Posts
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Adding to our RTW Trip
Somehow, it seems like I’m always adding people to this trip.
I booked a round-the-world award ticket for my family three months ago. Well, it turns out that my brother will probably be able to come with us on the trip, which we did not expect. So, we had to get him a ticket to come with us!
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I Booked a Round-the-World Award!
I’ve been writing about it since before COVID, but now I’ve finally done it: I’ve actually booked a round-the-world award ticket. In April 2022, I’ll leave Boston and never stop flying west until I get back to Boston.
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Around the World in 2022
I want to take an around the world trip. I started writing about it on this blog in June 2020 when the Coronavirus pandemic cancelled all travel, but components of it predate that. The plan is to take a trip in the spring to see cherry blossums in Asia and then keep flying west to see some spring festivals in Europe.
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A (Fixed) More Optimal Round the World Trip
Back in June, I wrote about a really good use of points for a round-the-world trip in business class to see a bunch of Asian countries and then a few European countries, for 115,000 ANA miles. However, going back to it, I realize there is one major flaw with the example itinerary I gave.
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The New Japan Trip
I have officially cancelled my Japan trip in August. It makes me sad, but I also get to start thinking about the next trip in April, which I wrote about the other day.
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A More Optimal Round-the-World Trip
Earlier I wrote about a potential round-the-world trip to see springtime events in Asia and Europe, and I noted that using 165,000 Cathay Pacific miles to book my original itinerary was a good deal.
Well move over Cathay Pacific, because there’s an even better deal.
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What Now?
I wrote in January, before COVID-19 was a pandemic, about trips to Switzerland and Japan that I had planned. By the time I was supposed to go to Switzerland in April, COVID was in full force and I was unable to do so. However, I wrote again in April that I still expected to travel to Japan in August. Since then, two things have happened that make me much less optimistic about the Japan trip.
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Adding Korea to my Next Japan Trip
I wrote in January, before COVID-19 was a pandemic, about trips that I had planned. One of those was a wonderful trip to Japan that I booked with frequent flyer miles – I managed to find two seats in Japan Airlines First Class from Chicago to Tokyo, and then we were going to fly from Nagoya to Detroit on Delta’s A330, which I loved becuase it’s a rather obscure route and it seems that there are almost always business class award seats.
Then I convinced a third friend to come along, and there weren’t any more award seats on Nagoya to Detroit near the date we planned to leave.
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Backpacking Through Europe
I have a ton of time in COVID-19 quarantine. However, what I expected to be doing now was taking a month and traveling around Europe living out of a backpack. When I went to Japan and Taiwan, someone I met was quite surprised that I took two weeks worth of clothes with me, so I was planning on bringing 3 sets of clothes and staying in hostels and doing laundry. Instead of obsessive planning of every detail of my trips, I was going to take things a few days at a time and figure out where to go as it comes. Then COVID-19 hit.
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Can Booking Japan Airlines with Flying Blue Miles be a Good Value?
Doing my analysis of American Express’s transfer bonus history got me thinking about some of the uses for miles that are relatively rare in the blogosphere, but still might have utility to someone, potentially with a transfer bonus. Flying Blue, the loyalty program of Air France and KLM (and Kenya Airways and a few others) has a few interesting quirks.
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Visualizing American Express' Transfer Bonus History
I am a big fan of time bar-based visualizations, such as the timeline view in ITA Matrix. I think it it easier to intuitively understand how things are arranged in time relative to each other compared to looking at a printed timetable. A few months ago, I was interested in when the next American Express transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic was, because I was interested in booking tickets on Delta’s flight from Nagoya to Detroit. The transfer history is available on the internet, but it is difficult to see recurring trends. At the time, I drew it on paper, but since I have some time on my hands now, I decided to make it into a web page.
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Notes on Booking Japan Airlines First Class
I like flying in the pointy end of the plane. There, I said it. I have annoyed my family to no end talking about it. Arguably, I have a problem.
My friend and I are going to Japan using the frequent flyer miles and credit card points I’ve built up. We booked Japan Airlines business class for 60,000 AA miles. I should have been happy with that.
Except American Airlines allows free changes to awards in certain circumstances. So I was faced with the option: be happy with what I have, or check every day for award seats in First like some kind of obsessed person.
You can guess which option I chose.
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Mistakes Booking my Taipei Trip
I mentioned in the previous post that I made a few mistakes when booking my trip to Taipei.
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Trips I (Currently) Have Planned for 2020
Since it’s the beginning of the year, and since I have planned a fair amount of travel for 2020, I thought it would be fun to write a travel blog about what that’s like, especially since my friends and family do not want to hear me talk about airfare or airplanes any more.
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