Author Topic: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG  (Read 14211 times)

Offline MEIR613

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MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« on: November 16, 2014, 11:50:43 PM »
I woke up Friday morning with a bunch of Whatsapp texts. “Did you book yet, Did you book yet, Did you book yet.” WTH were they talking about it. Quickly enough, I go to my computer and see there is a huge Aeroplan glitch. All tickets are pricing to the amount of your first stopover, regardless of the final destination. I could have possibly come up with something nice originating in Asia, but I wanted to ticket this ASAP for a flight with a week or two, since it would be the best chance of it getting honored. With last minute thinking and needing a suitable place for Shabbos for my one and half year old daughter, I quickly thought of HKG. I’ve been to Hong Kong once before, and I knew the Shabbos accommodations would work out very well with a baby. I knew I was going to be going to LA, since I wanted to fly Asiana’s new A380 (I already had a ticket booked in May with them and canceled it). JFK-LAX would be the hardest part since they are terrible with releasing business class TransCon space, and your only option is very last minute. So after a couple minutes I found my routing. JFK-LAX-ICN-HKG-TPE-JFK (United business, Asiana first, Asiana business and Eva Airways business). A night stop over in LA and six days in Hong Kong. Total cost was 70k AC miles + $285  P/P and $125 for the infant.  Since I didn’t know if they would honor the ticket, I didn’t book hotels until after Shabbos. Right after Shabbos, I try to check in for my Sunday morning United flight, and low and behold, it worked. Yay!!!! I’m going to Hong Kong. I originally booked the Intercontinental grand Stanford under an Ambassador account with a corporate rate for 3 night untill Shabbos; and when we would get to Hong Kong I would see which hotel we would stay in for Shabbos, but that quickly changed as I will explain later.
 
Sunday Morning, we took the JFK-LAX flight. Flight was very nice and United beds were very comfortable for a 5 hour flight. When we got to LA, I rented a mid-sized car, from National, for $35 for a day, and took a Chrysler 300 from the Executive Aisle. I had a bunch of options, but I took the 300, since it has a huge trunk, and is very easy to drive. We stayed at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel near the Airport. We went to see some relatives, and got some food for the trip. Afterwards, we went out to eat with a good friend of mine at La Gondola and had an awesome time. My friend and I both had the Chai Steak with Caramelized Steak Sauce. It really hit the spot.
 
The next morning, we checked in at LAX. The lines for security must have been an hour, or so, wait, and they weren’t opening their First class security line until later in the day. We got someone from the First class checkin to assist us through security, which took about 20 minutes. We checked out the star alliance first class lounge, which was very nice, but small. The business class lounge has an outside terrace, which we lounged in for a bit. It was nice to get some fresh air. Thirty minutes before the flight, an agent came to escort us to the plane, (which we requested when we originally came to the lounge).

To be continued.

Offline ilherman

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #1 on: November 16, 2014, 11:54:10 PM »
Nice! Love how you describe everything in detail!
You can say what you think when you think what you say.

Offline VacationLover

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #2 on: November 16, 2014, 11:57:08 PM »
Thanks for taking your time I know from experience that its not easy writing up all this...  Any photos?
« Last Edit: November 17, 2014, 12:02:21 AM by VacationLover »

Online Joe4007

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #3 on: November 16, 2014, 11:59:40 PM »
Awesome!

Offline SavingsBigtime

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #4 on: November 17, 2014, 12:10:12 AM »
When was this glitch ?

Offline MeirS

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #5 on: November 17, 2014, 12:11:52 AM »
When was this glitch ?
Friday 9 days ago. It was very short lived.

Offline MEIR613

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #6 on: November 17, 2014, 12:24:43 AM »

Business class outside terrace



« Last Edit: November 17, 2014, 12:30:45 AM by MEIR613 »

Online Joe4007

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #7 on: November 17, 2014, 12:28:27 AM »
Friday 9 18 days ago. It was very short lived.
FTFY.

Offline smart brit

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #8 on: November 17, 2014, 01:04:05 AM »
Thanks for sharing this detailed TR!
Looking forward to the rest.

Offline morgs

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #9 on: November 17, 2014, 03:07:47 AM »
Nice tr so far-cant wait to hear about the rest.....

Offline Yaalili

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #10 on: November 17, 2014, 04:15:04 AM »
Good start, the outside terrace looks nice with views of la.

Online Myccrabbi

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #11 on: November 17, 2014, 06:33:08 AM »
Wow! Very nice
If u work for a living, why kill urself working?

Offline MeirS

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #12 on: November 18, 2014, 12:46:50 AM »
Nope. Welcome to DDF. Where every thread comes OT eventually.


I've been around for long enough to know that, it's just that this is a full topic, and an "interesting" one.

