fun to fly on Eurobusiness flights. 3 hour redeye to Athens leaving after 1am? No thanks!
Just as a comment for you and TProphet, I am kinda guy who punishes myself with such itineraries chasing for experience and stories. Like when I talked about my QSuites experience, I had the choice of 3 hour, 7 hour and 10 hour layover in Doha (and all subsequent flights would have been QSuites). I just went for the 10 hour layover. Even during that time, I slept in one of the PP Sleep and Fly nodes for a couple hours too, just for experiencing it.
And on that trip, while returning I booked a LHR - DUB - CPH - LHR - BOM to cut down on APD, get experience of flying to 2 new airports (DUB and CPH) + 2 new airlines (Aer Lingus and SAS), even though it ate up my whole day. I started from friends house in London at 4 am and departed London in night ultimately at 9pm for BOM. (Had booked DUB-CPH-LHR-BOM for 30k Turkish miles in Biz).
The looks I got from Aer Lingus checkin lady when I explained this to her itself made it worthwhile. This was followed by me explaining the same to Irish Immigration Officer (because 2 separate itineraries, had to cross the border and then recheckin), whose expression was again incredible. He ultimately sighed (people be crazy) and stamped my passport in.
Wow, what a fun read. Great thought process but as others already said not worth due to standard of European business class. Would really like to read the follow-up on the 2 better redemptions, you found.
Did similar two years ago at age 78. Using points to BKK from YLW.
Kelowna - SFO on Alaska YLW-SEA;SFO, AS points, overnight
SFO-LHR on UA, LHR-Vienna, Vienna-FRA Swiss, overnight. FRA-IST TK, IST-MCT Oman Air, overnight, MCT-BKK on Oman Air.all on Aeroplan (117,000 mi)
Why? YLW-YVR-BKK was 550,000 miles. Got 5 different carriers, 7 different metal, 9 airports (some new),
We picked up luggage on the ramp next to AC flight from YVR that had landed an hour before us but had left three days after us. OF COURSE our bags were lost (in IST) as they didn't get on the Oman Air flight.
"I ultimately didn’t fly this..." Ah, that's a shame, because it would have been fascinating to read that review. Of course, since you started in LIS, if even one of those segments had an issue, you'd probably have been eligible for EU261 compensation, regardless of your booking method (80K!)
I Don't know why, but today is the first time I was able to see this story on the website. I thought this had been discarded for not meeting the standards. Only when I went to my profile and saw a big credit update is when I realised it might have been published.
@Jeremy, will also highlight this as the issue.
Also, had posted pictures of the Itinerary to go along. They weren't published. Just wanted to check if this was an error or by design.
I found it at https://onemileatatime.com/community-stories/ along with the other recent submissions. You're fortunate that your story was also posted on the main page. I recently shared a review about the new MLE airport, and it's not even on the main page ( https://onemileatatime.com/community-stories/male-velana-airport-new-terminal-1-international-arrivals/). Maybe Ben and the team stagger those highlights. Either way, pretty cool that readers can share their stories, regardless. (Hope you get to take the trip next time!)
I've done similar longer itineraries just for fun. I go to Pakistan often from the US to see family. Eventually I started taking creative routings (sometimes even in Economy) on cash tickets when QR and EK started to get a bit boring (this is when I travel around the holidays, because award seats are hard to come by both in J and Y).
My most brutal routing: I've done ATL-MIA-CDG-DOH-ISB in one go without a hotel, took 50+ hours. Got to fly AA's 777 in J and QR's A380 upper deck in economy.
I've also done MCO-MIA-FCO-CAI-DOH-ISB. I had longer layovers in every city, and went out into the city in all except DOH, where I stayed at the airport for 21 hours (i'll explain why). MCO-MIA was on Brightline (train - brand new for me then). MIA-FCO was on ITA on their new (at the time) A330-900neo, which was a brand new airline for me. Spend the day wandering around Rome before taking a late night ITA A320 flight to Cairo. Stayed there for 1.5 days, and my first time in Egypt as well. Then booked QR from CAI to ISB via DOH, with the first flight marketed as First Class (second as Business), which meant I got access to the Al Safwa First Lounge at DOH (hadn't been there before either). So, I booked a 21 hour layover at DOH. Got my own private bedroom, spent time in a jacuzzi, had multiple a-la-carte meals, and went lounge hopping to see the (at the time) two-month old Al Mourjan Garden lounge (and original Al Mourjan lounge for old memories and sushi). DOH-ISB was on QR's 787-9 in their different Business Suites (not Qsuite), so a new product for me as well. It was all super fun, and it took about 120 hours door-to-door. Yet, it wasn't exhausting surprisingly.
Now I want to know what the better redemption option was, and then the even better one!
Hi Jallan, I am working on writing that up. Have been a bit lazy and have travel coming but will try to submit by end of the month.
But this is crazy.