Korean Air Archives - asthejoeflies

Apr 07 2017

A quick look at Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges

I actually scheduled this article to be posted while I visit Hong Kong next week, but since people are flipping out about Delta’s latest devaluation I moved it up the queue. When I wrote about Korean Air award holds the other day, I decided to poke around and test out some flights to Europe on Skyteam partner airlines. I found that Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges run much lower than I had thought. I’d argue that travel hackers should look more and more to using Korean Air miles.

I spent most of my time looking at fuel surcharges to Europe in business class, because that’s where the real sweet spot is. 80,000 Korean Air miles for round trip in Delta business class vs. 140,000 Delta miles for the same flights, IF the fuel surcharges are worth it. Before I get into my East Coast biased research (that’s not a joke), let me say that I’m just positing that you should consider Korean Air award tickets as an option, but by no means do I think they offer a slam dunk. Some things you should know before we get started.

Korean Air Skyteam awards must be booked for round trip travel
Virgin Atlantic can also book Delta flights (but not other Skyteam). 90K RT from select East Coast cities like Boston, 100K RT otherwise, no stopovers
Korean Air Skyteam awards allow one stopover
Like with all Korean Air awards, you can only book for family members in your family plan
You can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to Korean Air

Why Korean Air is worth considering

Straight up, Virgin Atlantic presents a better value than Korean Air for Delta flights to Europe. No fuel surcharges and it’s cheaper. When you decide between Korean Air and Delta miles, you need to ask yourself whether 60,000 Delta miles (the price difference) are worth the cash outlay for fuel surcharges. For Virgin Atlantic that difference in miles is as low as 10,000 miles, so in general you’re better off with Virgin Atlantic, since both KE and VS transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards.

However, you still should keep Korean Air in your arsenal. With Korean Air, you can get one stopover, you can’t get that with Virgin Atlantic so that might make it worth it. You also need to go through the regular decision making process – do you have a surplus of X currency lying around, can you get a better deal transferring MR to Virgin Atlantic instead, etc. etc. For this post I only used itineraries that you can’t book on VS, but tons of itineraries on VS exist so I suggest you seek them out.

So let’s not bury the lede here: in many instances paying the fuel surcharges on Korean Air might be worth it. Especially if you have a lap infant since they only cost 10% of the miles instead of 10% of the revenue fare (which could be $600-$1000). Now lots of this hinges on Delta availability, which can be great for Bostonians like myself, but not so great if you live in a small city. Still, Delta business class availability for four this July:

BOS-CDG (one way)

JFK-CDG (one way)

DTW-CDG (one way)

Award availability should be similarly good to cities like London. A lot of people live in those three cities and award availability is decent from others, so don’t let people tell you otherwise. Delta sucks because of unpredictability, but that doesn’t mean its award space sucks.

Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges to Europe on partners

So before I get into the numbers, I should address that I mostly focused on business class flights. That’s because the mileage difference is way more stark between Delta miles and Korean Air miles for business (140,000 vs. 80,000). In economy, a 10,000 mile difference (60,000 vs 50,000) presents much less value.

So let’s see what we got, starting with my hometown of Boston.

So this itinerary costs you 80,000 KE miles and $513.22. On Delta:

On Delta it’ll cost you 140,000 miles and $139.76 (I chose the wrong flight for screenshot but the fuel surcharges should be the same). So the question to ask yourself: Are 60,000 Delta miles or Membership Rewards worth $373.46 cents to me?

There’s no right answer to that question. Maybe you use Barclays Arrival points to pay the $373.46, that’s different than using cash, which, famously, is fungible. But that difference came out much smaller than I had expected.

Here’s Detroit-London:

So Detroit to London in Delta business class using KE miles costs 80,000 miles and $546.59. Delta?

So Delta costs 140,000 miles and $260.66. So again, are 60,000 Delta miles/MR worth $285.93 to you?

To me, there’s no right or wrong answer here, but this definitely puts Korean Air on my radar in terms of options to Europe.

One Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharge example to Asia on partners

One award redemption that had Gary Leff downright chagrined was LAX-PVG. I didn’t search this route for my original post but I let curiosity get the best of me so I figured I’d share. Here’s LAX-PVG outbound on Delta:

PVG-LAX return on Delta:

I included both options since the rage revolves around how it costs 15,000 extra miles on partner airlines (justified rage). Anyway, this flight costs anywhere from 160,000 Delta miles and $220 to 190,000 Delta miles and $350.

