Hello from the SFO Polaris lounge! I’m flying to Japan in ANA First Class tonight thanks to wide-open award space that happened earlier this year. At SFO, the lounges all close by 10 pm (Centurion at 9 pm, KLM at 7:45 pm), but the flight is at 1:45 am, so ANA issues $30 meal vouchers per passenger in the form of a Mastercard Gift Card. Terms state the merchant must be categorized as “food, dining, or restaurant.” It’s the same GC that United, Alaska, and Delta issue (though I hear they are sometimes Discover cards), with the same zip code of 60173. You receive a QR code and the card number, expiration date, CVV, and billing zip code. From some internet sleuthing, I found the entire billing address: 1475 E Woodfield Rd, Schaumburg, IL 60173.
TagANA
NH 8 NRT-SFO on March 16, 2018
Booking
This was the return flight for a roundtrip booking I made via Virgin Atlantic where we flew the first flight in May 2017. The points were transferred from Membership Rewards with the 30% bonus, and cost a total of 110k Virgin Atlantic miles plus $170 for the roundtrip. Divided equally between the two legs, that makes this flight 55k miles and $85. The value of the flight at time of booking was $9,920 for a cpm of 15.62. Since it is unrealistic to actually pay nearly $10k for a flight, the cheapest non-stop economy flight was $736.50 for a “real” cpm of 1.16. Prices for roundtrips are probably cheaper but let’s keep things simple for now…
I should also note that I upgraded my husband’s NRT-SFO flight because he was originally booked in business class and flew the first leg SFO-NRT in business class (it wasn’t a big deal, we were basically one row apart and the menus/experience were very similar). When I saw F space open up, I called Virgin Atlantic and upgraded for 10k miles and a change fee of $50. I am glad this worked out, as you’ll see later.
Getting to the airport
We stayed at Hyatt Centric Ginza in Tokyo, so we took the Asakusa line from Shimbashi station all the way to Terminal 1 of NRT (it turns into Sky Access at some point). The walk to the station from the hotel took about 8-10 min and the train ride took about 1 hour and cost around 1300 yen. I do wish Google Maps was a little more descriptive on how to get to the platform for the train bound for the airport, but fortunately there were signs that mentioned the airport train. The timing of this train was approximately every 30 min, and we arrived at the platform out-of-breath with about 30 seconds to spare. I would recommend checking the schedule ahead of time and giving yourself enough time to look for the platform while dragging your luggage…
A couple other options are the Keisei Skyliner or airport limousine (the 1000 yen one shown on Google Maps).
Food court tsukemen detour
Against my husband’s strong protests of cutting into our lounge time and free food stomach space, I dragged us to the Terminal 1 food court on the 4th floor between the two Departure Halls (landside) to eat tsukemen at the famous ramen shop Tomita (the original shop is #1 on RamenDB) that my friend Forrest tipped me off to as a relatively new and convenient addition to the NRT food court. I would highly recommend making a pit stop here if you are not flying premium class, or if you are but don’t care for lounge food. For us, good free lounge food such as that offered by JAL and ANA trumps the ramen, but I would not hesitate to drop by if I had been flying economy.
ANA Suite check-in
ANA first class has a private check-in suite in the airport that is large and spacious. We didn’t know about it at first, so we went to the ANA portion of the Departure Hall where an agent told us to print baggage tags from a kiosk. We did so, only to find out later it was a waste of time. Then another agent told us to go to the business class line, and when we got there, another agent directed us to the first class check-in suite. Once there, I handed over our printed baggage tags to the agent, and they gave me wet towels and offered me hard candy (cough drops). I thought that was a nice touch. The check-in suite was simple but the little extra touches did make it feel calm and nice compared to the zoo outside in the Departure Hall with long lines and having to dodge tons of tourists rolling their giant bags into you.
Security and Immigration/Customs
From the private check-in, the agent leads you to the back of the check-in suite to a private security screening. I liked this because there is nobody in front of you, nobody behind you. No need to rush and nobody getting all up in your space. Relatively minor detail for most people, but I appreciated it.
The security led us right into Immigration/Customs, for which there were no lines for the Foreigners. Sweet! We stopped by the TTP booth to ask about our status, since we applied for the e-gate program more than 3 months ago, but they said that we’re still in preliminary processing and it could take another 3 months before secondary.
Lounge
We went to the ANA Lounge, which has a business class and first class (Suite Lounge) side. We checked out both and honestly, they were fairly similar in terms of spaciousness, crowdedness, food options, noodle bar and hot entrée options, and style. The first class side had a higher quality tea and Haagen Dazs ice cream, which I did not notice on the business class side. The bathrooms have Shiseido products you can use.
