Planning for the Asia legs of the trip was probably the most complicated due to having so many choices to start and end. On my last post, I had already booked my trans-Pacific flights from LAX to Tokyo with a stopover in Honolulu. This next part details the remaining flights on my planned trip.
For the next segment of flights, I had a list of possible countries we could visit other than Japan because we were in East Asia and surmised that it would be a very long time before I would have a chance to go on a international trek. Given that Vivian and I had less than 3 weeks to spend in Asia or Japan, I began to look for flights in and out of Japan but mostly through Osaka Kansai Airport because of the low-cost air carrier Peach Aviation which flew to Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan.
I also looked at alternatives using Google Flights and building complicated multi-city flight segments to see if anything would be cheaper. I juggled with Tokyo Haneda (HND), Tokyo Narita (NRT),Osaka Kansai (KIX), Seoul Incheon (ICN), Seoul Gimpo (GMP), Taipei Songshan (TSA), Taipei Taoyuan (TPE), and Hong Kong (HKG). I also wanted to travel to Southeast Asia but I was already pushing it with Vivian from country hopping too much. And so the farthest south we would head to was Hong Kong.
After playing around with several multi-city flights with Chase Ultimate Rewards Travel, I found a really great deal with Korean Air considering that Google Flights and the Korean Air website did not show the pricing for multi-city itineraries. I really considered using a low cost air carrier to fly but booking all the flight segments on one itinerary saves time and hassle with ticketing and baggage check-in would at least be included with flying on major airlines.
$348.40 for 3 segments or technically 4 if you count the stopover. Currently each segment of the flights are:
- HND-ICN — ¥46,380 JPY = $386.76 USD
- ICN-HKG — ₩368,500 KRW = $335.75 USD
- TPE-ICN-KIX — $10,117 TWD = $329.06 USD
In total would cost approximately $1051.57 if I booked them individually, so that’s a saving of around $700 on flights per person! Since I’m getting two tickets, I basically save at least $1400 on flights. The foreign exchange rate on the day of purchase also affected how much I would be paying considering that the same ticket on Chase’s Travel Portal would cost approximately $355 on May 13 or a $7 increase.
Now I considered using Chase UR points to pay for these but decided against it because I wanted to use the rest of my UR points for Hyatt hotels stays throughout the trip and paying for this trip would earn 3x points since I was booking it on Chase’s Travel Portal. Plus I would get all the travel protection that comes with paying the travel on my Chase Sapphire Preferred.
Now this last flights segment I had to book was from Hong Kong to Taipei. And there is only one reason that it was with EVA Air: Vivian wanted to fly on a Hello Kitty jet.
Now I could have spent 4,500(Economy) to 19,000(First) UR points per person on a British Airways reward partner flight to fly that segment but I realized that it would be a very long time before Vivian would get another chance to fly on a Hello Kitty jet.
Looking at the Route Maps for the correct flight number, BR858 was the only flight that would have the Hello Kitty jet. After looking on Google Flights of the day by day changes, the price of this flight never changes beyond HK$1,296 for the cheapest one. The only thing that irked me about this flight was the time that was available for the Hello Kitty jet. This flight left at 8:55PM and would land at 10:40PM! And there was no way around this because the Hello Kitty jet BR857 lands at 7:55PM. So if there’s any delays from the morning of the Hello Kitty jet, we would be getting the brunt of the delays.
Looking at the flights on EVA Air’s website, you’d notice all the prices have no differences beyond the fare class and BR858 is the last flight on the list. And using the website’s foreign conversion rate, it is about $167. The Hong Kong Dollar’s conversion rate is very stable since it’s pegged to the US Dollar at HK$7.75-7.85 and therefore the USD price won’t vary as dramatic as with the Korean Air flights.
Now when I tried looking for a cheaper price for the same flight, all flight booking sites were much more expensive no matter where I looked so the only way that I could get it cheaper was directly with EVA Air.
Interestingly, when I signed up for EVA Air’s Infinity Mileagelands frequent flyer program, I was given 1,000 from what I assume as a sign-up bonus. Although 1,000 miles is minuscule (saving HK$68), it’s still about $8.77 USD off the original ticket price. And my ticket after going through the foreign exchange rate became $158.46 per ticket. I have no idea how the foreign exchange rate and miles factored into this price but in the end, I actually saved $10 per ticket off the actual original price through EVA Air.
With all the flights booked for the trip, that only leaves where I’ll be staying and what Vivian and I plan to do while we’re at all those places! And I will post those details when it happens in September so stay tuned!
