A Week in Japan: Introduction

Introduction
Planning & Booking
United Polaris Business Class 787-8 San Francisco to Osaka (KIX)
Intercontinental Osaka
The Ritz-Carlton Kyoto
Park Hyatt Tokyo
Cathay Pacific First Class 777-300ER Tokyo (HND) to Hong Kong
Conrad Hong Kong
The Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong
Singapore Airlines First Class 777-300ER Hong Kong to San Francisco
Hyatt Regency SFO

I'm still working on a couple of segments from our latest trip to Al Maha in November of last year.   I plan to finish those trip reports in April but given that our next trip is coming up next month, I wanted to get the introductory post on the blog.

We were in Tokyo last August and loved it.  We decided to go back on the flight home and started thinking about when and where.  We wanted to spend some additional time in Tokyo along with a visit to Kyoto.  We were able to snag flights on United's direct service from San Francisco to Osaka (closest international airport to Kyoto) and began planning from there.

I do want to give United's Polaris soft (hard product won't be installed on these planes for years) product so leaning towards keeping the direct flight.  For another 40,000 miles a piece we could fly Asiana first class through Seoul which would be more comfortable and more fun but take longer.

16,000+ miles of flying

United Club Updates

I've been a United Club (and before that, the Red Carpet Club) member off and on for the past 10 years.  I remember purchasing my first RCC membership at the discounted price given my United 1K status.  I felt so cool checking in to clubs across the country with my shiny red card.

Over the years the quality of the clubs have definitely declined.  Everything from furniture to service to complimentary drinks and food.  But United is starting to reinvest in the product again and they are making upgrades to the clubs.  I rejoined last year and have been pleasantly surprised with the experience.

United sent me an email this week with an update on club renovations as well as new clubs.  I'll be in San Francisco in May and look forward to checking out the new club(s)...potentially the new Polaris lounge will be open by then.  I've only been to one United club worth reviewing since I started the blog and that was the arrivals lounge at LHR.  I'm glad to see continued investment from United in the club experience and hope to get to review a couple additional lounges in 2017.

AAdvantage Shopping Portal Offering a 10x Bonus

One of the easiest ways to earn extra award miles is to make purchases through an online shopping portal.  American AAdvantage's portal is out with a pretty lucrative bonus that's good through 4/14/17.

Make 3 $50+ purchases and you'll earn 1,500 bonus miles.  That's on top of the miles you'll earn from each online merchant.  Generally the bonuses offered by these portals provide 3 - 5x/dollar spent so 10x is really good.

I'll definitely be taking advantage of this for purchases I would have made anyway.  There are a lot of stores paying out 5x+ so you should be able to earn 15x+ if you split up your purchases.

Cathay Pacific First Class Space Opened Up!

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an award ticket downgrade on Cathay Pacific booked with Alaska Mileage Plan miles.  We had been booked in first class from Tokyo's Narita airport to Hong Kong prior to Cathay Pacific downgrading the flight to an aircraft without a first class cabin.  I opted to cancel the ticket and refund the miles - I figured something better would open up later.

I have been checking award space (using BA's website) every few days and last week, two first class seats opened up between Haneda and Hong Kong!  Even better than trekking all the way out to Narita!

I quickly called Alaska, fed the flights to a great agent, and had the award secured in less than 5 minutes.  Taxes and fees came to about $100 but at 27,500 miles/person, this award is an absolutely steal.

The flight is blocked at over 4.5 hours and a similar flight distance (1,800 miles) between Denver and Boston.  Consider that United first class between those two cities would cost 25,000 United MileagePlus miles per person - and that's if you can find the seats (tough to do these days) at the saver level.

Patience definitely payed off here.  We both love flying Cathay first and while this won't be the "full experience" it should still be pretty fun.  Even better that we get to fly out of Haneda which will save us ~90 minutes of travel time.

Stay tuned for the introduction and planning & booking posts!

Review: Turkish Airlines CIP Lounge IAD

We spent a long weekend in Washington, D.C. for my birthday.  On Sunday morning, we woke up early and headed out to Dulles.  We cleared security in a matter of minutes and took the airtrain to the B gates and located the lounge next to gate B43.

United Selling EQMs in March

United emailed me the other day with an offer to boost Premier qualifying miles (PQMs) towards elite status.  I've dropped down to General Member given that I didn't do much business travel in 2016 and a lot of our personal travels were on award tickets.

My offer was for up to 15,000 PQMs for $1,575.  While that is pretty cheap compared to other offers I've received in the past, (especially late in the year) I'm not even close to a buyer.  If I was, I'd have instant Silver status with United and be well on my way to Gold.  I think I'll get pretty close to Gold (50,000 PQMs) this year given that I'm going to be north of 16,000 PQMs in Q1 and booked travel will get me over 25,000.

This is my first time receiving this offer so early in the year.  I know that United is trying to monetize absolutely everything but I'm not sure how many takers they would realistically have this early.  Even at these prices.

Welcome Million Mile Secrets Readers

I've been reading Million Mile Secrets since getting into this hobby and really enjoy the blog.  They were kind enough to reach out to me about participating in their Friday interview series so there are a lot of new blog readers this morning.

If you'd like to learn a little bit more about me, check out this page.

For trip reports, start here.

You can also check out my 2016 year in review around hotel stays, flights, and points earned.

If you've been reading ATRP for awhile, check out the MMS interview!  Thanks to everyone for reading.