The food options were pretty good, but unfortunately I was already half full from the tuskemen earlier, so all I could eat was a curry udon, which was yummy. I also had a bite of the burger that my husband ordered, which was okay, but I chastised him for ordering American food when it’s our last few hours in Japan. 😛 I am a huge fan of gyudon (the beef bowl in the menu below – thinly sliced, marinated beef brisket over rice) and would’ve also liked to order the chicken curry, ramen, and sashimi over rice (chirashi bowl). But another thing I liked about this lounge is the number of small packaged snacks, etc. You catch my drift? 😉
Last-minute shopping
I usually don’t do any airport duty-free shopping, but this is Japan and I had so many Japanese snacks I wanted! I left my things in the lounge (fyi there are no lockers) and went out to the terminal to shop at Fa-So-La and the other shops. I realized I loved shopping in Japanese airports because:
(For whatever reason, I spend a lot of time combining the Virgin award charts. I think I might be the equivalent of a travel-hacking hipster, playing with programs and credit cards because they’re explicitly not in vogue).
The Credit Card
No blog post would be complete without a credit card pitch, but given that we don’t do credit card affiliate links, some math an explanation will have to suffice.
The current public sign-up bonus is a tiered bonus, as follows:
- 20,000 points after first purchase
- 50,000 points for spending $12,000 in 6 months
- Another 7,500 points for spending $15,000 in the first year
- Another 7,500 points for spending $25,000 in the first year
- 5,000 points for adding an authorized user
Here’s a direct application link (seriously, I just copy-pasted from the email they sent me advertising it).
Let’s say you go for the $15,000 tier (probably the sweet spot, given you’re already going to spend $12,000). You’d wind up with 105,000 points (bonuses plus 1.5 points per dollar spent) for $300 in opportunity cost over putting that spending on a 2% cash back card.
The reason I bother mentioning it is that it offers a pretty good return on everyday spending, and since premium cabin redemptions on partners are consistently less than twice the miles price of economy across all partners, it can put them well within reach of most people.
Virgin Atlantic Awards and Terms
Just don’t do them. The fees are absurd. That said, if you do a one-way award ex-Hong Kong the fuel surcharges should be capped. (Note: I’m being dramatic; see the comments for a bit of discussion).
Here’s a link to their chart.
That said, their mileage terms are useful to read, since they make it **really, really** hard to get a complete picture of what’s going on otherwise. Specifically, they mention the following:
- Date changes are allowed for a 30 GBP fee, which is actually quite nice. Bookings are cancellable for a full refund up to 24 hours of departure for the same cancellation fee.
- Open jaws are allowed on VS metal, which is basically a given since they allow one-way awards anyway.
One interesting bit about partner redemptions is that it may take VS up to 48 hours to book the award with the partner, which means precious availability might be taken out from under your feet in the mean time. Because of this, you can’t make a booking within 72 hours of departure.
Unfortunately, one-ways are not allowed in general. Or rather, they are, but you still have to pay the round-trip price.
4.6.2 Partner Rewards flights, except for Virgin Australia, are only valid for round trip travel between the destinations specified by the Reward provider using the routes stipulated by the relevant Reward provider. Members can redeem one-way Reward flights with partner airlines, however the full redemption levels as listed on our website will apply, unless specified on the Participating Company page.
The two exceptions are ANA and Jet Airways, for reasons that will become clear below.
Update: Looks like all the Virgin group partners (VS, VA, VX) allow one ways. Thanks to Raj for the info in the comments!
Unfortunately, no partner is excepted from the “stipulated routes” provision, which basically means that in order to travel between two regions/cities via the airline’s home country, you need to book two separate awards (except in the very rare case when the connecting route is stipulated).
A Big Caveat
No joke, they took down a bunch of the partner charts between yesterday and today. Even archive.org comes up blank. So I’m doing this all from memory plus a very old post from Million Mile Secrets (some of the charts on there are out-of-date, and some of the listed airlines are no longer partners). So bookmark this for posterity, folks 😉
Air China
They only offer awards between Beijing and London, so this probably isn’t useful for most people. Here’s the “chart”:
- 56,000/63,000/75,000 for Economy/Business/First, plus taxes, which are going to be pesky because flying out of London is expensive.
Air New Zealand
This is a fun one. First, here’s the chart, which is up-to-date, as far as I remember from what I saw yesterday:
The first (and important) note is that Air New Zealand’s chart is one of the few that includes routes where the airline’s home country is not an endpoint, so for those who live on the west coast of the U.S., you can get to the South Pacific for a mere 60,000/80,000, and if you live in Europe, you can fly the long way from London via LA for 110,000/170,000.
