Singapore, Phuket and Tokyo for 65k United miles: 1 roundtrip, 3 girls, 3 destinations
Read about how we use United Mileage Plus miles to travel to Asia and arrange three girls with three different itineraries from three different cities to three destinations in three different countries!! Whew.
I have been to almost every country in Western Europe. I lived in Australia for a year and visited New Zealand twice. In 2012, I visited two new continents: Africa and South America, with miles. Not counting Antarctica, that’s 5 out of 6 with just Asia missing.
Neither Samba for Miles nor I has ever been to Asia and Thailand has been on my list for a long time. We thought 2013 was a great year to go… and take Natalya with us!
LA to Singapore, Phuket and Tokyo for 65k United Mileage Plus miles
Our plan was to fly to Asia the weekend before Christmas and return New Year’s day. Because award seats go very quickly for these days, we wanted to be ready to book tickets 11 months out and made sure we had enough miles when it was time to book!
Star Alliance has five partners based in Asia:
- Asiana (based in Korea),
- All Nippon Airways (based in Japan)
- Thai Airways
- Air China
- Singapore Air.
This gave us many options for piecing together itineraries. According to the United Airlines interactive award chart, a roundtrip flight on Star Alliance partners from North America to South Asia costs 65k United Mileage Plus miles in Economy and 120k United Mileage Plus miles in Business class.
Now here’s the part that makes United Mileage Plus miles my favorite:
An international roundtrip award allows a stopover and two open-jaws which, as you’ll see in a minute, allows us to cover 3 destinations in Asia on a single ticket!
The three of us live in different cities: Svetlana in LA, Natalya in SFO and I live in NYC. Planning a trip from different cities can make the task easier and harder at the same time. On the one hand, we are not limited to only flights with multiple award seats available. On the other hand, we have to coordinate schedules. After researching routes, destinations and looking at availability with different partners, I finally got together a schedule for us for two nights in Singapore, five nights in Phuket and two nights in Tokyo. We are all flying on combinations of All Nippon Airways, Singapore Airlines, Air China and United.
Svetlana’s route to Singapore, Phuket and Tokyo
With United airlines, as long as you can arrange your trip into two legs and use at most one stopover and two open-jaws, then you can book it as one roundtrip. Here, the stopover is in Tokyo, which is on the way back. However, we’ve been able to get stopovers that are way out of the way like on Natalya’s trip to Grand Cayman and Cancun with miles on United and Svetlana’s itineraries to Grand Cayman, Rio de Janeiro and Canun.
Svetlana’s two legs are:
1. From Los Angeles to Singapore through Tokyo:
2. From Phuket through Beijing to Tokyo (stop for 2 days) and then from Tokyo to LAX direct
followed by
She is using one open-jaw here as she is flying to Singapore and returning from Phuket. She is also using the one permitted stopover to spend two days in Tokyo.
And the total cost for all this?
If you noticed she has no flight from Singapore to Tokyo, you’re very sharp! We’re going to have to buy flights from Singapore to Phuket, but this is actually optimal as Thai AirAsia has direct flights for $100 on Dec 24, when we want to travel.
How much did we save?
I checked the prices of tickets to Phuket. These ran about $1900 for our dates. Fortunately, the price for stopping in Singapore on the way there and Tokyo on the way back weren’t much more than that. But they are still over $2000!!! Since Svetlana is paying $100 for her flights from Singapore to Phuket and 65,000 United Mileage Plus miles + $99.10, she is saving $1800+ with 65,000 United miles.
Summary
- We are going to Singapore, Phuket and Tokyo in December!
- Samba for Miles is using 65,000 United Mileage Plus Miles + $99.10 in taxes in fees + $100 for a ticket from Singapore to Phuket.
- A similar ticket costs $2000+ so she is able to save $1800 by using 65,000 United Mileage Plus miles.
Stay tuned for a post about my business class trip!
Other posts you may like:
Hi Ms. Miles Professor, We are over 70 years of age and your trip sounds exciting. However, is it possible to leave from the west coast (we reside in San Francisco) and visit Hong Kong, Phuket, and Singapore or any combination? Really don’t want to visit Japan (too expensive). Your open jaws and stop over does not indicate if we could stay a minimum of 5-7 days in each location (we need time to recuperate from the airline trip)! Thank You in advance for any response. Al.
Miles Professor!
I am seeing an itinerary that includes Bali and phuket, I want to add a 3rd city but every combination i tried has not worked any ideas?
We are departing from nyc. nov 27 to dec 15th. Preferably 5 days in bali, 6 days in phuket.
So notice when I added a third city, I had to remove a segment between two of them. That is, we’ll be buying tickets from Singapore to Phuket. When you say has not worked, do you mean you cannot find flight availability to the city or the online multi-city United airlines award booking is not pricing them? You need to search one segment at a time. For example, with my itinerary, I’d search:
LAX-SIN
HKT-TYO
TYO-LAX
All as one way searches to get availability. Then write down the flight numbers and call with your final itinerary that follows the rules :)
Hi Miles Professor!,
So you have made your reservation via united.com website? Or over the phone. That’s would be great if you could explain more about stopover and open-jaw.
Thanks so much!
Hi Miles Professor
I’m trying to book a similar trip that includes SFO-NRT-SIN-HKG-SFO for next Nov/Dec 2014. Would like to stopover in NRT for about a week, in SIN for about 3 days, and then in HKG for about 4 days. I have a ton of AA miles and also United miles. Trying to shoot for Cathay Pacific first/business class. Any suggestions on this routing or perhaps an alternative that includes these stops in different order that would maximize use of miles?
Given that AA does not allow stopovers outside of North America and you’re keen to try Cathay Pacific, your best bet may actually be the distance-based oneworld awards. This is an option where you can be charged based on your total distance and you can fly up to 16 segments with up to two stopovers in each city. Your trip would fall into the 14,000-20,000 segment and that would be 130,000 miles in business class. American charges 55,000 miles for SFO-HKG business class just one way on Cathay Pacific. The only thing is you do have to fly two partners other than American, but Cathay Pacific and JAL Airlines, for example, from NRT to SIN would do the trick. I personally don’t have a post on this but you can read up on it at One Miles at a Time. Hope this helps!
Hi, your posts on how to book travel are very interesting. It would be valuable for us (readers) if you could elaborate how an individual can replicate (step-by-step) your bookings for their own travel.
Thanks,
Now this trip has further inspired me to grab me family and head east!! Already been saving miles for it. Now I must go. Awesome post!
Thank you!
you mean thank you POINTS! lol
How many miles do I need for 4 people to go in April 2015 to Singapore from NYC. We plan to stay 10 days and back to NYC
Hi can you still do this with United’s new award rules? Thanks!