Confessions of a Dirt Poor First Class Flyer

The COVID-19 travel restrictions that will be put in place soon somehow made me reminisce the past 8 years of my life as I was criss-crossing the globe (more on the Asia-Pacific side though), being able to cobble all the flying mainly in international first and business class.

As a poor unemployed Masters degree holder in 2012, I was wondering how to get back home for cheap.

As a Christian, I remembered praying, “Dear God, please help me to find a way back home for cheap, since I don’t have much money on me. Erm… business class if possible, too?”

You can then conclude what you wish to conclude, based on your own religious views. Whether it was the hand of God or my own human intelligence (as a staunch Christian, I will tend to attribute it to the goodness of God, always).

But I pulled off a Chicago-Singapore flight in Lufthansa’s international first class, going the wrong way (transatlantic via Frankfurt just to experience the Lufthansa First Class Terminal, which is gorgeous, by the way), and still managed to finagle an overnight stop in Taipei to meet my friend for dinner on that same ticket. For 70000 United MileagePlus miles and US$152, if I recall correctly.

I learnt from that experience how to manipulate and exploit systems, such as credit card churning (Everything You Need to Know About Credit Card Churning), for the easy collection of miles and points, which could then be redeemed on luxurious flights in international first class. To the point where I see a business class ticket as “slumming it out”.

Of course, knowing how to get the miles for cheap (on new credit card signup bonuses) was one thing; knowing how to spend what miles on which flights are another story altogether.

Different airlines have different mileage programmes, and they will charge different numbers of miles for redemption tickets. They also do have different routing and stopover rules.

For example, let’s look at a longhaul flight in international first class. Back in 2015, when Qantas utilised Dubai as a layover point for flights going to London on the Kangaroo route in conjunction with their joint venture in Emirates, their flagship QF1 route flew Sydney-Dubai-London.

The Sydney-Dubai leg clocked in at 7400+ miles, and Qantas would have charged 144000 Qantas points + fuel surcharges + airport taxes for a first class mileage redemption ticket on the QF1 leg from Sydney to Dubai.

The same ticket on QF1 from Sydney to Dubai would only have cost 60000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles + airport taxes.

Which is why I say one has to know how to burn their miles.

So obviously I spent 60000 AA miles, and with that came a luxurious chauffeur service transport to and from the airport for free, plus Neil Perry’s Rockpool-inspired a la carte dining menu at the Qantas First Class Lounge. The salt and pepper calamari (top right picture in the image below) is a staple of the Qantas First Class Lounge and one should leave space for those calories whenever one can access the Lounge:

Of course, there was also Japan Airlines. I flew with them when they rostered their 777–300ERs with first class on the Tokyo-Jakarta-Tokyo route. They have great crew members and there was free onboard wifi for first class passengers, which I thoroughly appreciated. All made possible by Alaska Airlines for a 30000 mile intra-Asia first class redemption. Do pardon the fat face rose among the thorns in the image below:

In essence, it’s all about knowing how to churn and burn.

When flying international first class, it’s not so much about immigration and boarding as it is about all the other frills. The chauffeur services, for one. Etihad Airways used to offer free haircuts for their first class passengers at the Six Senses Spa in their lounge in Abu Dhabi (US$20 for business class passengers), which has since shuttered as they attempt to stem their financial bleeding. Thai Airways has a fantastic Royal Orchid Spa that provides complimentary hour-long full body massages for their first class passengers departing Bangkok (30 minutes and not full-body for business class passengers). I have not even visited the Air France La Premiere Lounge in Paris CDG or the Emirates First Class Lounge at their A380 concourse in Dubai, but I’m drooling too.

Other ways of burning miles include knowing how to finagle creative but legal routings (legal as in what shows up on the website for booking). Delta SkyMiles, for example, allowed me to redeem 70000 SkyMiles on a business class ticket from Shanghai to Abu Dhabi with an overnight stop in Amsterdam. I love the Delft blue houses that KLM offers to its business class passengers too:

Luxury hotels are a different story. They, too, require the use of hotel-specific credit cards. I’ll cover that in another post when possible.

But that being said, it’s been a pretty fun run, and the object of envy among others. Managing 17 different credit cards with $0 in debt doesn’t come easy to everyone (that was what I did in the prime of my churning).

I should be one of the worst consumers to banks out there. My credit score is in the 800s (for the United States) and I don’t carry debt, but I’ve managed to fly around the world just by knowing how to spend on things that I need. The returns far outweigh the product purchases. And having my Angry Bird in tow only makes things more fun.