expired Posted by serra | Staff • Apr 5, 2023
Apr 5, 2023 7:27 PM
Item 1 of 4
Item 1 of 4
expired Posted by serra | Staff • Apr 5, 2023
Apr 5, 2023 7:27 PM
Singapore Airlines: RT Nonstop Flight: Los Angeles (LAX) to Tokyo, Japan (NRT)
(Travel 12/4-2/28, Return 12/11-2/28)$679
$924
26% offSingapore Airlines
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Singapore Air is a gold standard airline, you'll get decent food, a baggage allowance, and you even get free drinks in economy. There's no comparison here.
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I also flew Zipair back from Tokyo to San Jose. Had to pay $60 for checked in bag because I bought a few gifts and no meals but seats were comfortable. If I had a choice I would do full blown Singapore both ways because the extra fees basically kills your savings.
For example I transferred 51k points to lifemiles to book two tickets from SFO to Paris this summer. If I paid cash it would have cost $2,100 so I was getting 4x rather than 1.5.
I also transfered 70k points to Turkish airways for a business class flight from Cancun to Istanbul. The flight would have been $2,200 if I paid cash giving me around 3x.
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For example I transferred 51k points to lifemiles to book two tickets from SFO to Paris this summer. If I paid cash it would have cost $2,100 so I was getting 4x rather than 1.5.
I also transfered 70k points to Turkish airways for a business class flight from Cancun to Istanbul. The flight would have been $2,200 if I paid cash giving me around 3x.
Retro gaming. I was hunting for a good bit of retro games for Sega Saturn, Super Famicom and PSX games like Radiant Silvergun (prequel to Ikaruga), Zelda for Super Famicom, FF VI, Grandia, Vulcan. A lot of the shops in Akihabara do not carry as much as before because it has blown up to be a tourist spot so I had to go to 1 hour west of Tokyo to some place that had a huge Hard Off (it's a chain that carries old used stuff for sale), Book Off, etc. the best retro shop is either Super Potato or Hard Off. Mandarake has the best selection but their prices are ridiculous. They actually have some Book Off shops here in SoCAL USA if you try to search for them (Little Tokyo, Gardena, etc.).
The yen to dollar exchange has never been this low since early 90s. 1,000 yen is basically around $7 so I planned my trip to buy a Takahashi Telescope and retro gaming stuff. A Takahashi here in USA is $4300 while it's just 60% the price total if you buy directly in Japan. You could see the same for clothing like UNIQLO since you are buying from the country origin of the brand/company and you cut off the middle man/importer. I arrived in LAX and didn't even have to fill out or declare anything. My cousin bought multiple 3DS consoles. The customs lady who questioned if he had anything to declare just chuckled at him when he mentioned game boys and Nintendo games. Yes, I'm a SOTN fan and bought a 2nd Japanese copy of the game (Dracula X2: Nocturne in the Moonlight" is the original title). Bought a bunch of anime stuff too. Only bought one Gundam model (the exclusive one sold in Yokohama where they house the giant moving gundam). You can easily fill up your luggage space if you buy model kits, gundam PLA, etc. I probably went a little overboard with spending but it's a good time to grab what you want while stuff is cheap. I miss the 96cent per sushi dish eat outs. If you make a trip, make sure to go to KURA sushi. 15 dishes in US easily goes to $60 while it won't even be $25 while in Japan.
If any of you decide to go shopping in Japan for some pricey stuff, make sure you ask in the counter if they sell TAX FREE before paying. They just check your passport and what you pay for will exclude tax if the store does tax free transactions for foreigners.
For business class award space, you need to either be flexible (lots of availability opens up about two weeks before the flight) or plan about a year in advance. Avianca LifeMiles and Air Canada Aeroplan are my favorite programs for finding premium class flights to Asia (and they're reasonably solid for anywhere else, too). Aeroplan is a Chase UR transfer partner and you can even get a permanent 10% transfer bonus with their new Aeroplan card, and they allow you to add stopovers to any itinerary for 5k points.
Getting some decent sleep on a 12 hour transpacific flight can really help you beat the jetlag and hit the ground running instead of burning a day being exhausted.
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But there are many ways to get more value out of those points and learning about transfer partners is well worth your time, IMO. Premium flight redemptions are my preferred way to spend them. My 180k trip (LAX -> SIN -> BKK -> LAX) is definitely more expensive than this one, which would be under 50k points, but if you paid cash for those tickets it would be $4,650 for the cheapest business class fare I can find (which is on a lower tier airline, Phillipines Air, and involves wasting extra time with stops in Manila). Booking them on the airlines I booked would cost between $6,200 (EVA) and $7,100 (Singapore). Depending on which value you go with, I got between 2.55 cents and 3.94 cents per point. And I could have added another stopover on the way home for 5k more points (Taipei and Tokyo were both available), if I had the time to spend in three cities. You can also use stopover routing to make some amazing journeys, like flying from the east coast to Europe and then going on to Africa.
I won't fly transpacific in coach, because I can't get a reasonable amount of sleep doing that, but I probably would have done it 20 years ago. If flying business class isn't for you, I'd suggest looking at hotel prices and considering transfers to Hyatt. Sometimes you can find award nights as cheap as 6k, and I really considered spending 15k a night in Tokyo to get a room at a Hyatt Regency instead of one of the econobox rooms that make up the vast majority of Tokyo's hotel room inventory. A comparable room will cost you at least $300/night in most cases.
But if you're looking to travel on the cheap, then this is a good price and you can certainly justify spending points at 1.5x on it. Personally, I'd just rather pay cash for this one (especially since it's $33 less that way) and save my points for the big splurges.
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