On Korean Air:

The equivalent flights on Delta would cost 175,000 miles and $220. So in this case, are 20,000 Delta miles worth $200 to you? Again, just presenting the data (though in this case I personally would go Delta. But if only partners were available, KE becomes very attractive).

One Korean Air stopover example

I did mention that Korean Air offered the stopover benefit, so I wanted to share one example of how great that can be. I took a look at BOS-CDG // CDG-LHR (stopover) / LHR-BOS. Basically, visiting both Paris and London.

The itinerary looks like this on Delta:

These flights cost 165,000 miles and $327.76. You need to pay an extra 25,000 for the business class leg between Paris and London since Delta no longer allows stopovers. Same itinerary on Korean Air?

Booking the same flights on Korean Air cost 80,000 Korean Air miles and $701.24. So this time, we’re talking 85,000 Delta miles/Membership Rewards points for $373.48. A clear and present value? In my mind, yes, but do what works best for you and your family.

Final Thoughts

Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges really came out lower than I had expected. They are still at that level that would make me need to make some hard decisions, but it’s great to have another option to get to Europe, especially from the East Coast. Yes, Delta’s unpredictability sucks, but I find little use whining about it these days.

Instead, I encourage you to leverage their decent award space and book with other partners. I used to think that Virgin Atlantic and Flying Blue were the only viably realistic ones, but looking at the sizable yet not exorbitant Korean Air award ticket fuel surcharges, now I’ve got a third option. And so do you! Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to write another post to schedule for vacation. Thanks for nothing, Delta!

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Featured image courtesy of Pixabay

Apr 06 2017

How to put a Korean Air award on hold for a family

One reason I love having an Award Booking Service is it gives me the chance to book award travel. I’d love to book my own award travel, but I don’t get to do that as regularly anymore! One thing I’ve noticed though is that it’s easy for me to keep going back to the same well. One thing I find myself using for clients again and again is the generous Korean Air award hold policy.

Back in the day using Korean Air involved using a fax machine. Now that those bad boys have reached the verge of extinction, it’s much simpler to execute an award hold for yourself and your family. Let me tell you a tale of why you might want to hold an award and how to execute it.

One of the few frequent flyer programs that allows award holds is Korean Air. Here's how to use the generous Korean Air award hold policy for your family! — Korean Air has great award space to Asia (Image Credit: Pixabay)

Why hold an award?

Most people can probably skip this section, but just in case. Holding any award obviously provides a degree of flexibility. You can search for alternate flights, you can bug your wife about letting you book the tickets, etc. etc.

For Korean Air, the best and most legitimate reason to hold an award is to allow yourself time to transfer miles into your Korean Air account. You can transfer both Chase Ultimate Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest points into Korean Air. Ultimate Rewards transfer instantly but SPG takes a couple days, so you really need the ability to hold these awards for peace of mind. I’m always stressed transferring to Singapore from SPG, for example.

Creating a Family Plan

If you want to book awards for someone besides yourself (aka your family), you need to create a family plan. Luckily this has become much more straightforward now that you can do this online.

First, create a Skypass account for every member of your family. This took me about 45 seconds per person – the registration process for kids and adults is identical. Unlike some US carriers (ahem Delta!), you don’t even have to call in or send in a separate form – thank goodness!

Then, log in as the user whose miles you plan to use (or the person you plan the transfer the miles to). Go to “My Dashboard” => “Family Plan” => “Add a Member”. Then select apply online, the easiest method.

Just fill in the information of your family member and upload a document for proof of relationship (Tip from commenter Melanie: make sure name matches passport exactly!). For immediate family members this is a piece of cake – marriage certificate or birth certificate should do the trick. Also as long as your documents have both members birthdays you really only need to upload one document (if not, add secondary documents with your birthdays visible).

Note Korean Air really wants you to add family members to the family plan. So if you want to fly with a friend, they’ll probably need to book with their own account. Here’s a list of family members as defined by Korean Air (they use a dropdown list):

Grandparent
Maternal grandparent
Parent
Parent of spouse
Spouse
Brother/sister
Child
Grandchild
Daughter/Son in law
Child of daughter

If anyone’s gotten past these feel free to add to the comments. I do have one thought: why only child of daughter but not child of son? Come on, now!

Searching Korean Air award space

Korean Air has some pretty generous award space, especially in premium cabins. A paid Expertflyer subscription provides the easiest and fastest way to search for award space, but you can also search for it online using the Korean Air website. A bit slower but good enough! I’d recommend creating your family plan first because you can only search for as many seats as you have family members.

