Introduction
Planning and Booking
Plaza Premium Lounge Vancouver Transborder
Air Canada Premium Rouge Vancouver to Los Angeles
Los Angeles TBIT Star Alliance First Class Lounge
Singapore Suites Class Los Angeles to Tokyo
ANA Suites Lounge Tokyo Narita
Singapore First Class Tokyo Narita to Singapore
Usually, I’m incredibly awful with posting Trip Reports consistently. This time, I’m going to try and write it live so I actually finish it instead of writing one part and then giving up. 😛
I’m the type of person that religiously monitors award space and books pretty much 11 months before departure. This is good when everything is planned, but when I forget to plan all flights and hotels, I’m in a pretty big pile of crap. I also tend to take big gigantic trips, and they tend to be intricately complicated. I haven’t listed all the flights, hotels, and lounges I’m reviewing, but with this trip (and all my previous big trips) there’d be at least 25 segments. So we’ll see how it goes.
This trip originally started pretty innocently 10 months ago when I had more Singapore KrisFlyer and American AAdvantage miles I wanted to hold, so I decided to burn some to Asia in First Class. That was before KrisFlyer become a slut and started partnering with Chase, Citi, and pretty every imaginable transferrable currency except American Express Membership Rewards Canada, so space was pretty easy to get.
I originally booked Los Angeles to Narita in Singapore Suites, and Singapore back to North America on Cathay First Class, and a free one-way to San Juan in the future with AA First Class. I had originally planned on patching Vancouver to Los Angeles with Avios, which would normally be 7,500 miles, and the intra-Asia segment with a Cathay First Award with Alaska Miles or a intra-Asia Aeroplan business class redemption with the one-way to be left for future use.
Somehow, I forgot (I probably remembered, I just didn’t book anything) that I hadn’t booked hotels or flights, and fast forward to the beginning of August there was no more Avios space, and no award space at some of the hotels I wanted to stay at.
I refuse to pay change or cancellation more than $60 (i.e. no changes for non-Avios and similar bookings), and elite status not a good investment of my money, so I was scrambling to fix my trip. In this next segment, I’ll outline how I scrambled to find flights and hotels two weeks before departure. While the end result wasn’t perfect, I think it was pretty good for booking 32,000 miles of flights and 11 flight segments two weeks before departure.
I’m live social media-ing most of this trip, so follow me on Twitter and Instagram if you already haven’t!
Next Segment: Planning and Booking
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How did you manage to book Suite in SQ? The only I know is through Krisflyer, but it is extreme difficult to collect that in Canada, and the YQ is high. The only other way I know is to book it with lots of cash.
I have lots of cash. 😉 Just joking, I used Krisflyer miles which were transferred.
Please tell me how you can apply for an American credit Card in Canada. I would love to take a SQ flight in Suite 😉
You can’t! 🙁
Please transfer some to me, and I’ll be very thankful 😉
So how do you accumulate KrisFlyer points if you’re in Canada?
You can transfer from SPG or the HSBC program. Otherwise I think you’re pretty limited and you’re better off finding a friend in the US that has AMEX or UR.