Our first flight arriving in Phuket to pick us up and deliver us to Kuala Lumpur!
When Anna-Lisa and I decided to go on our 8 month trip around the world, one of my plans was to take advantage of this trip to use the 150,000 American Airlines miles each of us had burning in our pockets to book what I consider to be the ultimate award booking; the American Airlines Explorer Award. I will explain it more in a separate post I’ll be writing explaining how we booked these tickets, but lets just say that I’ve been dying to book this ticket since I first came across it over a year ago through this excellent post about it. Below are some stats about the booking:
- A visual depiction of the 12 flights we are taking as part of our latest award booking
Basic Stats:
12 Segments: all in Business Class (except for one short 1 hour flight in a single class plane)
9 stops in cities around the globe: (Kuala Lumpur, Bali, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Doha (Qatar), and finally Munich) If you happen to be in any of these places over the next 3 months let us know and we can see if the dates match, as we love running into friends while traveling!
4 different airlines (Qatar, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, and Cathay Pacific)
Cost:
130,000 American Airlines miles and $270 each…
…and about 3 days holed up in Krabi where Anna-Lisa and I tried to figure out where in the world we should fly on this ticket. This was actually the hardest part, since once you book this particular award, no changes except date changes are possible. We hadn’t made any concrete plans more than 2 weeks into the future on this trip until now, so this process was extremely challenging for us.
Being the travel bug I am, I also had an additional goal, which was to try to take the nicest planes and business class products possible. There’s a huge difference between a domestic recliner business class seat on an American flight from Chicago to Dallas, and some of the amazing long distance seats on airlines like Qatar and Cathay Pacific. The pictures I’ve included here show the cabin in our first couple flights; which is already very nice, but not as good as some of the flights we will experience in the future.
A good view of the crazy amount of room in business class cabin on this Qatar A330-200 plane.
As Anna-Lisa puts it, “I actually look forward to flying in business class!!” No truer words can be said. The experience really is a complete 180 degrees compared to the cattle treatment you get in economy.
My goal is to help all of you that are interested in experiencing this yourselves to do so! In furthering that aim, I’ve got a couple posts coming up on the process we used to book these tickets for those that have the miles they need. I’ll also be writing a couple posts about how you can accumulate enough miles to do this yourself!
The view at night from our hotel in Kuala Lumpur. The Petronas Towers dominate the city’s skyline
I don’t think I ever traveled in business class except once many years ago when a double booking forced the flight attendant to give me a different seat which ended up being in first or business class. I look forward to experiencing a trip like yours, and I will certainly hire you to set it up for me.