You don’t need to do this before you call but I always find it useful to have an idea of what flights have space before I call so I can feed the agents flights. I did find some discrepancies between what the agents saw and what Expertflyer showed me (some positive, some negative), so bear that in mind as well.

Creating a Korean Air award hold

Once you’ve created your family and found the flights you want, creating the Korean Air award hold is pretty painless. Call up Korean Air at 1-800-438-5000 and feed the agent your dates and flights. I’ve called a couple times in the last few days (middle of the day) and haven’t waited longer than five minutes. You probably will end up using the word “hold” but I think Korean agents call it a “reservation.” Regardless, after you feed them your flights and the confirm the availability, you get put on a brief hold and then they come back with your reservation held and a confirmation number.

At this point, ask how long the reservation will be held for. I made a couple of holds and they all will last for 14 days – shorter than in the past. Not sure if that’s the new timeline but it’s still better than the next most famous hold policy out there (AA – 5 days).

Things of note for family awards

At this point, you can complete the reservation online once you have transferred your miles over. Note you will have to submit an online form to do this. You can also complete the reservation over the phone, but this will necessitate the fax shenanigans of yore. If you no longer live in the 1990s and have since gotten rid of your fax machine, stick to booking online.

I saved the very best Korean Air feature for last: lap infants only cost 10% of the mileage, not 10% of the cash price. So if you fly in a premium cabin, instead of looking at a $1000 round trip charge you’re looking at something on the order of 6000-12000 miles. Great stuff.

Final Thoughts

Korean Air is great for travel to Asia on Korean Air metal, not so great on partner carriers. Europe SHOULD be a sweetspot (80,000 RT in business) but they charge significant fuel charges on transatlantic routes. Still, especially for families needing to get to Asia to visit relatives, Korean Air award holds are clutch and should be part of your arsenal.

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Apr 26 2016

Award Booking Tips overheard at FT4RL

So I made a rookie mistake presenting at FT4RL – too many slides! I had to rush through a few of my points on booking awards so I thought I’d share some of them here, along with a few other tips shared by the group. Nothing earth shattering here, but some good tips nonetheless.

There is coach award space to Europe still available this summer

I didn’t do an exhaustive search, but as far as I could tell there is quite a bit of award space available to Europe this summer. I searched the three main legacy carriers for four people to/from various US cities to various European cities and there was quite a bit of coach availability.

My main point here is this: if you want to travel to Europe this summer with a family, coach is your best bet. People write about flying in the front cabin all the time (guilty) but if you want to travel coach can get you there just fine.

There is even some coach award space to Asia

I searched (again, not exhaustively) flights to Taipei and Hong Kong and I found assorted coach award space for four people at low level award prices. Cool.

Delta is still the best option if you want to fly business class

I’ve spoken about this ad nauseum. Nobody cares, that’s cool. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for a heck of a lot more people than care to admit it.

Got a stockpile of Membership Rewards? Believe me about the Delta space?

Then when you find it, transfer your miles over to Air France and book. I think it was Richard Kerr (@thepointsjock) who shared that AF will wait with you online while you transfer miles so you don’t need to worry about the award space from disappearing from under you (Delta will do that too and they eliminated their phone booking fees). Transfer to AF and avoid the pesky excise fee.

Alaska Airlines is good for more than just showers

If you are flying roundtrip, you can use Alaska miles to book that Delta award space. Or book American Airlines coach space. Or book award space on a host of carriers in coach (and sometimes even in business). You might have Alaska miles leftover if you were holding out for Emirates first – no problem! Now you can fly to visit your friends on the other side of the country instead. Or to Europe.

Korean Air is a great option to Asia

OK, so they are adding change and redeposit fees in August 2017. Boohoo. Korean Air has great award space to Asia and you don’t even have to fly in first class. They have coach and business class seats too if you’re short on miles! There are enough seats for your family and they are an Ultimate Rewards transfer partner and they got rid of most of their fees. You can even fly to Mongolia from Seoul to be like milestomemories!

Be creative – lots of award programs have cool little niches

The aforementioned Richard Kerr shared some cool stuff about booking with Etihad miles but I think he’s going to write about that so I’ll just say here that…there is some cool stuff you can do. But the bottom line is, play around with some award searches or read up on some programs and you can find some pretty neat things.

