Here begins my next exciting Thanksgiving trip: my first around the world trip! Last Thanksgiving, I took an equally interesting and flight heavy trip that took me to Europe and Africa and even included one of the world’s top International First Class products: Etihad’s A380 Apartment-style First Class. That trip involved a wild itinerary from Venice to Frankfurt to London to Abu Dhabi to Cairo. This time around, I’m trying to simplify that a bit and spread the flights out better. Specifically, this trip will consist of three long flights and three short flights. Specifically, I flew San Francisco to London, then a few days later London to Madrid, then about 28 hours later Madrid to Seoul. After a few days in Seoul, I returned to the US via Tokyo. Unlike last year, I took all these flights alone.
Like last year’s trip, this trip started off simply enough: I had to finish a return ticket from Continental Europe to the US. That trip started with a flight from Milan to London with a 23-hour layover followed by a flight from London to New York. The return leg of that ticket began this trip as a flight from San Francisco to Phoenix to London with a 4-day stopover in London before continuing onto Madrid. Learning that you can book a free stopover in London on these types of tickets was a game-changer for me.
I then separately booked an award ticket on Japan Airlines (355 days in advance) from Tokyo-Haneda to Los Angeles at the end of the Thanksgiving week. I wasn’t sure if I was going to end up being able to take the flight, but the $50 cancellation fee seemed worth it to try to snag it since these flights are hard to come by (or outrageously expensive) otherwise. I did end up creating a trip around that booking, as you can tell by this article existing.
To get from Madrid to Tokyo, I had any number of choices. I toyed around with a Qatar Airways booking, but right when I was looking at the tickets, there were articles about foreign flight attendants being targeted in Qatar, so I decided to fly on a non-Middle Eastern carrier this time around. I originally booked a KLM flight from Madrid to Amsterdam to Seoul, but then a seat on the direct flight from Madrid to Seoul on Korean Air opened up, so I swapped to that.
I then booked a connecting flight from Seoul to Tokyo on Japan Airlines to connect me onto my Tokyo to Los Angeles flight.
And to add one more small piece of chaos, on the day of my trip, my flight from Phoenix to London was delayed by a couple hours due to a late inbound aircraft. I saw there was still a seat available on the direct SF to London flight, so I called up American Airlines and asked to swap to the direct flight because of the delay. My swap was approved, and so when all was said and done, these are the flights I had booked:
San Francisco to London in Club World connecting (with a few day stopover) onto:
London to Madrid in Club Europe on British Airways;
Madrid to Seoul in Business Class on Korean Airlines;
Seoul to Tokyo in Business Class connecting onto:
Tokyo to Los Angeles in First Class on Japan Airlines.
I then also had a flight from Los Angeles to San Jose on Delta, but that flight was neither here nor there, and I really didn’t pay much attention to it at any stage of the process.
I ended up with a total of 6 flights, 5 of which will be on the blog, for a total of around 18 000 miles of flying.
These are the trip reports that you can look forward to coming out on this blog over the next few weeks. Hope you enjoy them!
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