After AAdvantage announced its devaluation, business class awards between China and the U.S. went from 55,000 miles one-way to 70,000 miles one-way. At this point, the best-value business class award between China and the U.S. is basically ANA Mileage Club. A round-trip business class ticket between China and the U.S. booked with ANA miles costs only 95,000 miles, which is an incredible sweet spot. Although the fuel surcharges (YQ) are still fairly high when ticketing, for business class the miles you save compared with other programs are worth much more than those extra taxes and fees. At the end of December 2015, I used 190,000 ANA miles + $400 in taxes and fees to book two round-trip business class tickets between China and the U.S. for my family. I wanted to share the process here.

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Background

Previously, I had only used AA and UA miles to book a few one-way economy tickets between China and the U.S. Recently, I opened several credit cards and earned a large number of miles, so I decided to do something nice for my parents and book them round-trip business class tickets between China and the U.S. for July and August 2016. At the time, I had quite a few different types of points and miles available for business class bookings:

  • Programs I could book directly with: UA, AA, BA
  • Programs available via Membership Rewards (MR) transfers: ANA, AC
  • ThankYou Points could be transferred to CX miles for award bookings

In the end, I chose to transfer MR points to ANA miles and book with ANA miles for the following reasons:

  • I had just enough MR points in my account for two ANA business class award tickets
  • For business class awards, most other programs required significantly more miles than ANA (excluding BA, UA, and AC; AA also had competitive pricing)
  • I do not live in a major U.S. gateway city (so CX miles were not a good fit)
  • My parents' round-trip itinerary was relatively fixed (so there was no need to use AA to book the outbound and return separately)

The last point was actually the most important one. While ANA miles are an excellent value for business class between China and the U.S., the major drawback is that ANA requires round-trip bookings. That makes it much less flexible than AA, UA, or AC, which can book one-way awards. So if you also need to book a round trip, ANA miles should definitely be one of your first options to consider.

Steps to Book an Award Ticket

First, here is a quick overview of the booking process. I will explain each step in more detail in the sections below.

  • Add your family member as an eligible ANA award user (see Chapter 3 below)
  • Search for award availability on the ANA website, and only transfer points after confirming space is available (see Chapter 4 below)
  • In your AMEX Membership Rewards account, transfer MR points to ANA miles (see: Guide to Using MR Points)
  • Wait 2-3 business days for the miles to post to your ANA account (I transferred on 12.1 and saw the miles in ANA on 12.3)
  • Search again and issue the ticket for your family member

Using ANA Miles to Book for Family Members

With U.S. airlines, booking an award ticket for family members is usually very easy: you just enter the passenger's name and date of birth. With ANA award tickets, however, you must first add that person as an eligible award user in your ANA Mileage Club account, and only then can you select that family member during booking.

Eligible ANA Award Users

On ANA's official website, you can directly add eligible award users. After logging in, go to Member Service-Award user registration, or click the link below for instructions:

One important thing to note: you can add up to 10 family members for free. Once you reach that limit, changing the list costs 5,000 mile. Eligible family members are limited to the relatives listed below. ANA may not verify this at the time of registration, but it may ask you for proof later.

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The required information includes: name, date of birth, gender, and relationship to the account holder.

Important Booking Note

When searching and booking, pay close attention to this: if you yourself will not be traveling with them, make sure to check the option shown below. Otherwise, your own name will keep appearing in the passenger list and cannot be removed.

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The Difference Between Family Account and Eligible Award Users

ANA also has a Family Account feature, which allows all family members' mileage balances to be pooled together and used for award bookings. What you need to be especially aware of is that adding someone to the Family Account only lets you combine miles. To actually redeem those miles for that person, you still need to add them as an eligible award user. So if your only goal is to book an award ticket for a family member, you do not need to add them to your Family Account as well (doing so costs 1000 miles each time). I did not understand the difference at first and ended up wasting miles adding family members unnecessarily.

Using ANA Miles to Search for China-U.S. Business Class Awards (Outbound: China to the U.S.)

Compared with how easy it is to earn miles nowadays—often just by completing minimum spending on a new card—redeeming miles well requires much more skill and luck. Award seats that are easy to find, especially nonstop flights, are often snapped up early. The rest depends on how well you search. In fact, the biggest trick to award searching is this: search segment by segment. If you want to fly from A to B, there are often many connecting options besides a nonstop. In general, if both A and B are smaller cities in China and the U.S., your itinerary may end up being A-C-D-B, or even A-C-D-E-B. So if you are familiar with the major hub cities that can be used on China-U.S. routes, the easiest way to find award space is to plug in those hub cities and search one segment at a time.

In terms of search difficulty, it is generally: transpacific segment (China to the U.S.) > transpacific segment (Japan/Korea to the U.S.) > U.S. domestic segment > transpacific segment (China to Japan/Korea). So if you are lucky enough to find a nonstop award from China to the U.S., I would recommend booking that nonstop option for your parents, since connections can still be a hassle. That said, if your parents are experienced travelers, you could deliberately choose an itinerary connecting in Japan or Korea so they can enjoy the premium service and food in the business class cabins of airlines like ANA, JAL, or OZ.

