"Oh, Is Your Family Moving to Japan?"

I was asked this question 3 times by flight attendants on our recent flight from Los Angeles to Tokyo.  Here is Joe's explanation (written by Joe himself!) of why we were "crazy" enough to take our family on vacation halfway around the world.

Back in the spring there was a big fare sale to Singapore on a number of airlines and since Delta was participating, we decided to take the plunge.  Coach round trip tickets from LAX routing through Tokyo Narita both ways were right around $600, which is a very good deal on that route.  We bought three tickets for Mary, Annie and me and took Lizzy as a lap child to save some money on the trip. Once we got to Singapore, we added a separate ticket on AirAsia to Bali, Indonesia.

This was a good deal for anyone looking to head to Singapore, but since the three us of had some level of status with Delta, it made it even better.  Here is how it broke down for me.
Fare was $600 with the following routing:

Route Flight miles
LAX-NRT 5,451
NRT-SIN 3,328
SIN-NRT 3,328
NRT-LAX 5,451

LAX - Los Angeles
NRT - Narita/Tokyo
SIN - Singapore

That is a total of 17,558 miles earned for the trip.  Anyone booking the trip would earn those.  Since I am a Delta Diamond member, I earn an additional 1.25x miles, earning me a total of 39,506 redeemable miles for the trip.  Valued at a penny a mile, that is $395 worth of miles for completing the trip.  If you use them wisely for domestic travel or use them for business class international travel, they are easily worth two cents a mile, for a value around $790.

There is also value to the Medallian Qualifying Miles (MQMs) that were earned.  Part of the reason I booked this was I was not certain I would travel enough to maintain my Diamond status so it is always nice to get a big chunk of those miles on one trip.  In this case, my cost per MQM (cpm) was 3.4, which is pretty good for a trip you would like to go on anyway.  There is a wide range of value placed on these, but 2 cents a piece could be reasonable.  It is worth noting that these only had value for me.  Without going into the details, these had no value at all to Mary and Annie because I gift them status (a benefit of Diamond status) instead of earning it through flying.

As a Gold, you get an additional 1x the miles instead of 1.25x, so Annie and Mary each ended up with 35,116, worth anywhere between $351 and $700.  As long as you have some flexibility for when you redeem the miles, it should be towards the high end of the range.  My general rule is 2.2 cents per mile or otherwise pay cash.

Another (small) perk of Diamond status is that it allows you to book Premium Economy seats at no additional cost for you and everyone on your itinerary.  To be clear, I am still not sure what is premium about them other than that they are immediately behind the business class section.  They are essentially the same seat as coach with a tiny extra amount of recline. They also have a bit of extra leg room.

We booked an aisle and a window seat in one row, in hopes of having the middle aisle seat open, and an aisle seat in the row behind.

So, we kinda sorta flew all the way to Singapore for a buy one, get one deal.  I would like to say "free" but since we parted with the money and only received a trip and miles in return, it really isn't free.  At a minimum, we could use the miles earned to redeem for airfare to Hawaii, so you could look at it as "pay $600 to fly to Singapore, get a free round trip flight to Hawaii."

Parts of the travel were torturous but now that it's over I'm definitely glad we did it. The girls did really well and everyone had a great time. Thanks, Joe, for planning all the travel and explaining it for all of us pea brains to understand!

More posts about the trip coming soon!