It also includes two fifth-freedom routes: LAX-LHR and HKG-LHR, which is super unusual (but awesome!).
As will be a theme for most of the good partner charts, Business Class awards on Air New Zealand offer great value, even more so if you believe my one friend who will go on record saying that Air New Zealand’s Business Class is the best in the world. Award availability on the AKL-LAX and LAX-LHR legs has been pretty reliable lately, with two seats open many days, so this is a good one to keep in mind. That said, you’ll almost certainly be stuck with some hefty fuel surcharges, so it’s better to look at the award tickets as a discount for paying some portion with miles rather than a free flight.
Update: I gave Virgin Atlantic a call to try to price these flights, and they seem to have trouble seeing NZ award availability. I’m not sure if they have a separate agreement with NZ outside of normal saver seats (that show up on both United.com and Expert Flyer) or if their IT is just that broken. Please let us know if you have success. If I get through to them, I’ll ask for taxes and fees to confirm what I wrote above.
All Nippon Airways
Here are the highlights:
- All domestic itineraries (of up to 4,000 miles) are 15,000 points.
- One-ways are permitted for half the price of a round-trip, because the chart is distance-based. I confirmed this over Twitter:
@DanielTahara That's right Daniel. 🙂 ^R
— Virgin Atlantic (@VirginAtlantic) March 22, 2016
Here are the prices (thanks to MMS for the chart):
ANA has had pretty good availability to the U.S. in premium cabins, and there’s some huge value to be had, since VS charges fewer than 50% more miles for Business Class over Economy and fewer than 100% more miles for First Class. Talk about price compression!
Looking at the NRT-SFO route, which ends up pricing at 60,000/90,000/110,000, that would be $800 (relative to using a 2% card on the $40,000 in spending for the 60,000 points) for Economy, $1,200 for Business Class, and a mere $1,467 for First Class. That’s ROUND TRIP, ANA First Class!
The sign-up bonus alone nets you 105,000 points. So basically it would cost you $400 plus taxes for that award. Not bad, if you ask me.
Even better, ANA is getting rid of fuel surcharges on their own metal, so you don’t have to worry about them on these awards.
A couple of notes. First, they specifically call out a set of destinations:
Destinations include: Japan, USA, Hawaii, Germany, France, China, India and Guam
I find it strange that they explicitly limit them, but they didn’t ask for my opinion.
This also dovetails into a comment that a rep made to me, which was that they only have an agreement for NRT-SFO and not HND-SFO. This seems pretty obvious at first, since ANA doesn’t have a direct flight between HND and SFO, but the important takeaway is that you can’t combine flights across partners, with the exception of Virgin Australia connections to Australia (which is explicitly noted in the terms).
AwardFinder is a App for the Chrome browser that brings the power of many airline award search engines to one convenient place. It also adds additional features on top of the official airline search engines, such as the ability to search multiple cabins, multiple origins / destinations, save your searches, and more!
You can see a full list of features here.
Here’s an example search, from SFO (San Francisco) to TYO (Tokyo airports NRT, HND) using the ANA (NH) and British Airways (BA) search engines on October 26, 2016 + 2 days.
As you can see, I’ve found availability on multiple days on JAL and some on American Airlines. The class letters are F for First, J for business, W for premium economy, and Y for economy. You can’t actually book premium economy using American miles, unfortunately. Normally for British Airways search I just pick Business and Economy, as the actual British Airways search will cover all classes with those selections. For ANA it doesn’t seem to matter, so Business and Economy tends to cover all my bases. The British Airways engine will also show the number of seats that are available in each class for those looking to book for multiple people, but not all engines will do so. I would also suggest looking for 1 person at first before looking for multiple people to see what availability is like.
The supported search engines are ANA, Air Canada, and Singapore Airlines for Star Alliance, British Airways, JAL, and Qantas for Oneworld, and Etihad. Singapore and Qantas will show better availability for their own flights when using their miles.
You have to input your own frequent flyer info into most of the engines in order to use them, and you can do so by clicking the blue Set Up link by engines you haven’t set up yet.
I do trust the developer, but I would suggest using alternate fake accounts for the frequent flyer programs you care about.
I like AwardFinder because manually searching on multiple engines is very inconvenient, and it can lay out multiple days of availability in multiple classes in an easy to read format. At least for the ANA website, to admit the truth, I can’t even figure out how to get to the Star Alliance partner availability search anymore.
Some of the downsides is that it has no SkyTeam availability search, and can’t do calendar searches. Furthermore, since the app is doing the searches live for you, it isn’t terribly fast. But overall its very useful and a big improvement over searching day by day searches over multiple engines.
Some specific usage notes:
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