For this trip, I needed flights from China to the U.S. in July and from the U.S. back to China in August. This is not the absolute peak travel season (most students fly from China to the U.S. in August), but by then I could no longer find any business class nonstop flights from China to U.S. cities. So I adopted a strategy of connecting in Japan or Korea. Also, neither my parents nor I live in a major city with nonstop transpacific service. As a result, I needed to piece together the following three segments:

  • A domestic China segment
  • A transpacific segment (via Japan or Korea)
  • A U.S. domestic segment

Domestic China Segment

If you are booking through ANA, the ANA system currently cannot search Air China flights, so you are generally limited to departing from a major city in China such as Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, or Taiwan. You can choose the major city closest to you and buy a separate domestic flight or take a high-speed train for that part. In reality, domestic flights and high-speed rail in China are not that expensive—high-speed rail can be a little over 200 RMB, and flights can be found for around 400 RMB—so there is no need to worry too much about this domestic segment. In my case, I simply searched from Shanghai Pudong (PVG) to the U.S.

Searching the Transpacific Segment

The hardest segment to find is the transpacific leg, especially from Japan or Korea to the U.S. So it makes sense to start your search there.

Connecting in Japan: When I searched this time, I found that ANA’s own award search engine returned many itineraries connecting in Japan, and almost all of them required an overnight stay there. I’m not sure why, but many of ANA’s own flights from Japan to the U.S. depart in the morning, while flights from China to Japan generally arrive in the afternoon. That makes an overnight stay in Japan necessary. There are some guides online about overnighting in Japan, but after looking into them more carefully, it still felt like too much hassle. After all, the safest approach is to get a Japanese transit visa, leave the airport, stay overnight in Japan, and then take the flight the next day. So I basically gave up on the idea of connecting in Japan.

Connecting in Korea: If you use ANA’s search system directly, it will not automatically display tickets connecting in Korea. You need to enter each segment manually in the multi-destination section. In most cases, the Korea connection is in Seoul (ICN). So you can search by entering PVG-ICN-plus a major U.S. city. There is usually decent availability on the PVG-ICN segment, so the main thing you need to check is whether there is business-class award space from ICN to a U.S. city. Here, I recommend using UA’s search engine, because UA can search one-way flights directly, while ANA only allows round-trip searches. Using UA’s system, you can find business-class space on ICN-ORD (Chicago). Then go back to ANA’s award search engine and build that transpacific segment to confirm it.ana3

Asiana generally releases more award seats, so if you can’t find a Japan connection with suitable timing, or if you don’t want to stay overnight, connecting in Korea can be a good alternative.

Searching the U.S. Domestic Segment

For the U.S. domestic segment, I recommend using UA’s award search engine directly. Also, if you hold a UA credit card, you may see some award tickets in XN fare class. These tickets will not show up in ANA’s search engine at all, since they are available only to UA cardholders and elite members. So it’s best to register a new UA account to search for U.S. domestic award space. Once you find the domestic segment and confirm that your connection time within the U.S. is more than 3 hours, you can go back to ANA’s website and add that U.S. domestic segment to confirm availability.

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Since ICN-ORD arrives at night, it may require an overnight stay in ORD before continuing. So I chose to add a stopover in ORD, letting my parents spend three days in Chicago before heading to the city where I live. ANA round-trip award tickets allow one stopover plus two open-jaws, so you might as well take advantage of it.

Using ANA Miles to Search China-U.S. Business Class Awards (Return: U.S. to China)

Generally speaking, award tickets from China to the U.S. during the summer are harder to find, while flights from the U.S. to China are relatively easier. So I did not search segment by segment for the return. Instead, I searched directly in UA’s system, and after finding flights with suitable connection times, I went back to ANA’s system and filled in the remaining segments.ana5

Fuel Surcharge and Fee Analysis

The most annoying part of booking with ANA miles is the added fuel surcharge. Generally, it is about $400 per person (for non-UA and non-CA flights). So for the Washington-to-Japan segment, I chose a UA-operated business-class flight. The food might be a bit worse, but the aircraft has lie-flat seats, and it also saved about $200 per person, which is enough for a really nice meal back home. There were no UA-operated flights for the Korea-to-U.S. segment, so I had no choice but to pay that portion of the fuel surcharge anyway (about $200 per person). The final taxes and fees for one round-trip business-class ticket are shown below:

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Summary

Total Cost

This time I booked two business-class tickets, for a total of:

Without even factoring in the value of a three-day stopover in Chicago, a round-trip business-class fare between China and the U.S. would have cost around $4,000-$5,000 per person, so the redemption value came out to about:

  • ($10,000-$400) /190,000=5.1c in value

Award Booking Tips

  • Search for award space first, then transfer MR points. It’s best to transfer on a business day so the points will post in about 2 days.
  • Use UA’s search engine often when searching, then enter the segments one by one into ANA to ticket the award.
  • If you want to save on taxes and fees, consider UA-operated flights.
  • For business class, it’s best to check the seat type on each aircraft and choose lie-flat seats for maximum comfort.
  • When entering the U.S., it’s best to allow 3-4 hours for the connection.

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