Quick Thoughts on Hong Kong

We arrived in Taipei yesterday afternoon after three awesome days in Hong Kong.  I'll have a full trip report on the flights/hotels over next few weeks but wanted to provide a few thoughts now.

First off, Hong Kong is still my favorite city in the world.  I love Istanbul, Singapore, London but nothing quite matches the vibe of Hong Kong.  The contrast of new and old, east and west, water and mountains...and the endless skyscrapers make the place so unique it's hard to describe.

We spent our days riding the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour for <$1 USD roundtrip.

View of Hong Kong from Kowloon after another Star Ferry ride

A Little Drama on the Way to Hong Kong

First off, hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends.  I’m writing this post from the comfort of my Singapore Airlines First Class “bed” en-route to Hong Kong so to end the story before it beings…everything worked out just fine.  But it wasn’t looking so good for awhile...

We left for the airport around 3:30 for our 7PM departure to San Francisco.  Weather was coming in and we wanted to get to the airport a bit early to get something to eat and relax before what would be 18 hours of flying.  We had a great dinner at Rootdown in Terminal C (definitely add to your list of DEN restaurants for a layover) and were just finishing up when we started getting notifications that the aircraft scheduled for our flight (also inbound from San Francisco) to San Francisco was going to be late.  No worries we thought - we had nearly four hours to make our connection at SFO.

What first was a twenty minute delay quickly became an hour.  We grabbed the check and headed for the customer service desk to see what was going on.  As we were making our way over to Terminal B, the inbound flight diverted to Las Vegas.  I’ve flown almost 500,000 miles in the last five years and I can’t remember seeing a diversion for a reason other than weather or medical.  The desk had no information so we made our way to the United Club where they had very little additional information.  Soon the hour delay became two hours and we started getting nervous.

This is what a diversion looks like

We worked with the absolutely fantastic team at the United Club to get our bag re-tagged onto our Singapore flight.  We had consciously not tagged the bag all the way through  as we wanted to get a few things out prior to the long-haul flight and wanted to make sure they were properly tagged at SFO.  I trust Singapore ground staff a lot more than United to get that right.

It became clear that we weren’t going to be able to exit security but the team working this for us couldn’t get ahold of anyone in the baggage area.  It was Christmas and a blizzard was rolling in…We were told that the diversion was due to a flight attendant seizure en route from SFO to DEN.  That certainly put things in perspective and we can only hope that she is okay.

After another agonizing hour as the delay slipped to nearly three hours, we had pretty much given up that we were going to make our flight.  That likely meant a night at a SFO airport hotel or worse since the day after Christmas is one of the busiest travel days of the year and finding a flight is near impossible.  At this point the inbound flight from Las Vegas had landed and we needed to make our way down to the gate.  Our bag still hadn’t been re-tagged to Hong Kong but the team helping us in the lounge took down our number and promised to call and leave a message either way.  They were either going to get the bag retagged and we would have a shot to make our flight.  Or they wouldn’t and our trip would be seriously derailed since we’d have to go to baggage claim which would mean missing our check-in time.  We thanked them profusely and headed down to the gate.

By this time, people were pretty upset as their Christmas plans (either going home or headed somewhere fun) had been delayed big time.  The airport was pretty dead except for the massive army of snowplows that kept the airfield clear and safe.  Thank you snowplow drivers!!!  Emily’s phone rang and it was the United Club team on the other end.  “Ho Ho Ho…Merry Christmas…your bags are tagged to Hong Kong.  Good luck!!!”  Now we were at least in the ballgame.

15 minutes later we were on the plane.  15 minutes after that we were sitting on the de-icing pad.  15 minutes after that we were airborne.  Based on the pilot’s estimation we were going to be at the gate at 11:25PM.  Our departure to Hong Kong was at 12:05AM.  40 minutes to transit terminals.  We pulled into the gate at 11:25 and were off the plane at 11:30.  We had a mile to run.

We made it!!

We were the first ones off the plane and we ran a solid 10 minute mile to the gate.  Pretty proud of us considering it was 11:30 PM and we were both carrying multiple bags.  We actually made it with about 10 minutes to spare.  The first glass of champagne tasted REAL good…all is well that ends well.

We made it safely to Hong Kong yesterday morning after a great flight in first on SQ001.  The bag ended up not making the flight but it should be here today.  We did receive 800HKG (~$103 USD) in compensation which enabled Emily to stimulate the Hong Kong economy.

Thank you to the phenomenal staff at the United Club in Denver.  Thank you for the Christmas miracle!!

Ready to go.  Our ride to Hong Kong in the background

Flying Singapore First Class to Hong Kong!

I've written about "gardening" award redemptions (both flights and hotels) several times in the past.  As a trip approaches, I'll usually spend a few minutes every few days checking award space on itineraries that would make the trip "better" as airlines typically release unsold space close to departure.

We have limited time for this trip so getting to Hong Kong quickly (vs. a more circuitous routing) is definitely a priority.  There are only a handful of options that would be better than our original routing on United Global First from San Francisco to Hong Kong.  So either Cathay Pacific or Singapore Airlines direct from San Francisco to Hong Kong were really our best options.  I had struck out finding space in first on Cathay and Singapore until Sunday.  Two first class seats were available at the saver level on SQ1 which is a pretty cool Singapore Airlines fifth freedom route.

