"oh, i'm transiting through SEA, IAH, and ORD instead. that's so much better." planning for london (january 2014)

when i booked my reward trip to singapore, i realized that i was giving up a chance to earn 19,000 status miles with a regular revenue ticket. i currently need an additional 19,000 status miles by november 30, 2014 in order to maintain my asiana diamond status, which equal star gold status. as we know, star gold status is very, very useful.

looking into the future, given that i write my certifying board exams in the middle of 2014, travel will be looking pretty sparse. so this is where the mandatory trips that i have to take will have to earn me status miles.

case in point: in january, i have to head to london, ontario for a review course. incidentally, it is after this review course that i jet off on my almost-all-business-class ticket to singapore. so i needed to buy tickets that made the most sense for me.

1) timing isn't a concern
for my certifying board exams, i don't want to have to deal with any potential mis-connections when i fly out to write them. so i'm probably going to fly directly from the west coast to ottawa because those exams are very, very important. a review course is less so. but it's nice to not have a snafu like what happened on my way to a different review course last year. in this case, i can fly out on either a saturday or sunday, as long as i arrive in london in time for the 8am start of class on monday.

2) there is a limit to how much you can spend
my friend told me about this amazing sale on westjet whereby he got his roundtrip tickets to london, ontario from the west coast for just $480. i was hunting around for price and the cheapest fare i could get on air canada was $330 all in for a tango fare. this, of course, was a wonderfully timed flight. short flight time, and barely a stopover. ideal if timing was everything.

i know that you can get cheaper, but i figure that going to a smaller centre would be a bit more expensive than the $550 toronto fares that i heard about 5 years ago. so i was willing to settle for $330 one way.

while air canada tango fares now offer 25% status miles, they still offer 0% status miles on asiana. so for $330, you could get zero status miles. if you paid $398, the following screen would tell you that you'd be booked into an L-fare.

according to asiana, all L-fares accrue 50% mileage. while air canada offers 100%, i only care about what i will get for the program that i'm crediting things to.

so for $398, you will get 1000 points for YVR-YYZ, and another 250 points for YYZ-YXU, for a grand total of 1,250 status miles.

3) if you fell short for the year, would you do a mileage run in order to get more?
absolutely i would. and so therefore, i might as well spend a little bit now on trips that i'm already taking rather than book a brand new itinerary for which i'd need to pay additional for airport taxes and surcharges (which can be up to $100 per round trip domestically!)

this is when i decided to look at united. united has great flights out of seattle, which is just a short $50 quick shuttle bus away. alternatively, if i'm daring, i can use the bolt bus with their $7 - $20 fares from vancouver.

4) how much more are the united flights from seattle?
doing a quick search, there are long many different flight combinations from seattle. so when looking at flights, there are a few rules. first, flight prices have to approximate what i would have paid on air canada. second, if you're going to hassle yourself by going to seattle in the first place, go all the way in terms of hassle. take multiple connections (with generous connection times). take the longest routes possible. maximize the number of elite qualifying points.

for example, i found these flights below:

option 1

option 2

taking a look at the two options, they both arrive at the same time. the second flight leaves a few hours earlier than the first. but most importantly, the second options offers 3,152 elite qualifying miles. this is almost 900 more qualifying miles than the first.

5) adding in the extra costs, is it worth it?
yes, my time is probably important. however, if my final destination is london, ontario, then i doubt that i'd be doing anything fun and exciting anyway. arriving earlier would not make my experience any richer.

i would most likely need to buy a bolt bus ticket ($7-$20 one way) and an overnight hotel (red roof inn with a free shuttle to the airport = $60). the total extra cost would run around $80. in this case, my ticket is $338 + $80 (bus + hotel) = $418. this is merely $20 more than the air canada flex fare, but would yield an additional 1,900 elite status miles.

if chasing status and trying to maintain star gold was not a priority, then i would be the first to fly the $330 air canada tango fare. but if i know that i'm going to struggle to make star gold, and if i know that it might involve a mileage run in the future, then the extra cost and time for these convoluted routings are totally worth the investment. i went ahead and booked option 2 above.

i can imagine the conversation now ...
"yes, i'm flying to london (ontario) next week," i'll say to a friend. they'll bemoan the horrors of having to transit through toronto, for which i'll interrupt, "oh, i'm transiting through seattle, houston, and chicago instead. that's so much better."

i love this crazy game i play.