Offline MEIR613

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #13 on: September 07, 2015, 10:33:40 PM »
I am not the best at writing trip reports and definitely not the best at a taking pictures, but will try to finish this one up to the best of my ability. So here we go.
As first class passengers we got to board first. On Asiana’s A380 the first class section in the front of lower deck, so when you board you bare left while business class passengers go straight and up steps to get to the top of the deck. There is a total of 12 suites, with 3 rows of a 1-2-1 layout. We had the two middle seats in the last row. Each suite has fully enclosed doors which really makes it very private. One thing that I do remember very clearly was that the TVs were massive. I’ve never seen such a big TV screen on plane before. I’ve flown plenty of times first class, but this was the biggest TV I’ve seen. All in all we had a great flight to Seoul and then had a 2 hour layover in Seoul where we used Asiana’s first class lounge. The flight from Seoul to Hong Kong was also on the A380, but they weren’t operating a first class on this flight, so we were booked in business. It was a pretty empty flight and we had about 6 rows to ourselves. The seats were lie flat and since we were pretty tired we slept the whole flight.
We got into Hong Kong at about 10pm. I booked the Grand Stanford Hong Kong under my father in laws  Ambassador account. Since my father in law wasn’t staying with us they wouldn’t upgrade at all. At the end I got them to give us a little bigger room, but was still very tight. I just wanted to go to sleep and wasn’t really interested in a whole back and forth, so I just took the room and I would deal with it the next day.

Of course there was so some show going on during our stay and most hotels were completely sold it and if not the prices were sky high. I ended up being able to book the next 2 nights in the Hyatt regency with C&P and applied a DSU. During the day we did the Bus tour, peak, one or two other things that I don’t remember and a lot of relaxing. We were debating where to stay for Shabbos. The Hyatt regency isn’t Shabbos friendly and the Sheraton had no award nights and the prices were over $400 IIRC. We ended staying in the Shangri LA which is right next door to KZ. It was also about $400 for the night but we figured for convenience it was worth and bore were right. There is nothing better than eating a Friday night meal overseas and being able to walk 30 seconds to your hotel room. Since the hotel was pretty expensive and we still had another 2 nights after Shabbos in Hong Kong. I checked before Shabbos and the Sheraton had award space for the next 2 night, plus you are able to use a SNA with SPG even award night so we decided that will change to our fourth hotel Motzai Shabbos. We asked the Shangri La if we could have late check and explained the whole Shabbos thing which they already knew already they told us we cant have late check, but a bellman will come up at 3pm and take our bags to storage and we can pick them up after Shabbos. So that’s what we did, after the Shabbos meal we took a little rest and then at 3pm the bellman came to take our luggage and we sat in lobby for an hour and by then it was time for mincha (it was in the winter so Shabbos was over earlier).

Sunday night we went to the famous all you can eat JCC BBQ which was excellent as expected. I would say there are two things on DDF that are major hyped up. The JJC BBQ and the PHP. Ive never been to the PHP, but this I understand. Not something to fly to Hong Kong for, but if  you are going to HKG for the first time, I would try to get there for a Sunday night if possible.

On the return we flew Eva Airways via Taipei. On this flight there is only business class, but was great with lie flat, direct aisle access and WiFi on board. I tried once to change the return to First class on Thai via BKK, but the rep said I would need to pay more miles, since I only paid 70k for the round trip. I was going to try a couple more times, but figured it wasn’t worth it and I would just stick with the original flights.

All in all we didn’t do much in HKG, rather relaxed, lived a week in Hong Kong,  tried out four different hotels and paid 66% less for our first/business class flights.
Hope you enjoyed!

Offline Nitantnel

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #14 on: September 07, 2015, 11:03:42 PM »
Nice TR!

I am not the best at writing trip reports

Is that why it took you 10 months  :P

Offline MosheD

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #15 on: September 07, 2015, 11:09:10 PM »
Hmm I missed this glitch.
When was it?

Offline Aaaron

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #16 on: September 07, 2015, 11:17:39 PM »
You have to get this TR out of the way before the next trip, eh?

Thanks for writing it up!

Offline DMYD

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #17 on: September 07, 2015, 11:22:03 PM »


and definitely not the best at a taking pictures,
really no pictures?


Offline Yehoshua

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #18 on: September 08, 2015, 11:08:12 AM »
Wow! Thanks for finishing this TR, especially since it's about HKG where I'll be headed in a few months. I'll be missing the JCC buffet, but if you're not eating meat/chicken I've heard it's nothing special.

Offline Ergel

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Re: MEIR613 AC Glitch to HKG
« Reply #19 on: September 08, 2015, 11:50:43 AM »
but if you're not eating meat/chicken I've heard it's nothing special.
???
Isn't that true in general?
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