iPhone 14 Pro | f1.78 1/9804

One of the mountains (not the Matterhorn) in Zermatt, Switzerland

iPhone 14 Pro | f1.78 1/10753

View of Sapporo from Teine Ski Resort

This is a neurotic documentation of my (+ my sister’s) trip to Switzerland and Japan. 🤓

  • Planning date: Nov 2024
  • Trip date: Jan 2025

Summary

My bookings:

Date Flight Cabin Airline Points Fees Booking ~Ticket Cost
Xcpp* (Ticket Cost * 100) / (Points + Fees * 1.2 * 100)
Remarks
Change Fee* Moved dates from 1/9 to 1/8
$69 AP
1/08 JFK-ZRH J LX 92,500 $133 AP $7000 6.3
💡 During check-in, Swiss offered Business to First
upgrades for $1940 USD and $1940 CHF, respectively.
I took it for the ZRH-NRT leg :-)
1/12 ZRH-NRT F LX $2,138 $16000
1/15 HND-HKD Y NH 7,000 $5.60 UA $200 2.6
1/25 AKJ-HND J JL 0 $0 JL $106
1/26 NRT-ORD F NH
61,000* VS 40% Xfer Bonus from MR
$233 VS $12000 13.5
💡 Very lucky to get this booking. I called on Christmas day
with <15 min wait time. Points transferred and booked
within 10 minutes.
1/26 ORD-JFK Y B6
5400* Jetblue card 10% rebate
$5.60 B6 $120 1.97
1/29 CTS-HND J JL 75,000 $37.5 AS
💡 Originally, I planned to fly to the US around 1/29, then directly to MEX
for a wedding.
I changed this flight ~3 times, first connecting in LAX,
then connecting to DFW.
The DFW flight would have been great, since I could try
JAL's new A350 business class
Luckily, I found the ANA F flight, so JL will have to wait.
1/29 HND-DFW J JL
165900 $2621 $35426 7.37

Cathy’s flights.

Date Flight Cabin Airline Points Fees Booking ~Ticket Cost Xcpp Remarks
1/6 HNL-NRT PY JL 40,000 $18.10 AS $1,278 3.03
1/15 HND-HKD Y NH 7,000 $5.60 UA $200
1/25 AKJ-HND J JL 75,000 $62 AS $4,400 5.35
HND-SFO J JL
1/23 AKJ-HND J JL 75,000
$62* Alaska has a non-refundable partner
booking fee of $12.50 per booking.

There is an IT quirk where you can't
make flight changes online, so either
call or cancel and book online.
I usually did the latter.
AS
💡 JL has unpredictable married segment
availability. I would check every couple
days for a segment with a direct flight
NRT/HND-SFO to open up.
HND-LAX J JL
LAX-SFO Y JL
1/06 HNL-NRT Y 30200 $0 QF
💡 Qantas has a 6,000 point cancellation fee,
plus its chart is relatively expensive
For the future, I'd be more careful
122000 $147.7 $5878 4.06

Booking Details

Inbound

After a couple days of browsing, I found the following flights on Aeroplan for 87,500 points. I was particularly excited to try Singapore Airlines business class.

Then, I found out about Air Canada’s great stopover policy. You can add 1 stopover on most tickets as a multi-city/stopover booking for 5,000 points. I figured, let’s break up the trip and add skiing in Switzerland.

Unfortunately, since I did not book the flex ticket for free changes, I paid a ~100 CAD change fee.

Swiss business class, at least at the time of booking, is quite easy to find year round.

Swiss First Class, on the other hand, is much harder to book. No other programs other than Swiss can book it with points, and it commands a steep $16k price tag. I’ve heard of bloggers being able to upgrade their flight at check-in. Maybe I’d try that out, because when else am I going to try it?

For Cathy, since she was already going to be in Hawaii, I booked her JL economy via Qantas for ~30k points. Later, I found premium economy availability for 40k points and switched her onto that.

Outbound

Initially, I wanted to find a way to Mexico around ~1/29 for a friend’s wedding.

ANA flies NRT/MEX. However, there was no availability, and historically it seems they never fly their new cabin on this route.

The best option with availability seemed to be Japan Airlines. I was able to find reasonably plentiful availability on married segments, such as (Some city in Japan)-(HND/NRT)-(USA)

  • Since we are going to be in Hokkaido, finding a flight starting in AKJ/CTS was ideal.
  • I booked CTS-HND-DFW, with the added plus of being able to fly the new JL A350 business class seat.
  • This cost 75,000 Alaska miles, which is transferable from Amex via Hawaiian Airlines.
  • As I was monitoring this daily, I also found availability for AKJ-HND-LAX, ITM-HND-SFO, etc.
  • Changing the flights is relatively easy. You can’t change it on the website due to Alaska IT - your options are:
    • call/text Alaska to help them change it for you
    • cancel the flight online and book it after points redeposit. This will lose you the $12.50 nonrefundable partner booking fee.
  • I did the second option several times… and that partner booking fee adds up.

Later, through seats.aero alerts, I was able to book ANA First Class NRT-ORD on Virgin Atlantic for 61,000 Amex points (after a 40% transfer bonus)!

Here’s what the final itinerary looks like!