IHG Comes Through Again

Emily has to be in San Francisco for work in a couple of weeks.  She was scheduled to come home on a Friday so we figured we'd make a weekend out of it.  For some reason (there are a couple of big conferences in town) hotels are either sold out or outrageous.  The St. Regis was pricing at almost $800, the W at $600+.  The Le Meridien was sold out.  So were both Hyatt properties.

Ridiculous San Francisco hotel prices

Cash and points availability and points availability at the SPG properties were both zeroed out.  So I started looking at other options.  The last few trips, we've either stayed at the W or St. Regis.  The InterContinental San Francisco is just a few blocks away in the SoMa area.

InterContinental San Francisco

Paid rates were also going for $800+ AI but there was award availability!  Both Emily and I were sitting on balances of 100,000 IHG points so this was a no-brainer and I booked it.

That's nearly 1.93 cents per point.  Pretty much unheard of for IHG points.  This is a perfect example of how this hobby can pay off big time.  Diversify your point balances and you'll have options when you need them - whether that be a last minute flight or a tough (meaning really expensive) hotel market like San Francisco.

Review: Singapore Airlines First Class San Francisco to Hong Kong

Introduction
Planning & Booking
Singapore Airlines 777-300ER First Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Grand Hyatt Hong Kong Grand Club
The Bridge Cathay Pacific Business Class Lounge
Cathay Pacific A330 Business Class Hong Kong to Taipei
W Taipei
Cathay Pacific 777-300ER Business Class Taipei to Hong Kong
The Wing Cathay Pacific First Class Lounge
Cathay Pacific 777-300 ER First Class Hong Kong to Los Angeles

Apparently, post milestones are for Singapore First Class posts.  Number 150 was my last flight in Singapore Suites.  This one (number 200!) will cover our first class flight on the 777 from San Francisco to Hong Kong.  This is going to be a pretty epic trip report so please enjoy!  One note - due to the late departure and the fact that the cabin was dimmed/dark during most of the meal service, I didn't take a ton of food pics.

Originally, we had booked United's direct service to Hong Kong from San Francisco.  A few days before departure, I was able to change our flight to Singapore Airlines First Class with the same routing.  The flight operates as SQ001 (flight #1) which is pretty cool.  While I would love another crack at Suites Class, the equipment used on this route is a 777-300ER with the "old" first class seats. We've flown this configuration before so we pretty much knew what to expect.

Enjoying the last few minutes of Christmas aboard SQ001

Due to weather and a diversion due to a medical issue, our flight from Denver to San Francisco encountered multiple delays and left us very little time to make the long haul flight.  Despite the delays, we arrived at the gate area for SQ001 just as they were preparing to board.  We still needed boarding passes so went straight to the gate agent who had them ready for us.  I had called Singapore Airlines customer service from Denver to let them know about the delay.  Not sure if they would have held the plane for us at all but they were definitely prepared for our late arrival.  Just one of the reasons why they are awesome!

2015 Credit Card Strategy

Earlier I posted about my 2015 Elite Status strategy.  As I mentioned in the post, part of my elite status strategy is to continue to hold certain credit cards that provide elite status benefits.  Here's an overview of my 2015 credit card strategy:

The Status of Status for 2015

2014 was the year of airline devaluations.  United announced multiple devaluations of the award chart and announced the migration to a revenue based frequent flyer program.  The economy is improving and planes are full.  I guess the fact that oil is cheap is just gravy if you're an airline CEO these days.

After a couple of great years as a United 1K, I made the decision last year not to chase any status (airline or hotel).  I have plenty of points and miles in the bank and am perfectly happy (so is my bank account) redeeming more awards and earning less from staying/flying.  It is a great time to earn points and miles from credit card bonuses and spend and will continue to focus on earning that way during the year.

To that end, here's where things stand for 2015:

Airline:  Will drop to United Premier Silver after flying 35,000 paid miles last year.  Emily will be dropping to Silver as well after roughly 40,000 BIS (butt-in-seat) miles.

Hotel:  I qualified for Starwood lifetime Gold and am pretty happy with that.  Dropping from Platinum stings a bit (will miss free breakfast) but it's really not that big of a deal.  I also have Hilton Gold, IHG Platinum, Hyatt Platinum, and Marriott Gold from credit card benefits.  Having "mid-tier" status with all the major hotel chains is plenty.  Free internet, bonus points, and upgrades when available are nice perks.

While United and Starwood will remain my core loyalty programs, relinquishing higher tier status makes it much easier to "cheat" on the core programs.  If American is offering a cheaper flight with better times, I'll book it.

The biggest downside dropping from Gold to Silver is losing the ability to book Economy Plus tickets at the time of booking for free.  As a Silver, I can only select Economy Plus (for free) at check-in.  I am taking advantage of the my last month as a Gold - booking as many tickets as possible for 2015 so I can select premium seats without a fee.

In some ways, I'm happy to be a little less loyal.  More freedom = good.

