Earlier this summer I blogged about my upcoming vacation and how I used Gary’s (View From the Wing) award booking service to find the “perfect” itinerary in first class. Well, vacation is only 3 ½ weeks away and wouldn’t you know it, a last minute business trip has created havoc with my award booking.
So here was my debate (which I’ve been having with myself for the last three days) – do I change my award ticket to leave a week earlier and end up with a horrible itinerary or do I book a coach ticket to Bangkok and hope for an upgrade? Well, if you know me, you’d know that I’m not one to leave things to chance – not on a 12+ hour flight. I started researching frequent flyer award availability from Charleston, SC to Bangkok, Thailand. I’ve literally spent at least 10 hours searching and searching – I even emailed Gary to ask a question or two – and this is the best itinerary I’ve come up with so far.
I will depart from Charleston, SC and fly to Charlotte, NC. From there I will head to Los Angeles, CA, first two legs on US Air. I leave Charleston on Wednesday evening arriving in LA late in the afternoon. I leave LA on Thursday morning. In LA I will switch over to Asiana and fly from LA to Seoul, South Korea (this was when the US Air agent asked me what country South Korea was in…yeah, it was a rough call) in First Class. I will arrive in Seoul around 6pm on Friday. I currently have seat 2A.
The next flight out of Seoul with award availability doesn’t leave until the next day, Saturday, around 5pm arriving into Bangkok at 11pm. That flight would be on Thai Air in business class. I have no idea what seat I have because Thai’s online tool hasn’t been working in weeks and I don’t feel like calling in.
Worst itinerary ever? I think so. I have to leave on Wednesday night to arrive on Saturday night in Bangkok. I’m continually checking every day for a better itinerary…and I’m hopeful that something turns up before I have to depart. I’m disappointed that I’m not able to take the original flights Gary found for me but…well, there is no but. I hope I’ll find something better.
What do you think? Is this the craziest thing you’ve heard of? Have you had a crazy itinerary?
Just came back from this trip. It was awesome BTW:
8:00 AM YVR to LAX
1:30 PM LAX to ICN
overnight in ICN – hotel was so mediocre I won;t reveal it
12:30 PM ICN to FRA
6:00 PM FRA to LCY
10 days in London
9:30 AM LHR to MUC
overnight in MUC
3:30 PM MUC to ZRH
10:30 PM ZRH to BKK
7 days in Bangkok
8:00 AM BKK to HKG
2:30 PM HKG to ICN
Overnight in Gangham
4:30 PM ICN to LAX
3:00 PM LAX to YVR
@EagerTraveler – I’m pretty sure you win! That’s an amazing itinerary.
I too am flying F on the ICN-FRA in Feb 2013. I hope it will be OK – seems as if there are a good number of reward seats on this flight.
@MilesfromBlightly, are you flying Asiana? I really like them, good airline.
I flew Asiana F on the ICN-FRA route this past spring and enjoyed it thoroughly. I’ve only flown OZ once but I’d assume their F service is going to be better than OK 9 times out of 10.
Last year (2011) flew:
YVR to SFO
SFO to PEK
overnight at PEK Langham Place
PEK to MUC
Overnight at bad airport Sheraton
MUC to FCO
10 days in Rome
FCO to DUS
3 days in Cologne
FRA to PVG
10 days in Shangahi
PVG to PEK
Overnight in Beijing
PEK to YVR
Turn lemons into lemonade! Enjoy your new found time in L.A. & Seoul and make the most of it.
That’s really not that bad if you dont mind spending some time in Soeul… [and Thai is horrendously unreliable for assigning business or first seats in advance on flights under 6 or 7 hours as they always seem to be switching the aircraft…I cannot count how many times my boarding pass has been changed as I have boarded the plane…]
I had a “suggested” routing of Ottawa-NY-Charlotte-San Fran-Hong Kong-Manilla – Sydney – Townsville for a flight last year… [In the end, I was able to fly Ottawa-New York-LA-Sydney-Townsville but if they are offering that up, some poor unsuspecting soul will end up accepting it…]
@New Girl, yep, I think that’s what I’ll be doing 🙂
What about Singapore via New York or Moscow or Lufthansa via any North America Gateway city…availability will start appearing at two weeks out.
@John, I’m looking every day 🙂 We’ll see what happens.