How to fly 18,446 miles to Australia (and back) in style

It's rather easy, actually: You could clean out a good chunk of your savings account and buy a First Class ticket from Lubbock to Sydney on American for $24,460. Actually, that's probably the simplest way, but also the one that for most of us is somewhat beyond our financial comfort level.

Or you can do what I did: I spent $112.95 for taxes and fees, used 210,500 miles, and booked the exact same flights that would have cost almost $25K. It wasn't as straightforward as blowing the heirs' inheritance (actually, I don't have any real heirs') because initially the mileage requirement was an extra 160,000 miles, but with a bit of persistence and rechecking and rebooking four times (no costs involved) I was able to land a heckuva deal.

While American Airlines (as well as the other legacy carriers) have increasingly turned the screws on frequent fliers, loyalty programs still have a place in the world of travel. It used to be that each airline published a mileage chart, and you'd know that you would need X number of miles to travel from point A to point B, during various times of the year, in your class of choice. No longer. "Dynamic pricing" means that the required miles are linked to how much a flight to a particular destination costs in dollars. So, there's not much transparency left in regard to what the miles in your account are actually worth. Let me put it this way: They're worth way less than you might think—way less than they used to be.

I generally buy one-way award tickets with my miles since it is easier to make changes later on (you don't have to deal with availability on the portion of your ticket you don't want to change), and as someone who has earned Executive Platinum—top-tier frequent flier status with AA—for the past dozen or so years I don't have to pay a penny to change or cancel award flights (and reinstate my miles). 

I had a general time range when I wanted to fly to Australia and started looking for flights around those days. For the outbound flight, I unexpectedly found a flight on December 4 for 95,000 miles, and I immediately booked it as the entire week before and after started at 200,000+ miles for First.

(I should explain that I was looking only at Business and First class flights for the long LAX to SYD flight. If you're willing to spend 15 hours wedged between fleshy people on the right and left, you can fly for 40,000 miles on some days, sometimes even less! I'm sorry, at age 67 I'm no longer willing to do this any longer. So, 95,000 for First was a true bargain, just 10,000 more than biz at the time.

For the return trip after about three weeks or so in Australia, right around Christmas, things didn't look so good, and I initially booked a flight for 260,000 miles on the 28th. Ouch. But all the alternatives were hitting 400,000 to 450,000 miles, and even though I still have around 2.5 million miles, that seemed like a LOT!

As I said, persistent looking and rebooking (plus the use of a free online service called PointsYeah that sends an alert when mileage requirements for a particular route and date have changed) allowed me to bring down that return flight to 115,500 miles. That's a savings of 145,000 miles, and for most people that takes more, way more, than a year to accumulate.

There were a few days when I could have done the entire roundtrip for somewhere around 160,000 miles in Business, but I decided to live it up and splurge. For most people, the terms Business and First are pretty much interchangeable, but there's a difference. On domestic flights, you can fly Economy or First—there is no Business domestically. When you fly internationally, Economy is still Economy (although there's also a Premium Economy), and the seats up front are called Business. Those are the nice cubicles that you see when boarding the plane—and peeking to the left—on wide-bodies that have lie-flat seats and have much better catering than the back of the plane, heading to the right.

International First class is a dying breed. AA has phased out most of its three-class planes (or converted part of the plane to Premium Economy, which has wider seats with more recline but is not lie-flat), and only a few routes remain that offer AA's top-of-the-line product, Flagship First.

And that's what I was able to book.

Long gone are the days of the caviar cart (Russian caviar and ice cold vodka! I experienced that once!) or the chef who'd slice the meat in the aisle and serve it piping hot out of a true oven, but Flagship First still provides a level of cushiness and service that Business simply doesn't. Does it matter that you have a choice of six wines instead of just four? Do you like the idea that the flight attendant transforms your seat into a comfortable bed with a special mattress? Do you want to change into an airline-supplied pajama?

It's heady stuff. During my 15-hour flight I struck up a conversation, in the galley, with one of three of the flight attendants who were working our cabin, all eight of us. Like I, she has been loyal to AA for more than 30 years. After initial banter about the good old days I asked her point-blank: How many of the eight pax in First on our flight AA73 were revenue? Two. Two people shelled out a shitload of money. The others used Systemwide Upgrades to move from biz, used miles to do the same, or spent $112.95 to cover the taxes and fees for this extravaganza. See why airlines are phasing out First?

So, who pays? Well, not 20%-ters like I. The flight attendant told me that just a few weeks ago she had Leonardo de Caprio as a revenue pax. And a few folks with him. Good for AA. Maybe Flagship First stays around so those schmucks among us who feel entitled get to revel on the glory of a 1%-ter. Of course, there is another universe beyond that ....

Flagship First is not limit to a huge, massaging, reclining every-which-way seat, or impeccable on-board service. At the airport, even in little old  Lubbock where most of  the gate staff know me, personnel treat you a bit differently when you're in international First. Get to the DFW airport, and upon entry into the Flagship Lounge (already heavily restricted but available to only international flights) you are personally invited to "enjoy" Flagship Dining. Understand: There are lounges with finger foods, there is the FL lounge with a nice buffet and an open bar, and then there is Flagship Dining. Better don't wear your pajamas in here. 

Does all this justify an additional price tag starting in the low five digits? For a normal guy like me, of course not. All my friends are normal people. This is stuff we saw in the movies ("Up in the Air"), stories we hear about from buddies who get upgrades ("They put me in Economy Plus!"), and things we can't comprehend ("How would anyone spend $25,000 for a night on a plane?"). 

I get it. I quite likely get it way more than you do because I know what this (does or does not) mean. It's damn nice, and I feel extremely privileged to have been able to work the system (that we all pay for with our airfares and choose with our credit cards and enhance with all those other little tricks out there) in a way that allows me to travel like a 1%-ter without being one.

I promise, the next blog post will have more exciting pics than all that food and booze crap!

Jürgen