Questions and Answers

Hi everyone I am new to this page!

My family and I want to travel to various places in Asia in a couple years and are trying to figure out how to best maximize our points and money. We want to fly business class on all segments, except those shorter than 3 hours can be economy.

This is going to be like a once in a lifetime trip. We live in Massachusetts and the 4 of us want to travel on the same flights, but this isn’t the concern right now.

We have silver status with BA and 1 Million points total. We wanted to go from Boston and visit Hong Kong (possibly Macau and Shanghai too depending on cost and points): Seoul, South Korea: Kyoto, Japan (Osaka and Tokyo too depending on cost and points): Taipei, Taiwan: Singapore: and lastly, New Zealand.

The order doesn’t matter but we really want to go to all these places during one trip as the flight is long from the East Coast of the U.S.

I would really appreciate all of your help as like I said this will be a once in a lifetime trip and acts as a 21st birthday present and college graduation for two people.

[USER=1367]@Maia[/USER] sounds like a pretty fantastic trip. I’d say you likely need more points and some diversification. Even though a million points sounds like a lot you’ll eat through them pretty quickly buying four business class tickets through BA for long flights plus you will get hit with surcharges. I’d suggest getting some AA miles for the long distance flights and then use Avios to fill in for shorter flights on JAL, CX and other partners in Asia. I’d also start collecting some UR to get access to star alliance awards through United and skyteam awards through Korean.

The most important factor might be flexibility. Getting four seats in business on the same flight is not impossible but very hard. You might need to take some out of the way routings or split up in order to get seats. Good luck, I hope things work out for you.

[USER=79]@Gaurav[/USER] Thank you for this feedback it is really helpful! I will be having 2 companion tickets for this trip. What segment do you think it would be best to use them? Also can I use the companion ticket on partner airlines or codeshare flights that aren’t on BA metal?

Welcome [USER=1367]@Maia[/USER]!

You can only use the companion certificate on BA-operated flights, so you’d have to fly US>London>Asia, which would require approximately 300,000 Avios per person (or for two with companion cert) for the round-trip in business class. You’d also pay about $1800 in taxes and fees per person.

The suggestion [USER=79]@Gaurav[/USER] made about diversifying is a good one. To compare, if you were using Alaska miles you could fly US>Hong Kong for 100,000 miles roundtrip per person, and fewer than $100 in fees.

I’d recommend using your Avios for shorter flights within Asia, and starting to accrue other currencies for the long flights. Or at least pick up a cash-back card to help take the sting out of the massive BA fees.

You’ll also want to review this post to get an idea of the goalposts: [URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/07/23/many-miles-needed-award-ticket/[/URL]

Hope that helps get you started!

[USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER]

Thank you for your feedback, I will look into that, but worse comes to worse, I have actually calculated everything, except Singapore to New Zealand and I have enough points for those segments. However, I can’t get the information about the number of points it requires from Singapore to New Zealand.

I had a question regarding the Travel Together Ticket. I have been reading that open jaws (multicity) are allowed on the Travel Together Ticket. Would the flights also need to be on BA metal for this to work?

Also could I essentially take the longer segments that cost more points and do them on the open jaw? Like plug in BOS-HKG, HKG-NRT, TPE-SIN, SIN-HKG, and back HKG-BOS?

Forgot to include this, if the main cardholder has 2 travel together tickets and they fly on the same itinerary as the rest of us, can the other travel together ticket be used by two people who not the main cardholder?

[USER=1367]@Maia[/USER] – all flights on the Travel Together ticket must be on BA metal and must be on the same itinerary as the card holder.