July 14th, 2009
Trip Reports: Eli And Levi Use AA’s OneWorld Award To Travel To The Far East And Hawaii In Style!
Our very own dansdeals.com forum administrator (Eli) and moderator (Levi), went on an incredible trip to Hong Kong, Macau, Beijing, Tokyo, Oahu, and Maui.
He was even able to use the free wi-fi on AA deal to submit the report from 35,000 feet!
They used one of my favorite awards, the AA OneWorld award, to book the trip in business class.
With that award, instead of using miles to fly to a single place for a set amount of miles (for example a business class ticket to Israel would be 135K miles) you book multiple flights and add up the total flown miles to determine the zone and its cost. You could fly to Israel using a Zone 5 OneWorld award for just 115,000 miles in business class.
There are a few catches with OneWorld awards:
-You must fly on at least 2 OneWorld carriers (and AA can not count as one of the 2)
-You can’t have more than 16 flight segments.
-You can only have a stopover once in each city.
-You can only connect in the same city twice.
-You can’t stopover or connect in the city where travel originated.
With just under 20,000 flown miles, they were able to squeeze into a Zone 6 award which costs 130,000 miles in Business class. Nicely done!
Want to make your own OneWorld award? Churn the Citi AA card or Get a Starwood AMEX and start spending! 20,000 Starwood Points becomes 25,000 AA Miles with Starwood’s 25% airline transfer bonus.
July 14th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Eli’s travel diary was really nice I just have a little problem with his ethnocentrism.
“Sunday morning we headed out to Tiananmen Square. Apparantly some people got killed here 20 years ago but if you don’t care very much about that, it’s basically just a HUGE square. We walked around and walked around until we got sick of walking around, and then we walked across the street to The Forbidden City. Again, just a huge area surrounded by a bunch of buildings. Two of us weren’t so interested and were pretty hungry so we took a 30 minute cab to Dini’s, the only Kosher Restaurant in Beijing.”
Perhaps someone should have done some reading in a history book before venturing out into the world? (I’m not registered in the forum which is why I am commenting here.) Calling Tiananmen and the Imperial Palace just a couple of squares is like saying Massada is just a settlement on the top of a steep hill. IF you are going to travel read first make the trip more enjoyable. What a waste of a trip to just go and not appreciate the history and heritage of the country.
July 15th, 2009 at 12:15 am
I think he was kidding around…
July 15th, 2009 at 1:08 am
Great job on the trip post.
“Mimenu yiru vechein yasu”
July 15th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
ac, you are 100% correct. I did not read about the history of the place before I went which I should have. But, while saying that, I must also say that Tiananman is just a really huge square, knowing the history or not. There’s nothing to do there besides take pictures and buy water to keep yourself from getting dehydrated. I still recommend people do it, I just think if you are expecting to be there for hours, you should think again.
July 15th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I read how your Starwood Platinum status helped out for your hotel stays. Is there any way to get it without actually staying at hotels?
July 15th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Ha! Try buying ot on eBay….maybe. Otherwise stay 25 times.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Great report.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:25 am
so how many miles would i need to fly from new york to johannesburg to tel aviv to new york?