I’m hoping someone can sanity check my logic, and tell me if there’s a better way to approach a trip I am planning for my partner and I in June/July 2018.
At this stage, we want to visit Hawaii, Canada (West Coast) and New York. We’re flexible in which order we visit, providing we’re not back tracking.
We have approx 300,000 Velocity points. We figure we’ll use this for one way travel in business. We’re then happy to buy a cash ticket, or buy miles, to use the other way.
My plan was:
PER-HNL via SYD/BNE: redeem Hawaiian Airlines business flight, as either a cash ticket (Virgin $2100ea) or buying AAdvantage miles (65k miles each) if there is a decent buy miles promo at the time. Availability seems very good.
After a few days in HNL we’ll visit a couple of other islands, and ultimately fly out of OGG to YVR. This will probably have to be a cash ticket. We would be open to flying somewhere else on the west coast of USA (e.g. SEA) if there was a reasonably priced award flight, but I’ve not come across anything decent.
Our trip in Canada is mostly driving. We’ll then book a cash ticket from YYC to JFK.
JFK-PER: we’d planned to transfer Velocity points to Krisflyer and redeem 2x business flights with Singapore Airlines (110k miles each). Availability seems pretty good when booking a year in advance, though it seems near impossible to find a Thursday or Friday departure flight - the latest I can find in the week is a Wednesday flight, arriving back in to Perth on a Friday. I figure we’d be best to throw our points on Singapore Airlines, as we’ve not flown business with them before and by all accounts it’s a great experience.
That said, if I’m missing a golden opportunity to maximise our miles/$$ then I’d love to hear it.
Have you thought about or looked into using Alaska mileage plan miles for your SYD to HNL leg???
You can get an award seat from SYD to HNL via Nadi with Fiji Airways using Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, If you were to purchase miles, you are also able to use a free stopover!! This could cost you about half of the $2100aud cash fare with Virgin per person, As 45k Alaska miles per person is the amount needed from SYD-NAN-HNL, they have a current promotion so that will cost you about $890usd per passenger to buy them miles, you can buy them in the one account and book 2 seats if there’s availability. Plus even if you bought more miles ontop say another 20k per person you could also book award lay flat business seats with Qantas from PER to SYD, then the Fiji Airways from SYD-NAN-HNL. It would be 2 seperate award bookings, My calculations worked out for around $2585usd plus taxes you will be able to buy the 130,000 Alaskan miles, but will have to do miles purchase 2 transactions(which is allowed) while the current 40% bonus is on(included in that cost)
If you follow my tip, and there is availability, I’d say for around $1800aud+/- (including all taxes) per person, Alaska Miles will be able to get you and your partner from PER-HNL all on decent business class products. But if that’s too complicated or costly, Just simply buy 90k miles From Alaska in one transaction for $1650usd + tax and do SYD to HNL in Business, that’ll get you the 2x 45k mile redemptions so is perfect pending availability. To even test further and aim for value possibly the same goes from HNL to SEA you may get a better deal using Alaska miles versus buying a paid fare if there’s reward availability with Alaska, this is an Alaska operated route, I haven’t seen the cost for this as I’ll leave this upto you to look and learn, There’s a few articles on here about how to buy and redeem Alaska Airlines miles as well as reviews on Fiji Airways, this should show you some strength in your options. I think Alaska Airlines miles are the way to go especially on this routing!!!
As for getting back to Perth from JFK I think using your converted velocity points to Krisflyer miles to fly on Singapore Airlines is an excellent choice!!!