TRIP REPORT: Champlagnes – TG F, OZ J & F and NH F – Sofitel, Hyatt, Conrad, Hilton

Planning

After a couple of months of reading the Trip Reports forum on FlyerTalk.com, I slowly became aware that an itinerary involving multiple flights in international First Class, was no longer a lottery winning dream. This could actually be done. Not only that but with judicious routing and planning it could be done cheaply and awesomely, maximising all the little extras that make each airline unique.

I read about buggies, massages, the private room, 380 vs 747, suites, Krug, Dom, Rimowa, the FCT, the Wing, bed and seat side by side… rubber ducks. Well you get the idea.

In the past I had skimmed past blog and forum posts concerning USDM but one day a post appeared on Lucky’s blog caught my attention. It said that USDM were available for super cheap… provided you had miles to begin with. These miles could be used to book international F itineraries on *A with up to 8 segments, including a stopover. Alas, much like needing money to make money, with Share Miles bonuses; you need miles to make miles.

Having never flown US, I searched around for a way to get the miles I needed. I could have transferred some SPG points but these take a long time to post and the Share Miles bonus was only on until the end of the week.

So, I decided to use the well documented miles multiplier method.
I was a little apprehensive about having $10,000 of flights sitting on my credit card account.

But I guess all of us involved in this hobby, have that moment where we take a leap of faith.

After waiting for five agonising days, the 25k multiplier miles posted.

I immediately transferred these to my girlfriend… and the transaction was put on hold. There was only one day left until the promotion ended and I couldn’t afford to wait. I kept hitting refresh on the points.com website chat portal, for at least an hour, until I finally got through to somebody on the chat.

The guy from points.com was super helpful. He instantly pushed the transfer through. My girlfriend checked her USDM account:

Balance 50,000 points.

“Oooh, that’s a lot of points” she said.

I was delighted. She immediately kicked the 50k points back to my account… and again the transaction was put on hold. So after another chat with points.com and a couple of excruciating hours wait (not sure why this one took longer than the first), I ended up with 100k points in my account.

At this stage I wasn’t sure what my exact itinerary would be, I just knew that having 100k USDM was a good idea. I was certain however, that a couple of key factors were going to come into play:

I like to eat… a lot.
I like Krug… a lot.

I spent the next week trawling through the ANA search engine, trying all sorts combinations of flights and carriers. Call me crazy but piecing together an itinerary, to me, is one of the most satisfying parts of the travel ‘experience’.

I found a NRT-LHR flight, on ANA First Class, in late Feb and decided to base the entire itinerary around this.

The Kaiseki tasting menu, Rimowa amenity kit and bottomless Krug sounded too good miss. Not to mention the fact that NH F availability is enormously scarce and usually limited to the first 3 months of the year.

When you live in London you tend to base your entire life around the weather.

“what degree of awful is the weather going to be today?”
“moderately awful? Excellent! I’ll reduce my exogenous vitamin D intake to 2000 iu and take my smaller umbrella to work today”

Come February, you begin to get pretty sick of this.
Thankfully there are countries where it is warm year round.
One of these countries has a national carrier in *A, with proper international F, including massages, in-terminal transportation and a shiny new F cabin in its 747s… and some awesome F availability.

So, TG F outbound and NH F return.

All I needed was a middle:

I wanted to fly a whalejet for the first time, after being wooed by glimpses of them on the tarmac, in the past. I was also keen to try the service in OZ F, having heard that it was one of the best in the sky.

So, my routing ended up looking like this:

LHR-BKK TG 747 new F
BKK-HKG TG 380 F
HKG-ICN OZ 767 C (with captain Kirk seat!)
ICN-NRT OZ 747 F
NRT-LHR NH 777 F

 

 

I arranged a hotel for a few nights of much needed sun and spicy food in Bangkok.

My hotel criteria:

• Elite benefits
• reasonably priced
• modern
• on the right side of the Chao Phraya river
• Infinity pool

After hours of (immensely pleasurable) trawling through hotel comparison sites, trip advisor and the miles and points forum; I had a hotel:

Sofitel So Bangkok

Before booking I asked the manager for clarification of elite benefits.
As an Accor Platinum, I would be upgraded to a club room when booking the cheapest room available and they were prepared to accommodate my 6am arrival into BKK. This along with the excellent pool and amazing looking rooms, was more than enough to sway me.

In Incheon I would spend a night at the Hyatt Regency, supposedly the best airport hotel in the World. The pool looked amazing in pictures and its location would make my turnaround at ICN super simple.

In Tokyo I am fortunate enough to have a friend whose wife works for Hilton, so I left this in her hands – and didn’t know where I’d be staying until a couple of nights before setting off for BKK.

Unfortunately, as all great plans tend to – this one sharply unravelled.

In the space of 2 days I received an email telling me that there was no longer a captain Kirk chair for me on HKG-ICN. The plane was now an absolutely rubbish A321.

This was followed by an even more crushing blow, as a result of the unrest in Thailand: BKK-HKG was downsizing from an A380 to a 747.

As I often do in times of woe, I decided to bury myself in Trip Reports.
After pining over the TG A380 in one particular report, I suddenly realised that I could use the route from the TR! (provided USDM agents allowed me). I had non-refundable hotels booked in BKK and ICN so wasn’t keen to drop my nights there.

On the other hand, I wasn’t particularly fussed about transiting in HKG and was even less thrilled about the prospect of a long flight in Business and a short one in F, to get me from BKK-ICN. I decided I would try my luck with the USDM phone agents, to see if I could book:

LHR-BKK TG 747 new F
3 days later
BKK-NRT TG 380 F (a flight more than twice as long as the one to HKG, plus it has a Rimowa kit!)
2.5 hour connection
NRT-ICN OZ 747 C (in an F seat, as this flight sells First seats as Business)
Overnight in Incheon
ICN-NRT OZ 747 F (same seat, better booze and service, interesting for a comparison)
2 days later
NRT-LHR NH 777 F

 

 

I watched the A380 space like a hawk, rejoicing as day by day the ANA portal showed another new day of availability. Then, on the day the award space should have opened up for me, the logic broke down and no seat was made available.

I had a big night out planned that night, so decided to drink away my sorrow, at the lack of A380 F space. Arriving home in the early hours of the morning, I thought “what the hell” and fired up the ANA engine.

I say fired up, what actually happened was that I incoherently bumbled my way through the screens, in a state of ape-like confusion. Nonetheless my deepest, most primitive, neurological stem region was able to immediately recognise one thing: the First Class space on the BKK-NRT flight was now open.

There was no option, I was going to have to go on a charm offensive with a USDM agent – immediately.

I called up USDM, full of hope. The first agent instantly said ‘no dice’, she said something about changing my destination to NRT and this prohibiting me from staying there again on my return.
Didn’t even try to argue.
HUCA .

The next agent was helpful, spent an hour re-confirming all my flights, was about to take payment for the change fee… and the phone cut out.
Curse you Skype, curse you to hell.

2 hours since my last drink… I was just about ready to start drinking all over again.

One final try.

routing – legal
change fee – $150
change in taxes – $14
tickets issued immediately.

Happy dance.