Singapore Airlines 777-300 ER First Class

I quickly transferred the additional miles required (from Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi Thank You points, and American Express Membership Rewards) to my Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer account.  By Monday morning, the points were in my account.  Five minutes later, I had us booked.  While not Singapore Suites, I'm not complaining.  This route is operated by a 777-300ER and will be a huge upgrade over United Global First!

Total cost was 140,250 miles and $207 USD.  We will definitely get our money's worth in Dom and Krug.  I was also able to drop our United long-haul segment from the reservation (online) so we could keep the DEN - SFO segment.  That resulted in a net $38 cost and a refund of 125,000 United MileagePlus miles.

A few key takeaways:

1)  If you can, be flexible
2)  Diversify your miles and points currency
3)  Invest in "transferable" currencies like Chase Ultimate Rewards or Amex Membership Rewards

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Happy Holidays!

Video of A350s Flying in Formation

Airbus is getting pretty close to putting the A350 into production.  In fact, Qatar Airways will be taking delivery of the very first A350 today!

I just saw this video over the weekend (Thanks Lucky!).  As a promotion for the launch of the A350, Airbus put together an "airshow" of sorts with five A350s flying in formation.  Keep in mind these aren't fighter jets (i.e. Blue Angels) but massive, wide-body commercial airliners.

Click here if the embedded video doesn't load.

I definitely prefer Boeing (if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going) but will make an exception for the A350.  The A380 is pretty sweet as well.  Anyway...this video is just awesome.

I would love to see something like this in person although the video captures the background of how they put it together which is pretty neat.

Enjoy!!

Pickup an Amazon Kindle for $29

I usually bring two "real" books for each longhaul trip.  Sometimes I'll throw in a travel book which makes three.  I'll typically ONLY finish one of the books but I like having more than one option.  That said, bringing multiple books eats up a lot of space in my carryon and adds some unnecessary weight.  So replacing "real" books with an e-reader makes a ton of sense.

I've looked at getting an Amazon Kindle a few times but for whatever reason never pulled the trigger.  Today, Staples is selling Kindles for $59 with a $30 Visa Gift Card.  That drops the effective price to $29.  That was good enough for me...so I bought one this morning.  I went through the Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping portal (2x points) and used my Chase Ink card (5x points at office supply stores) to earn an additional 420 Ultimate Rewards points.  I value those points at about $8 so the Kindle was really about $20.  What a deal.

A great last minute holiday gift for friends, family, or yourself.

2014 Year in Review: Hotels

I recently posted about my 2014 year in flight.  You can also read about my 2013 hotel stays here.

In 2014, We stayed in really great hotels although didn't receive as many "upgrades" as in prior years.  I'll end the year with ended the year with 57 total nights (I was at 55 last year) across Starwood, Hyatt, Hilton, IHG, and independent brands.  Interesting to note that 5 of our stays and 13 of our nights were at independent properties where we were unable to earn/burn points.

None of the nights were business travel although 10 of the "nights" were credit from the Starwood American Express cards and two additional nights were "mistakes" credits.  So I actually stayed in hotels 45 nights during 2014.  I will be dropping from Starwood Platinum to Gold (lifetime) which I'm okay with.

Chase Hyatt Credit Card Rocks

One of the best cards from Chase that I have yet to write about is the Hyatt Credit Card.  Over the last couple of years, I've become a big Hyatt fan after awesome stays at the Park Hyatt in Istanbul and Andaz Fifth Avenue in NYC.

Two free nights - for $1,000 in spend and no annual fee

The card offers two free nights at any Hyatt in the world (all brands) after spending $1,000 on the card.  The annual fee is $75 but that's waived for the first year.  If you are planning a honeymoon or a special trip of any sort, you should get this card.  You can redeem your nights for the Park Hyatt in the Maldives, Paris, Tokyo, NYC, etc...those properties can go for $500 - $1,000 per night so you're getting a ton of value for a very low spend threshold.

Beyond that, the card offers (for the $75 annual fee) a free night in a category 1 - 4 property.  There are some pretty great hotels on the list but we had been unable to use the certificate (which expires at the end of the calendar year) which I was kind of bummed about.

A few days ago we changed our outbound flight for our trip to Asia.  It's Christmas night so hotels are real cheap.  All Starwood properties (Westin, Le Meridien, W, Palace) with the exception of the St. Regis were under $160/night.  That is phenomenal for San Francisco.  But I remembered I had an expiring Hyatt certificate and checked to see if there were any category four hotels in the city.

Hyatt Regency San Francisco lobby

The Hyatt Regency San Francisco is a category four and I was able to use my certificate without an issue.  I'll have a future post on how easy it is to redeem the free anniversary night.  For some reason, paid rates were a lot more expensive than other (arguably nicer) hotels in the city.  We did some searching and found out that the property has a massive Christmas display in the lobby atrium.  In fact, the hotel has make the Travel and Leisure "best hotels for Christmas" list! 

The anniversary night really worked out.  Clearly a nice return on the $75 annual fee to end up with a $200+ hotel night.  Thanks Hyatt and Chase for making our Christmas.  We are pumped!