You can use cash to buy tickets

Seriously! And this isn’t an option for all families, but you could always book two award tickets and two tickets with cash. There have been a lot of good deals in coach for this summer, just follow any of the big fare deal sites (airfarewatchdog, The Flight Deal, etc.) and then see if they work for you. You can even offset the overall cost with award tickets if they match up to the same flights.

Hat tip to milenomics for this huge breaking news!

You can use cash to hire someone to do all this work for you

A lot of my talk was about finding balance in our lives as our families get bigger. If I want quality time with my family that means less time running out to various stores, less time blogging, and less time searching for award space (my favorite thing to do).

If you don’t have the time, there’s no shame in paying someone to do the work for you. Go spend an hour playing with your kids instead!

Final Thoughts

I think I will write an entire post on why FT4RL was so freaking fun. But these are just some random award booking tips from the conference. None are game changing, but they all served as nice reminders to me – especially the ones I thought of myself. Always good to go back to the basics…

P.S. – I apologize for all the exclamation marks I am still on a conference high. I will do better next time.

Apr 26 2015

Using Flexibility to Find Premium Award Space to Australia and New Zealand Part 2 (Skyteam)

I wrote last week about how, if you’re flexible enough, you can use United miles to get to Oceania in premium cabins. Today I’m going to write about how you can do something similar with Delta miles, though I should remind you that Kenny from Miles4More has already written extensively about the most direct routes to Australia on miles.

Like with United, the key to finding premium cabin award space is taking roundabout routings, namely, through Korea.

Getting to Australia Using Delta Miles

Aside from the highly preferable Virgin Australia option, you can route through Korea to get to Oceania using Delta miles as well – with no fuel surcharges so the prices are good. Now that Delta has vastly improved its award search engine, you can pretty much find flights you want in business class to Australia or New Zealand (as long as you’re willing to route through Korea).

The costs of these flights are 80,000 miles in business class each way plus taxes and fees – the same as United. I had more trouble finding return itineraries than outbounds. There seem to be options with China Southern as well.

Korean Air flies from Seoul to Sydney, Brisbane, and Auckland, here are some sample itineraries through ICN (all searches for two people):

You can basically try to get to those three cities in Oceania through ICN on Korean Air from any airport they fly from. They fly to ICN from ATL, ORD, DFW, IAH, LAS, LAX, JFK, SFO, SEA, YYZ, YVR, and IAD. I did quick searches from these airports and found premium cabin space from ORD, LAX, JFK and IAD, but there was economy space from all those other airports. It’s worth searching from all of those airports if you want to fly business to Oceania!

One other thing to note – Delta has some weird blackout rules for Korean Air dates that more or less coincide with Korean Air’s peak travel times. The peak times for 2015 and 2016 can be found here.

Screenshot of Korean Air peak times you need to be aware of

It’s worth taking a look at this Flyertalk thread to see people’s different experiences regarding peak times (the short version is it seems like if a flight is during a peak period you can see it on delta.com but cannot book it).If you’re trying to book for those dates, you won’t be able to book on Delta – though you have another option.

Getting to Australia Using Korean Air Miles

You can book any of the Korean Air space that you find on Delta using Korean Air miles (obviously). The upside of this is Korean Air is an Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, the downside is it levies fuel surcharges. But it can be helpful in a pinch or if you need to fly during peak periods (which are more expensive on Korean though).

The cost to route from North America to Australia on Korean Air is 97,500 miles each way during off peak time AND , so it’s more expensive as well.

While the booking process for partner awards on Korean Air is super cumbersome, to book Korean metal it’s pretty straightforward. The biggest issue is that you can’t search award space on koreanair.com unless you have enough miles to book the award – do not under any circumstances transfer from Ultimate Rewards until you know the space is there. To get around this, search on delta.com (like above) or use Expertflyer (paid subscription).

If you find space, you could transfer miles over from Ultimate Rewards and then book. In my experience, the lag time is around two days (though I’ve seen them go through in as little as one). This makes me a little paranoid – I’m always afraid the space will disappear (though Korean is admittedly generous). If you’re willing to do a little extra work, there’s a way around this.

Call into Korean and tell them you want to book a bonus ticket (their term for award ticket). Feed them your flights and then tell them you need to transfer miles over and want to put them on hold. The last time I did this, they put the flights on hold for a month!

So that’s how long you have to transfer your miles over and book (or make up your mind). As long as all flights are on Korean Air you can just complete your booking online and not deal with the faxing nonsense necessary for partner awards.

