Yesterday, my wife and I were discussing options for shoehorning an around the world trip into our crowded schedules. You see, I had 269,000 ANA miles set to expire at the end of this month and I wanted to get the trip booked before it was too late. Then, this morning, I awoke to read a very welcome email. My 269,000 soon-to-expire ANA miles would be extended to the end of March 2023! I get a full year reprieve!
Almost two years ago, I posted my predicament. I had 269,000 ANA miles set to expire in March 2021 and no way to extend their life. In that post I discussed various ideas for how I’d use those miles before they were gone. Ultimately I decided that the best option was to book a Round the World business class trip for two. I presented my thoughts, ideas, and research in the following posts:
- My Round the World business class adventure (planning phase)
- Tips for booking ANA’s Round the World award
- My Round the World business class adventure (exploring hacks, and testing limits)
COVID struck while I was planning this Round the World trip, but in the early days I still thought that things would be back to normal by the time we travelled. Boy was I wrong! The bad news was that we had to scrap our plans. The good news was that ANA extended the life of my miles three times. Twice for six months at a time, and now for a year. As the diagram from the latest email shows, there will be a scary few weeks where the miles expire before they show up again (as has happened each time before):
This extension is awesome because it gives me time once again to plan for travel to far flung locations including many that, until now, have been closed off to U.S. travelers. Hopefully the trend of more and more countries opening up will continue.
See also: Around the world in business class for 115K [Sweet spot spotlight]
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Better take Southern hemisphere routes!
I have both my AMEX points and ANA miles just waiting to book a round the world flight. That is a major bucklist item for me. Maybe later this year I will be able to do it!
I originally transferred miles from AMEX over to ANA almost 3 years ago. I was supposed to go on a big Trip to Asia in May 2020 but COVID prevented that. I rescheduled two more times but several of the countries we were going were either still closed or quarantine policy in place which we were NOT going to do.
For 272,000 miles my wife and I were flying Business class from LAX to Taiwan then on to Bali. We booked a cheap Air Asia ticket from Bali to Bangkok but then we had business class seats from Bangkok to Tokyo back to LAX.
We were supposed to go in May 2022 but there is a quarantine still in place in Indonesia and I think Taiwan is still closed. We didn’t cancel the tickets waiting to see but I started planning a replacement trip instead and hopeing that the flight got cancelled.
My miles were set to expire. A few weeks ago I got an email that one of the legs of my trip was outright cancelled. Bangkok to Tokyo. Once that happened, I called in and they allowed me to cancel the entire trip.
But the GREAT thing is they said that they would reset my 3 year clock since they cancelled the flight. So now I have until February 2025 to use my points.
That’s great. Others have reported the same happening. Before the latest extension my plan was to book something for 11 months out that we might be able to fly and then to hope that a leg gets cancelled.
Yes Greg I would suggest trying to book something that is coming up sooner rather than later. I’m not sure which dates are available to Tokyo but any leg that has Tokyo in it probably is at a higher odds that it will get canceled.
The previous times that I canceled the trips, I probably should have waited as they ended up getting canceled anyway and I even had to pay a few thousand points to re-deposit back into my account. This was the best possible scenario as this time around I don’t want to actually book until things are at least open. I kept saying to myself, “there is NO way Japan would still be closed in X months” and it was.
It’s route dependent. ANA -TYO to BKK (and visa versa),TYO to LAX (and visa versa. the Suite! no less) have never been cancelled from what I’ve seen. I flew these routes In Jan and was worried about cancellations as many many other routes were being cancelled. But luckily these routes were always available. TYO/JFK was another route always open on ANA. Imo, now’s the time to score the awesome ANA F the Suite. Once Japan truly opens up, those seats are going to be scare as heck.
@weadasmiles – how was the situation transiting through TYO? and did you do the night 1 and 5 test n go thing through bkk govt?
To me it’s totally ridiculous and until they remove that nonsense or I hear details from someone that’s actually done it…all those Asian countries that are “open but closed” are a hard NO!
Transiting through TYO was no problem. Had to overnight layover at HND, but that wasn’t a problem either.
Yes, I did the 1 night Test & Go (Hyatt), no day 5 test and go (it was a “regular’ test on day 7)
I agree, it is ridiculous to go through all the hoops BUT it really isn’t that hard and the reward is pure gold (for Thailand anyway)
I have 32,000 miles set to expire Oct 2022. Are they extending for everyone?
I don’t think so, at least not yet. The notice said that it was for miles expiring March 31