wandering amphibia

A few new successful bookings

Sometimes people ask me if I commercially help people book reward travel. My answer is usually yes – and I take points as payment, rather than cash, as I feel points are worth more than dollars to me (some people might think me insane, but whatever).

Just helped two friends book the following tickets.

The first one flies YUL-PHL-ZRH-DXB, stop, DXB-PEK (overnight in Beijing)-HND-OKJ (Okayama, Japan) – destination. The return begins in Osaka and goes ITM-NRT-IST-VKO, stop, then DME-ZRH-YUL for the return leg. $230 in taxes. 99 miles under maximum permitted mileage on the outbound, and about 600 miles under on the return. Not bad 🙂

The other friend was a little bit more adventurous – I think he just wanted to see as many cities and be on as many planes as possible in one go (as opposed to actually BEING in them). I booked this for him: YUL-ORD-LHR-ZRH (overnight)-PEK-HKG (destination), HKG-TPE (overnight)-PVG (overnight)-NRT (stop), NRT-PEK (stop), PEK-YYZ-YUL. $375 in taxes, but 80% of them due to the PEK-YYZ segment being on Air Canada. Outbound is far under the maximum permitted mileage, but the return was pretty tight!

Of course, this is in addition to the trip I booked for myself for next summer: YUL-ZRH-MUC-BLQ (stop, side trip to LHR), BLQ-IST-SIN (stop), SIN-KIX (destination), KIX-ICN-SFO (all day), SFO-YYZ-YUL. The return was so tight on the maximum mileage because of the SFO detour that I couldn’t even route through LAX, even though I really like the ramen at Daikokuya there… oh well. Will stay at the Radisson SFO because of the free night gained through my earlier Seattle stay!