It’s November 2019 and we have accumulated 498,292 Ultimate Reward points to use on travel. Ultimate rewards can be used in a number of ways but our favorite is to use them to travel business class on the longest flights we can book.
Next Spring 2020 we want to return to Asia to visit Japan, China, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. In this post I will lead you through our search for the best way to travel business class for the least number of points.
Ultimate Rewards transfer 1:1 to the following airlines: Aer Lingus AerClub, British Airways Executive Club, Flying Blue Air France/KLM, Iberia Plus, JetBlue, Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards, United Airlines MileagePlus, and Virgin Atlantic Flying Club.
We will consider flying anywhere within the United States to almost anywhere in Asia. We want a non-stop flight for the majority of the trip.
First I have to determine the best offer for using our Ultimate Rewards points. Check out the 1:1 transfer partners and then research research research. In the past we have found desirable reward flights when searching using the British Airways website. Last year we did a RTW (Round The World) using Singapore Airlines. This year after trying a number of airline website reward searches I settled on United as the best deal. This is before the 11/14/19 United devaluation so I was able to find 70K one way Business Class from LAX to Seoul Korea with a stopover in Shanghai. Then I found a 50K one way Business reward from Bangkok Thailand to Almaty Kazakhstan. And finally I found a 70K Business reward from Istanbul Turkey to Boston. We’ll fill in the gaps with low cost airlines….and I still have 100K of Ultimate reward points after the transfers.
So how did I figure this out? Once I did some initial searches and decided to use United Airlines (A Star Alliance Member) for my reward bookings I visited https://www.staralliance.com/en/route-map which allowed me to select hubs and then search for one-way non-stop flights on any Star Alliance member.
We knew we wanted to visit friends in LAX and we could buy tickets inexpensively on Southwest (we used points for Freddie and bought some extra points to cover the remainder of my one way ticket). LAX is a good jumping off point for Asia and we have often flown business rewards from there. We wanted to get to Japan but that was going to cost 80K miles each. After a lots of searching on the United flight I found that we could fly one way Business Class LAX to Seoul Korea with a long stopover in Shanghai. That’s great, we have a friend in Shanghai and our 17 hour layover is perfect for seeing her and staying in a hotel overnight before the late morning flight on to Seoul.
We’ve never been to South Korea before so we’ll spend a few days there exploring a new country. The website flights.google.com shows lots of low cost airline flights between Seoul and Tokyo. So by booking the 70K one way business flights LAX to Seoul we save 10K Ultimate reward points each, we see our friend in Shanghai, and we get to add a new country to our list and it will cost us less than $150 each to get to Tokyo. Such a deal.
After some more research using flights.google.com I found that we can get from Fukuoka in southern Japan (we’ll get there by train) to Singapore for about $120 each. I’ve wanted to see the new attractions at the Singapore airport and we’ll spend 1 or 2 nights in Singapore for this our second trip to this city/country. From there we’ll fly to Indonesia and from Indonesia to Chiang Mai to visit friends. There’s a new very nice overnight train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok which should be fun. (You can read about it here: https://www.chiangmaitraveller.com/bangkok-chiang-mai-overnight-sleeper-train/).
I used the Star Alliance Map to see how we could get from Bangkok to somewhere near Uzbekistan. ttps://www.staralliance.com/en/route-map Set the Hub (upper left corner of the screen to various airport selections) until a dot appears where you want to go. It wasn’t until I selected ICN (Seoul) that selections near Uzbekistan appeared. There’s a route from Seoul to Tashkent and one to Almaty. OK…I wonder if United will route me from Bangkok through Seoul to either Tashkent or Almaty…..YES….Using the United website I searched one way business class rewards and found a Bangkok to Almaty for only 50K points each…perfect.
I could have also used flights.google.com starting in Bangkok for non-stop, one-way, Star Alliance flights. The red dot below is Bangkok and I see Seoul listed and also there’s a grayed out Almaty that gives me a hint that it’s reachable via 1+ hops.
Last year we had a very nice return flight from Istanbul to Boston on Turkish Airways and using the United site I found that business class seats were available this year for 70K miles each. It was an easy decision and I know that we can get from Bishkek to Istanbul cheaply on Pegasus Airlines https://www.flypgs.com/.
So now we have used 70K+50K+70K = 190K Ultimate reward points each for basically a round the world in business class for a total of 380K points. Of course we’re filling in the gaps with low cost airlines, but we’re flying the long segments in Business Class with totally lie down seats, and Business Class Service: LAX->ICN(Seoul) via Shanghai, Bangkok->Almaty via Seoul, and Istanbul->Boston. Not bad. And the taxes and fees cost us only $188 for the 2 of us. All business class.
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Earlier in the search process I thought about leaving from NYC. I signed up for Asiana membership at flyasiana.com so I could search business rewards and found: NYC->Seoul 62,500+$155, LAX->Seoul 62,500+$155.
www.awardhacker.com is also a good place to initially search to try different route options. Shows 60,000 miles LAX->Singapore booked VirginAirlines flying Delta. (Look for rewards tagged UR for Ultimate Rewards). Similar LAX->Tokyo, LAX->Beijing.
Or: Consider a RTW: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/ana-around-the-world-ticket-sweet-spot-spotlight/?utm_source=BoardingArea&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=BA_Email_Aug0719
Some tools for finding lowest way to spend miles: http://www.milez.biz/en/index.php, https://www.travelcodex.com/award-maximizer/
Here’s another flight search tool that I just found: https://greatescape.co/