Korean Air is pretty generous, I saw two or three business class seats on a bunch of days using delta.com. I think they might open up even more seats to their own members if you’re booking through Korean Air.

Final Thoughts

Like I said at the top, Virgin Australia is the best way to get to Australia on miles. But if everyone has booked the space thanks to Kenny’s post or if you don’t have Delta/Virgin America miles, there are still other options as long as you’re willing to go the long way around (also be aware some of KE’s business class is still angled so do your research). If you’re using United or Korean Air miles – book a stopover in Korea and hit two continents in one trip! Bottom line – though the quickest way between two points is a line, being willing to go outside the box can yield great results too. Happy booking!

Apr 20 2015

Using Flexibility to Find Premium Award Space to Australia and New Zealand

Kenny has written extensively about how Virgin Australia is a bit of a gold mine for travel to Australia/Oceania using Delta or Virgin America miles. Virgin Australia remains the single best way to get to Australia in a premium cabin, provided you have a way to position to the West Coast (since domestic space can be tough to find on DL).

Virgin Australia is definitely the way to go, but if you can’t find space and you’re willing to tolerate some extra time in business class there are other options to get to Australia/NZ. In fact, you can find space using two alliances! The key to the space? Funnily enough, it’s Korea.

Korean Air (Delta or Ultimate Rewards partner) and Asiana (United partner) both are pretty generous about business class award space, specifically on their A380 JFK-ICN routes. I’ve pointed out Asiana’s JFK-ICN award space before but noticed while working for a client that Korean Air is equally generous. The key here is that both Delta and United will allow you to route through Asia to get to Oceania.

In today’s post, I’ll focus on getting to Australia using Star Alliance on Asiana, and later in the week I’ll discuss using Korean Air and Skyteam.

Getting to Australia Using United Miles

Getting to Australia using United miles on Asiana is pretty straightforward. Sometimes, you can just find it through a straight search. For example, if you search JFK-SYD you can find a flight like the following:

Two seats to Sydney via Seoul using United miles on Asiana

You can go to Auckland as well, usually connecting through Sydney.

The mixed cabin is only an economy leg from SYD-AKL, everything else is business

However, sometimes the itinerary through Korea won’t come up automatically. In that case, search for the award space one segment at a time – ensuring that you are spending less than 24 hours in Seoul (anything greater would be considered a stopover – doable if you are booking a round trip but not on a one way. So yes, if you’re booking a round trip you could spend some time in Korea in one direction!).

After you have found the space, run a multi-city search cherry picking for the flights that you know are there (be sure to be careful about the dates you put in). The multi-city itinerary should price at the same cost as a one way, 80,000 miles plus taxes and fees.

160,000 miles is for two people, so 80,000 each (as it should be)

In a worst case scenario, you can call in to book the ticket. If you are trying to avoid the phone fee, you can book one leg online and then use the 24 hour cancellation/change policy to call in and add the segment that you want.

I searched routes from the United States to ICN and found the following:

– There seems to be decent to good business class space availability (except in December) on the flight from ORD-ICN, but it seems you have to use the multi-city itinerary search to piece it together as below. The tougher leg to find business class space in is ICN-SYD, but there are also options to connect through Bangkok on Thai

Again, the price is 160K due to searching for 2 people

– Space is great between SFO-ICN, though some of those flights are on UA metal (save 10,000 miles get a lesser product)

– Space is equally great between SEA-ICN

– As far as I can tell, JFK, ORD, and SFO all feature lie flat business class seats, while the SEA flight is angled flat

– From ICN, Asiana flies to SYD (flat beds as far as I can tell) and this is what availability looked like in Aug-Nov.

Space from ICN-SYD for Aug-Nov. 11 months out looks pretty good too

11 months out space looks really good, and there is pretty great coach availability as well. From SYD you can catch an Air New Zealand flight to NZ – usually in coach but good enough for the shorter flight.

Final Thoughts

Getting to Australia is tough, but routing through Asia can help you get there in a premium cabin. If you book a round trip, you can even stopover in Seoul if you’d like. United miles are your best Star Alliance bet here due to the lower fuel surcharges, but on Aeroplan it’s also 80,000 miles and $300 in taxes and fees each way. Though space isn’t rampant, it’s a lot better than most direct premium class flights. Also note all my searches were for two seats – you might have better luck if you’re only looking for one. Next time I’ll take a look at the Korean Air space doing the same thing – it’s even a shade better.