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Business Class to Australia using miles on United
I am getting a bit frustrated and am hoping you may have a little insight to help me. My wife and I want to go to Australia next January (from LAX) using points…..in Business Class…..on United or a Star Alliance Partner. The United website has a non-stop r/t flight, but costs 350,000 points per person. (We don’t have that). There are also Business class flights (w/1 stop) with Air China and Asiana Airways. These cost 80,000 points per person r/t. We were ready to book these, despite the extra travel time. However, on closer reading, it looks like ONLY the segment from LAX to Beijing (or Seoul) and the return is Business class. The 10+ hour flight from Beijing / Seoul to Australia and back to Beijing / Seoul is Economy.
Any thoughts on how to get to Australia using 80,000 points r/t on all segments of the flight?
I don’t think you’ll ever find 80K RT. Maybe 160K for a class J saver.
Try searching segment by segment – LAX-PEK/ICN and PEK/ICN-Australia to see if any business class awards come up. If they do and are at the saver level, call United to put the award together.
It could also be that there is just no saver level awards available. Are your points with United already or somewhere else?
The round trip to Australia is 160k in business class on partners and 140k on united only which is never available.
While you can try what [USER=29]@David W[/USER] suggests the new rules prohibit agents from piecing together flights to make a trip. It’s what you see is what you get. You can try tho.
Something new United is doing is listing their metal on top and partner flights at the bottom as well as sorting by time of day, at least on the mobile app which is what I typically use.
A tip, try to Akl which might go through Syd, if you find it book it then call united and have them drop the Syd-Akl flight part. You have 24 hours to change at no charge, even cancel. I’ve seen this available while just to Syd isn’t.
While finding space on United metal is rare, I wouldn’t say it is impossible. I flew Melbourne to LAX last February direct on United for 70,000 miles. I booked about 6 months in advance.
Best advice is to [B]be flexible.[/B] I knew I wanted to travel in January 2016, but that was as specific as I could get. I waited until I found the award space, and literally built my trip around that date.
Hopefully you have similar flexibility, or I’d say you won’t be flying direct on an award ticket…
If you have United status, you can always book and change for free.
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