As I alluded to earlier, I booked a second business class Star Alliance award with Aeroplan in December during the business class for the price of coach “glitch.”  Coupled with the Aeroplan transfer promotion, the award cost 50k Membership Rewards points (all from my Amex Platinum signup bonus) in addition to taxes and fees.

When I booked my trip to Sydney and Auckland, I transfered 76k Membership Rewards points to Aeroplan.  At the time, Aeroplan was offering a 25k mile bonus if 100k miles were transfered from a single program.  I went ahead and transfered an additional 24k points to Aeroplan, waited a few days for the points to post, and then transfered an additional 26k points to Aeroplan.  Fortunately for me the booking glitch lasted while I waited for my bonus points to post, allowing me to book this Asia 1 business class award (normally 125k miles) for 75k Aeroplan miles which I obtained by transferring 50k Membership Rewards points to Aeroplan.

From credit card signups, promotions, and actual flying, I’ve wound up with globs of frequent flier miles and I want to make the most of them.  Since I was on a United revenue ticket for my trip to Europe in January, I did not make use of my US Airways Grand Slam-obtained Dividend Miles as I had originally planned to.  Since US Airways places Thailand and Singapore into its “South/Central Asia” award category (and thereby requiring 160k miles instead of 120k for first class), planning a trip there using Dividend Miles instead would not be as efficient.

Since this trip was booked roughly three months in advance, scarce award availability on other transatlantic flights and fuel surcharges from Aeroplan on Lufthansa-operated segments led me to pick my routing via Copenhagen and Berlin on United.  As I have never been to Denmark and last visited Berlin in 2005, both stops were reasonable concessions to make.

A further constraint of award travel are the routing rules imposed by the airlines.  IATA-set maximum permitted mileage (MPM) figures between city pairs can be used to validate revenue ticket routings.  The MPM for EWR-TYO is 12511 miles via the Atlantic and 8084 miles via the Pacific.  For comparison, the great circle distance is 6751 miles.

On a similar vein, MPM’s can be used to validate award tickets with some carriers.  United permits the MPM to be exceeded by 15%.  Aeroplan permits a (comparatively) meager 5% overage.  Since this is an Aeroplan award ticket, these rules gave me 13136 miles to work with in each direction for travel via the Atlantic (practically speaking, this means “via Europe” both ways due to distance restrictions and the Star Alliance route structure).  I made the most of it on my outbound leg (at 12979 miles) and comparatively less on my inbound leg (at 10666 miles).

As a continuation of this mental exercise, we could validate the itinerary as a EWR-BKK award.  The MPM for EWR-BKK is 11734 miles via the Atlantic and 10648 miles via the Pacific; the MPM+5% is 12320 and 11180 respectively.  While this works for the outbound journey, my now convoluted return from Bangkok (BKK-NRT-IST-TXL-EWR) exceeds the limit at 13555 miles.

Given these constraints, I arrived at my trip itinerary:  Newark to Copenhagen to Zurich to Bangkok to Tokyo to Istanbul to Berlin to Newark.  Aeroplan permits two stopovers (a stop over 24 hours) in addition to the destination itself; I’m stopping in Zurich, Bangkok, and Tokyo.  I have extended layovers in Copenhagen, Istanbul, and Berlin.

As a result of some plans to take the Amtrak Coast Starlight from San Jose to Los Angeles not going quite to plan (I would have only had a few hours in Los Angeles to sleep before catching a plane back up to SFO so I could pick up my existing flight back to New York), I had a prepaid reservation at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara to make use of.

Interestingly, it was cheaper to stay at this Hyatt Regency, a “full service” Hyatt location, over a few nearby Hyatt House and Hyatt Place locations.  As a current Hyatt Diamond member, this translates into a 1k point amenity (instead of 500).  Further, as this location’s lounge is closed on weekends, I picked up a further 2.5k point bonus, bringing my total for the stay to about 4k points for $80 before considering the ongoing Hyatt promotion.

For perspective, a category 1 award night (in a standard, non-suite room) runs 5k points.

As one of the gotchas of the switch over to the legacy Continental systems of the merged United Airlines, the powers which be decided to reduce the distances between many city-pairs.  While some of these were understandable changes (when the airport moved but the mileage did not change) but many were inexplicable.  The Atlantic shrank.  The continental United States shrank.  The Pacific shrank.

A while back, United ran a major ad campaign in New York.  When reports first surfaced of this problem on FlyerTalk, I was unable to find any photos on Google Images of one particular billboard.  As a result, I was quite thrilled when I, bleary-eyed from a redeye into Newark, came across a sign in the concourse:

Yesterday, United announced to FlyerTalk they would reverse the mileage changes and retroactively fix flights which had credited in the meantime.

Admittedly, much of my discussion on this blog frequently focuses on very first world problems.  For example, my upgrade did not clear on my American flight to San Francisco last night.  (It’s hard to complain when I was on a $109.40 all-in fare.)

Meanwhile, United moved its computer systems over to premerger Continental’s to provide a unified passenger system.  My miles, upgrades, and reservations transfered flawlessly while they did not for others.

colpuck on FlyerTalk reminds us that if (temporarily) losing our miles is the worst thing that can happen to us, we’re in pretty good shape:

Last night while we were fretting over the system merger and deciding whether or not the world would come to and end it actually did for some. Tornadoes moved through AL, KY, and IN killing 73 people. Greg Cook hugs his dog Coco after finding her inside his destroyed home in the East Limestone, Ala. on Friday, March 2, 2012. A reported tornado destroyed several houses in northern Alabama as storms threatened more twisters across the region Friday (AP Photo/The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr.) Mr. Cook has his dog and we have our airline. We have all lost some and we have all won some. It is just a question of degrees.