Some people are plane enthusiasts. They’ll do anything to fly the new mega-jet A380, which I’ll be doing in Qantas business in January. Or one of the new Dreamliners, which United’s taking more deliveries of and releasing the routes they’ll operate on. Or one of Lufthansa’s new 747-8s, which Lucky will review soon and already teased.
I’m not a plane freak, but I got an interesting question from reader Herb, so I thought I’d try to solve the puzzle:
My brother and I were debating if it would be possible to get on a 747, an A380, and a 787 all on one Star Alliance award flight, all in a business or first cabin, and do it as a pseudo “around the world” trip. In theory it seemed possible, but I was wondering if you had any thoughts or suggestions on how to piece something like that together and have it count as one award. I’m based out of Denver…
I’ve upgraded the challenge from any old 747 to a brand new 747-8 Intercontinental.
My reply was this:
So a routing of Denver to Tokyo to Bangkok, returning Bangkok to Frankfurt to Washington-Dulles to Denver would enjoy the A380 twice, a 787 Dreamliner, and a 747-8 plus it would be a mini-round-the-world trip.
The routing is perfectly legal. Both Denver to Bangkok and the return are well below the Maximum Permitted Mileage for those routes. And of course, a stopover can be taken anywhere en route in addition to the stop in Bangkok, the destination.
Unfortunately, I can’t find space on the above routing in a premium class. As of yesterday, I couldn’t find any business class space on DEN-NRT. And United didn’t configure the plane with any first class seats.
But I don’t give up, so I did find a single United award with flights on all three of the new big birds, though it features only two airlines and the Lufthansa A380, which doesn’t have fully flat seats in business. (What is this, 2005?)
I was tipped off by the Bengali Miles Guru that Houston to Amsterdam, which the United Dreamliner begins flying December 4, does have space in business class.
Lufthansa flies its A380 from Houston to Frankfurt, with angled lie flat business class seats.
And Lufthansa flies its 747-8 from Frankfurt to Delhi and Bangalore to Frankfurt, with fully flat business class seats.
Then I pieced together an open jaw award that used all these planes. It was a simple multi-city search on united.com. Behold:
This itinerary priced at 120k United miles and $146 including the phone fee:
Of course, if you actually wanted to fly this itinerary you could jazz it up with a stopover en route or a free oneway. United allows one stopover and two open jaws on roundtrip awards, so a stopover could be had in Frankfurt or Amsterdam.
Or if you preferred not to use the stopover en route, you could make the stopover in Houston at the end of the trip and add a free oneway after the trip. (The bible on United free oneways.)
Can anyone find a better routing that gets premium cabin space on all three of the new big planes? What about one that goes around the world? First person to comment with a valid routing and send me a screen shot gets a drink on me.
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While doing a sample search similar to yours I stumbled on a few interesting ideas:
1. One of the routines of BKK – FRA goes through Ethiopia and they will probably at some point fly 787 to FRA, but I couldn’t find availability yet.
2. United website is either really buggy or there’s some rules at work I don’t know about, because the routing: IAH-NRT (open jaw) BKK – FRA(stop) – IAH works fine, but if you drop the last FRA-IAH leg and just do two open jaws, the website gives an error. Any ideas?
The website is buggy, but it might have a problem putting those oneways into one award.
…btw, have you looked into having both the open jaws be in the same region? This would open up the possibility of effectively 3 stop-overs, but so far every booking i’ve tried on United’s website, it gives an error.
can you elaborate?
Here’s an example: LAX – Tokyo (open jaw) PVG – HKG (open jaw) BKK – SIN (stopover) – LAX
I tried a similar booking within Europe and it gives an error, but there doesn’t seem to be any written rules I could find that make this invalid. Only difference from the usual bookings is you have both open jaws wholly inside one region.
One of those “open jaws” is en route, so it’s not really an open jaw. An open jaw is when one direction’s origin doesn’t match up with the other’s destination. This route has one open jaw. The outbound’s destination (HKG) doesn’t match the inbound’s origin (BKK). The hop from Tokyo to PVG is just against the rules because it’s en route.
Thanks for the info. Couldn’t see that rule on their website.
4/8 LH419 6:40am – 8:40am+1 IAD – FRA 748
4/9 LH710 1:50pm – 7:55am+1 FRA – NRT a380
4/9 CA158 8:55am – 11:15am NRT – PVG 738 (Economy)
4/10 UA199 8:10pm – 5:10pm PVG LAX 788
As someone who will book 4 tickets so I can bring our kids with us in steerage, I view the A380 as a great leap backward. Nothing like sharing a quarter of the plane with 3 quarters of the flying public.
Earlier this month I had an opportunity to get all three on a single routing. However, since I was on United First award, I wanted to maximize and instead did Thai first (having never flown Thai in first) rather than biz on the 787. I was able to get first on the A380 FRA-NRT (only two of eight in first) as well as first on my return FRA-IAD on the 748. Only thing missing from my plane portfolio now is the 787.
More and more chances will pop us as more come into service.
Have you flown it? I understand there are more people, but it shouldn’t be more crowded, and the entertainment options and cabin should be way nicer.
How does this United “Stopover” thing work exactly?
My fiance and I are getting married this February and want to plan the honeymoon of a lifetime in June/July 2013. Our goal is to make it to Africa and a little island off the coast of Madagascar called Mauritius (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritius).
We live in San Francisco and can fly from SFO, OAK, or San Jose airports. We were considering a flight to Cape Town South Africa first, then a flight up to the middle of Africa, then a flight to Mauritius. The other option is a flight to Dubai, then a flight to central Africa (basically we want to do a safari) then a flight to Mauritius.
Can you advise on the best strategy to get there doing “stopovers”?
(Feel free to email me too!)
http://milevalue.com/free-oneways-on-united-awards/
You’re not looking for a free oneway, just several stopovers. You can go SFO-Cape Town-Mauritius-SFO on one United award, no problem. If you need help booking, contact my award booking service through the tab at the top of the page.
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