British Airways Travel Together Ticket in My Account

One of the best benefits of the Chase British Airways Visa is the "Travel Together Ticket."  You earn the ticket after spending $30,000 in a calendar year.  The ticket enables you to book two award tickets in any class for the price (miles) of one.  You must pay the taxes and fuel charges.

I had been working on meeting the spend requirement and did so at the very end of the year.  It took some tricks (Amazon Payments which is unfortunately dead) but I got it done.  Anyway, I received the email that I would receive the ticket in my account shortly.  I checked over the weekend and there it was.

While we already have a pair of BA tickets booked for this year, we'll definitely get great value out of the ticket.  It's good for two years so we have all of 2015 and 2016 to use it.  As an example, let's say you wanted to fly from Denver to London in BA First over Christmas.  Normally, you'd pay 300,000 Avios and $2,509.  With the travel together ticket, you'd save 150,000 Avios.  I value them at around $.02 so the certificate would be worth around $3,000.  Yes, it sucks to shell out $2,509 in taxes and fees but ultimately you'd pay more than that if you were straight away buying two coach ticket to London.

If you don't already have the card, you should definitely consider the Chase British Airways Visa especially if you can swing the $30,000 in 2015 spend to earn the Travel Together Ticket.  The current promotion waives the annual fee (normally $95) for the first year and offers 50,000 British Airways Avios after $2,000 in spend in the first 90 days.

How Many Miles Did We Earn in 2014?

I keep a pretty organized (happy to share if you'd like just let me know below) spreadsheet containing a ton of information about my mileage earning.  It also helps me keep track of our credit card applications, minimum spend required, etc...this is very much a team effort as Emily earned a little over 44% of the total in 2014.  You can read about our earnings in 2013 here.

I looked back at the spreadsheet this morning and summarized it below.  We earned almost 1.3 million miles and points last year with the vast majority coming from credit card bonuses.  We applied for (and were approved for all) 22 credit cards in 2014.  Read this post first if you are new to the concept of earnings points/miles through credit card bonuses.

2014 Earnings

The rest of our earnings shown above were a mix of goodwill from service issues, promotions and other random sign-up bonuses.  We earned 400,000 American Airlines miles from five CC sign-up bonuses which we leveraged to fly Cathay Pacific First Class home from Hong Kong.  The Citi American Executive Platinum was huge as we grabbed three of those and netted 300,000 AA miles for only $750 in fees!

We also used this stash to book a first class flight to Europe on British Airways.  We earned 80,000 Alaska Airlines miles which we'll use for a flight on Emirates in the future.  I did use some of those points to upgrade my parents on their flight to Hawaii earlier this year.

Cathay Pacific First Class - only 67,500 miles one-way to/from Asia!

This doesn't include the miles we earned by flying/staying which amounted to another 125,000.  We also purchased a handful of miles (20,000) during a couple of promotions across the year and earned around an additional 120,000 or so miles and points for our "everyday" spend including category bonuses and shopping portal bonuses.

All in, that is over 1.5 million miles and points generated during 2014!  So where do things stand in terms of point balances now?  According to Award Wallet, we have (again) over 1.6 million miles "in the bank."  This time last year, we had 1.633M points and miles.  So we are basically are at the same number despite of points and miles despite a ton of burn for our trips to Bali and Hong Kong/Taipei!  We need to do a better job of using them I guess!

Ringing in 2015: Back From Our Trip

Happy New Year!

We're back from our awesome trip to Hong Kong and Taipei and I'll begin working on trip reports as soon as I have some time.  It was certainly a whirlwind as we had flight changes going and coming.  I wrote about the change we made (and associated drama) to our outgoing flight last week.

We had a great time in both Hong Kong and Taipei.  The day before we were supposed to depart Taipei for Hong Kong (where we were going to overnight at the W) I figured I'd check to see if we could get a more direct routing home from Taipei.  I also checked to see if Cathay Pacific first class had opened up...lucky for us there were two seats on one of the HKG - LAX flights the day before we were supposed to come home.  That meant we'd keep our original Taipei to Hong Kong flight and then just layover vs. going into the city.

Taipei 101 NYE Fireworks

Emily and I talked it over and decided that we should go for it.  We have both wanted to fly Cathay and this was a good opportunity to do so.  That meant we were going to miss 20 hours in Hong Kong but since we gained 12 hours or so on the way there (by switching to an earlier flight) we felt like it was a good trade off.

So I called (via Skype) American Airlines and went about changing the flight. More drama as American was making a system update to their website and the first agent I spoke with was only able to hold the reservation...not ticket it.  I was told to call back in 6 hours to get the reservation completed.  There was more drama but needless to say it all worked out.

The Wing Bar - Not a bad spot for a 5 hour layover

Cathay First Class - Hong Kong to LAX

We had a phenomenal time at the Wing (Cathay's first class lounge in Hong Kong) before the long flight home.  I'll have more details in the full trip report but just wanted to update all of you that didn't follow along via Instagram.