When my son graduated from college several years ago, I offered to send him and a few friends to Hawaii using my points and miles. He was excited about that graduation gift, but apparently not excited enough to do his part: to let me know who was going and when. Fast forward several years. Now, he asked me if the graduation present was still available? Of course! How about to Japan for him and a friend? Yep!
This is the story of how I booked their flights…
My son and his friend wanted to visit Japan, but they had a narrow range of dates when the friend would be able to get away from work. My son lives in Ann Arbor and his friend lives in Los Angeles. Of course they would prefer to fly together but that wasn’t required.
My son expected to fly economy, but I wanted to make this trip more special so I was determined to find Premium Economy or Business Class awards to fly them to Japan. This was a tall order because premium cabin awards to Asia have been notoriously difficult to find lately. Still, I was confident I could make it happen…
Could I use my Singapore miles?
I had 148,000 Singapore Airlines miles that were within months of expiring. And I knew that Singapore Airlines has a flight between Los Angeles (LAX) and Tokyo (NRT). I checked for business class awards, but couldn’t find anything available. Then I checked Premium Economy. To my surprise, there was plenty of award space from Tokyo to Los Angeles in Premium Economy! Even better, the point-price for two adults came to 146,000 points — that was just 2,000 short of the number of points that were expiring! I would use up nearly all of my points without having to acquire any more points. Perfect!
So, now I knew how to get them home from Japan. The next step was to figure out how to get them there…
Could they fly from Detroit?
I figured that the best bet would be to fly my son to Los Angeles so that they could fly onward from there. But, I did check to see whether any of Delta’s direct flights from Detroit to Asia were reasonably priced. To my surprise, award flights to South Korea were available at great prices for much of the summer.
Here’s Premium Economy from Detroit to Seoul in August. Thanks to my 15% Delta cardholder discount, the price is 79,900 miles instead of 94,000:
And here’s the price for Delta One Suites in August. Thanks to my 15% Delta cardholder discount, the price is 119,000 miles instead of 140,000:
Delta usually charges far, far more for these flights. Unfortunately, the trip needed to happen during dates when these prices were not available.
Los Angeles to Japan?
I used the Seats.Aero Search feature to search at once for flights from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area to large airports in Japan and the rest of Asia. I searched for two seats in business or first class across a range of 7 days (e.g. I picked a specific date and selected to search plus or minus 3 days). Surprisingly there was a match for their preferred departure date: For 95,000 Alaska miles I could fly them from Los Angeles to Seattle in first class, and then onward on Hawaiian Airlines business class to Tokyo!
I decided that it didn’t make sense for my son to fly to Los Angeles first and then to Seattle, so I booked his friend on one 95K ticket from Los Angeles to Seattle to Tokyo; and I booked my son on another 95K ticket from Seattle to Tokyo. I’ll book his Detroit to Seattle flight separately.
Once these outbound flights were booked, I logged into Singapore Airlines and booked their return flight in Premium Economy as described earlier in this post.
Next Steps
We’re not done planning this trip. So far, I’ve booked the overseas parts. That’s always the hard part. I still need to book flights for my son to get to Seattle in the beginning of the trip and to return from Los Angeles at the end of the trip. And I plan to book hotels and intra-Japan flights for them too, once they decide where in Japan they want to go. I’ll also probably buy them a one week Japan Rail Pass so that they’ll be free to go wherever they want for a good part of the trip. And, of course, I need to get them tickets to one or more TeamLabs exhibits. Read about TeamLabs here.
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What a great story. But don’t give them Biz Class – it will spoil them forever!
😉
I hope you continue to document this, as we’re going to Japan for the first time next March/April (Biz class – yes, we’ve been spoiled!) We’re going in part because of hearing about Japan from the FM team – we had never planned to go.
No offense to Hawaii, but Japan was the way better choice in my opinion. That said, be prepared for heat.
Japns in August is a death trap!
Do not do it!
What a good dad. Awesome.
How I booked my son’s graduation present flights to Japan, the article is too informative, especially for those who want to study abroad.
I’m sorry but 73K for premium economy is straight robbery in a world with ZIPAIR. I know they were expiring points though
Not to butt into someone else’s business but you can get dynamite fares on WestJet’s YYC-ICN flight using penny points. You can even originate in YQG, which Google Maps says is a 63 minute drive from Ann Arbor.
That’s good to know, but for the dates that would work for them the prices even on WestJet look terrible
Great story. I’m glad you could help them out.
The conventional wisdom is that the rail pass is pretty much never worth it at the current prices. I doubt they only want to spend a day or two in each location.
There’s a good rail pass calculator here – https://www.japan-guide.com/railpass/ (for most people it won’t be worth it)
Definitely ask them about where they want to go in Japan though as the rail passes require a TON of trains in a short period to make them worthwhile now that the prices increased.
Yes do not get a rail pass.
I recommend doing night buses around Japan. It is a unique cultural experience.