Around the World Flight Packages

Learn how I scheduled our travel award flights around the world

What hooks it is that it usually requires advanced scheduling (and some flexibility), but it's simple to find the required uptime with enough uptime for a big itinerary. For my Erin and myself, I started to plan this memorable journey around the world in June 2016. It' s undeniable that the journey took a great deal of thought (and only a few queries about place availability!), but I had a great deal of fun putting it all together.

Ultimately, this should be the journey of a life with the number of different places we would be visiting (many of them new to us), and of course...together we wanted to try some of the best premium quality produce in the world! In the following you will find a short overview of our journey.

Expenses for travel in these staterooms were less than half the fare for economic travel on the same flight. Once in Singapore and by boat to Bintan, Indonesia for 24h. The long preparation period allowed me to be strategical and get much more for less points!

He knew we were Singapore Suites but had no clue about all the other flights...and the kid was ready for a little spike! Neither did she know that we were sleeping in Bintan or Dubai; in fact, she didn't really know much about what we had in mind for the journey! Even though I had scheduled the journey more than a year in advance of September 2016, I arranged for all my reward travel to be scheduled by the end of January 2017.

On such a complex journey - and every single case you're looking for more than one quality cab seat - this timing is common and highly recommended. I had the dream for this journey when I came to see my oldest sibling Stu, who is living in Vietnam.

As we began to plan this part of the journey, things went uphill. Neither had we seen our British boyfriends living in Singapore since they migrated there many years ago. In addition, my best man in Sydney, Australia, and our very dear ones also in Melbourne are living... You can begin to see how a world tour came about.

Besides, it wasn't motivating enough to see my oldest sibling and some of our favourite buddies again, as a point and trip enthusiast I naturally wanted to try more of the most luxury line of airliner prod. When I knew where we were going, I was on the short list of carriers I wanted to go to.

This is because I had the great good fortune to have already seen a number of other airline companies on the front of the aircraft, such as BA, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airline, Lufthansa, etc.. As we wanted to stop in Singapore, too, to fly with Singapore Suites was the right way to get there! JFK Singapore Airlines operates the A380 (the only aircraft with the Singapore Suites product) from JFK, stopping in Frankfurt before continuing on to Singapore.

The long journey means you can get the full excitement for 92,500 Singapore KrisFlyer mileage plus $296.73 per capita in tax and surcharges. It' happened since our flight: The needed mileage is now 120.000, but the tax and fee is only ~$50). Travelling to Australia from Vietnam is not a challenge, and after looking at Google Flights to see which carriers are flying this itinerary, I realised that Singapore airlines was on that schedule!

So I researched, and then the ultimative duet presented themselves. Well, there are not so many flights on which you can use the Etihad Apartment, as this special flight can only be found on the A380 (just like in Singapore).

The A380 will either return from Abu Dhabi to JFK, or you can travel from Sydney to Dubai. So we could have done Sydney > Dubai on Etihad and then Abu Dhabi > JFK on Etihad, but at the moment of the search there was no available on our desired date.

Instead I chose to look for the Sydney > Abu Dhabi on Etihad (A380) and then Dubai > Los Angeles on Emirates (one of the longest in the world!). Such a feast: Fly in the skies, spoil yourself with bubbly, kaviar, my own suites and shower on board!

There were other things I wanted to do with their Airbus 380. Since then, it's been all about making reservations for our planes. I have given you the high-level detail here, but I would like to give you 5 hints on how to reserve your own reward flight for any travel time:

Hint 1: There are different ways to plan a small or large journey. You can either choose to really try a particular item and see where it's going, or you can choose your target and then edit the flight around it (I'm happy to do that).

Hint 2: Take an inventory of your points and mileage and consider what you can earn by the time you make your travel reservation. Of course you want to prevent a situation where you have already made 1 or 2 bookings but cannot make the definitive reservation because you lack the points!

Hint 3: If you want to make a reservation soon and don't have enough spare points, make sure you know exactly what you can get for your stock. If you have Chase points, for example, research what they can offer you (and which airline they are transferring to).

The Etihad apartment, for example, only travels on the A 380, and when I look at the Etihad website, I can see their A 380 itineraries. Having found that Etihad does not operate an A 380 from Melbourne (but they do from Sydney), it means that we would first travel from Vietnam to Melbourne (to see our friends) and then on to Sydney to see our other buddies before flying an A 180 to Abu Dhabi.

This made the trip much more effective than going to Sydney first, then to Melbourne and then back to Sydney! Hint 5: I use Google Favorites a great deal to see which airline is on certain itineraries. I can then make a travel reservation from there. When I looked at how to get from Vietnam to Melbourne, for example, I simply entered this itinerary in Google Favorites and within seconds realized that Singapore Airline was an optional one.

That' s when I made the decision to go down Airport and take this flight in Bus Division - it was really that simple. There is no question that this journey required a great deal of planning...but I had so much enjoyment with it and the memory will really last a life. I was so excited to see my oldest sibling in Vietnam, to meet my esteemed buddies in Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney and to take some spare moments to spend my free stay in Dubai with my miss.

Naturally I also liked to see Erin's face every single day I caught her off guard with our next flight and goal! There is no need to be possessed (like me!) for it to work; any of these trips is possible with the right plan. Earn 2X points for travelling and eating in global restaurant & 1 point per dollars for all other shopping.