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A First and Final Flight on UA/DL 747

A First and Final Flight on UA/DL 747

  1. Colin Thiele New Member

    To whom it may concern,

    My name is Colin Thiele. I am a current college freshman studying Aerospace Engineering at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. I have loved aviation for as long as I can remember, and I have an immense passion for flying!

    I really enjoy reading your blog, it definitely makes me feel like I am flying in first class at times, and I love to hear about all the travel info. Although I am an aviation nut, and love reading many articles about first class flying and travel, I have never had the chance to fly on a 747. Upon hearing that the end was near for both Delta and United, I knew I had to find a way to take a trip on one.

    Due to my being in college, I knew this was going to be a tall order. I only have about 5,000 miles in my both my United account, and Delta account as I used about miles for award tickets home for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays this past year, so unfortunately my milage balance doesn’t help me there! I do not get to fly the amount that I would like to (let alone fly in first class), nor do I have the nice credit cards to aid me in accumulating award miles for this “bucket list” trip.

    I am just posting this question here to see if anyone has ideas. I would like to fly a flight on one of either United’s or Delta’s (does not matter) remaining 747’s over my summer break. I am just wondering if you have any recommendations as to how I could avoid shelling out $5,000-$8,000+ for a ticket for one of these flights?

    Thank you for your time,
    Sincerely,

    —————-
    Colin Thiele
    Saint Louis University
    Parks College of Engineering, Aviation, and Technology
    Aerospace Engineering
    SLU Class of 2020
    “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today” -Will Rodgers

  2. MarkS Member

    Welcome [USER=2809]@Colin Thiele[/USER] A final trip on UA/DL 747 is a worthy goal for sure. Keep in mind if that doesn’t work out, Korean Air and Lufthansa still fly 747s and also have the newer 747-8 which is a fabulous aircraft.

    So to start understand where UA and DL fly their 747’s to. UA has recently re-positioned all their 747s to fly out of SFO. The destinations are HKG, PVG, NRT, ICN, TPE, FRA and sometimes LHR. These destinations are subject to change but it gives you an idea of where to search. DL’s 747 are out of Detroit which might suit you better being in STL. They fly to Asia, primarily PVG, ICN and NRT, again subject to change.

    You can use this website to quickly search for fares. It has filters for carriers and class. You probably can get a business class fare R/T in the $3K range and economy $1.5K. It depends on where/when you go etc.

    [URL]http://www.momondo.com[/URL]

    If the $3K amount is in your range then look for Delta business to Seoul out of Detroit. Sit in the upper deck which is far better than United’s upper deck in terms of privacy.

    Good luck, hope you find something!

    Also, Korean Air is flying their new 747-8 to Chicago for 2 weeks in August. This would be a superior experience to DL or UA in terms of aircraft and service. $1,400 RT in Economy and $3,700 R/T in business class.

    [ATTACH=full]253[/ATTACH]

  3. Colin Thiele New Member

    [QUOTE=”MarkS, post: 26534, member: 2121″]Welcome [USER=2809]@Colin Thiele[/USER] A final trip on UA/DL 747 is a worthy goal for sure. Keep in mind if that doesn’t work out, Korean Air and Lufthansa still fly 747s and also have the newer 747-8 which is a fabulous aircraft.

    So to start understand where UA and DL fly their 747’s to. UA has recently re-positioned all their 747s to fly out of SFO. The destinations are HKG, PVG, NRT, ICN, TPE, FRA and sometimes LHR. These destinations are subject to change but it gives you an idea of where to search. DL’s 747 are out of Detroit which might suit you better being in STL. They fly to Asia, primarily PVG, ICN and NRT, again subject to change.

    You can use this website to quickly search for fares. It has filters for carriers and class. You probably can get a business class fare R/T in the $3K range and economy $1.5K. It depends on where/when you go etc.

    [URL]http://www.momondo.com[/URL]

    If the $3K amount is in your range then look for Delta business to Seoul out of Detroit. Sit in the upper deck which is far better than United’s upper deck in terms of privacy.

    Good luck, hope you find something!

    Also, Korean Air is flying their new 747-8 to Chicago for 2 weeks in August. This would be a superior experience to DL or UA in terms of aircraft and service. $1,400 RT in Economy and $3,700 R/T in business class.

    [ATTACH=full]253[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]
    Thank you! I actually may try to get on that 747-8 from ORD in August!

  4. MarkS Member

    Excellent! Keep in mind the 747 is only on this route from 7/30 to 8/16, not including 7/31 and 8/2. Otherwise its a 777, but both have their newer cabins.

    Let us know what you think!

  5. Ben Holz Gold

    Hey [USER=2809]@Colin Thiele[/USER] in addition to Mark’s useful advice, I would also recommend you to go on Google flights as they offer a very efficient search engine which may be useful if you were to have some flexibility on the future. I once managed to find a ≈1800€ ow fare from FRA-PEK with AC F on their 747-4. It’s a question of looking. Good luck!

    P.S. I also studied at SLU, but in the Madrid campus + 1yr in St Louis.

  6. MarkS Member

    The [U][I]rumor[/I][/U] is Delta’s last 747 flight is on 12/31 (according to flyertalk). Recently they changed the few 2018 747 scheduled flights to 777 aircraft. In particular ICN-DTW on 1/2, 1/4 and 1/6 was changed to the 777. Now the last 747 on Delta’s schedule is ICN-DTW on 12/31. Of course this can all change.

    And even more interesting 2 weeks ago they had PVG-DTW as a 747 on 12/31. Then they switched that to a 777.

    I was questioning the upper deck seating as I happen to have a confirmed reservation on this last scheduled 747 flight!

  7. RTBones Member

    [USER=2809]@Colin Thiele[/USER] – welcome, from a fellow Parks grad, also in aero – though in my day the campus was in Cahokia. 🙂 Mark has some great advice above. While we all want to fly business or first, I would think you could get a 747 trip for under 5K, assuming you were able to “suffer” economy. Mark suggests Lufthansa and Korean as additional airlines that still fly the 747. Qantas does as well.

    I wish you luck in your search – and do come back and tell us how it went!

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