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Is This the Craziest Aeroplan Trip Ever Booked?
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40 Comments
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Very inspiring article! When having these many layovers, wouldn’t the airport fees add up pretty significantly? Also, at the layover airport, did you need to check yourself in again after entering the country?
Yes, the airport taxes is how the total taxes and fees on this itinerary came to $437.40. Ghana’s airport tax was especially expensive.
Nope, usually you’ll receive all 2-3 boarding passes at the start of a sequence of flights over the next 24-hour period, and you just keep using those until you need to get the next set.
Hi Ricky, I’ve been a loyal reader for more than a year now and learned so much from your post. I even got a handful of friends following you after they keep asking me how I can fly around so often on very modest earnings.
I am kind of on high alert now that the deadline for booking the mRTW is only a few days away. I want to try out the Island Hopper UA 154/155 as well as the African Hopper that you mentioned in your Craziest Aeroplan mRTW blog post.
My goals:
– East Coast to Cancun for a long Layover
– Cancun to West Coast Africa (hopping through CKY / ABJ / ACC hopefully)
– Then making my way to IST (Stopover)
– IST through Asia to WLG (Destination)
– WLG to HKG (Stopover)
– Finally HKG to wherever I started from taking advantage of the Island Hopper UA154/155 through HNL
– My MPM is roughly 14075
Could you please confirm the following for me?
– If I book a NA/SA trip before Sep 1, I can make changes to the entire itinerary with the same rules prior to Sep 1 changes but I will incur the $100 fee for each direction thus $200 + $30 calling fee
And if you have any tips/suggestions for my crazy goals please let me know. I am all ears.
Thanking you in advance,
Jay B.
Where are your stopovers apart from Beijing? Is UA155 counts as 4 segments rather than 1?
Awesome trip. I’m working on a less stop version of the same from YVR. It’ll be my third "mini-rtw" using Aeroplan. I can’t imagine they leave the program open to such redemptions anymore.
I’d never really though to try for the island hopper with this, kinda assumed there’d be no availability cuz UA availability is such garbage often times.
How far out did you book this? I’m basically look at 337 right now and while trying to find a final flight from SFO-YVR I get stuck with like a 14 hour overnight layover at SFO cuz the only option is a 0600 departure.
I booked this in June 2018, and the trip was in Jan 2018. So about seven months out. UA availability is decent in economy class, and the Island Hopper is almost always open in my experience.
Amazing- totally agree-I would rather blow my existing point balance on a Aeroplan program that I know than take a gamble with the new program!
Exhausted just looking at the no. of stops
Omg! Ricky! I might have to copy cat that trip. Hard to top the one up Im sure! Fantastic trip and thanks for sharing!
Regards,Marlene
Thanks for the inspiration. This is a crazy amazing trip!
nice itinerary. be warned about the ACC stop, Ghana requires visa that can only be obtained within 90 days, and in home country. thankfully I verified before booking
Hey Ricky, the MPM online finder linked in this article is 404ing. I know it’s easily googlable, but for continuity of your blog I’d like to let you know 😀
You are the best kind of reader! 🙂 Thanks so much.
This sounds amazing! Congrats!!! Do you know anything about stopovers in the South Pacific? I’m looking at doing something a lot simpler, like maybe MEL<->TBU with a stop in AKL, but it says that it’s not a valid itinerary. Thoughts?
I can’t check at the moment, but I remember seeing that Aeroplan actually doesn’t allow any stopovers or open-jaws if the travel is completely within one region that’s not North America (which gets one stopover or one open-jaw). Your itinerary would be completely within South Pacific. Maybe that’s it?
That looks about right! I tried doing a stopover on a purely Asia 1 itinerary, and it gave me the same error message. Must be one stopover only in North America!
Hi Ricky – do you use a spread sheet to plan such a mega trip. I am planning a similar trip for 2019 or 2020 from YYZ, with layover in Asia and Africa, my stops are;
SCL // 10 days –
open jaw – EZE – JNB
JNB // 10 days
PER // 15 days.
Question, can I do open jaw in my first stop or must be at the final destination?
Thanks
I typically use a Notes file. Technically you aren’t allowed to do that, but you might find an agent who’s able to ticket it for you. But don’t count on it – most agents will tell you that the open-jaw must be adjacent to the destination.
Wow, this post is drawing some great comments from all sorts of travellers. Many good ideas are coming out. Its almost like networking at a meeting. Keep the comments coming people. I am getting so much info, so many ideas. Thanks so much
Hi Ricky – near the end of this article you mention that you want to set "up some ExpertFlyer alerts for those segments in United economy class in case business class opens up". Would this incur any additional costs (i.e. maybe another $30 for calling into Aeroplan or maybe even some severe change fees)? or is it really just knowing that a Business class seat has opened up – and letting them know and they’ll just "correct" it accordingly for what should have been Business in the first place?
Thank you – awesome content, as usual.
Hey Jonathan,
Yes that’s exactly how it works. If you’ve booked a journey in a certain class of travel, but have some segments in a lower class, you can call in and upgrade for free if award space in your designated class of travel opens up on that exact flight later on.
Ricky
Wow, ACC – IST – Ghanna Passenger service Charge $195.30? This is one crazy trip. Last year, my wife and I did the UA154 island hopper, ewr-hnl-maj-kwa-ksa-pni-tkk-gum-mnl, then pek-ord all for US$295.36 and I credited the miles to Krisflyer 100% miles flown. By the way I paid extra for seat 7A & 7B and got to sit next the Mechanic seated on 7C for the island hopping part of the journey.
Off topic, I think your Siberian Express to China is insane. Can’t wait for your trip report though.
Yep, some of the African nations have crazy high airport taxes, which can add up on a journey like this. Your itinerary sounds like a great deal – was it one of those cheap UA fares to Asia, and then you just took advantage of the routing rules?
And funny you mention that – for me, the more insane something seems, the more insane I’d be not to try it! 🙂
Yes, I took advantage of the routing rules. I did the search on ITA Matrix and the real trick was to go to the site “bookWithMatrix” and book it through Price-line. It had then a drop-down menu if you want to book it through Mobile or Desktop site. Here I am on my desktop computer and I choose mobile site to finalized the booking and the price dropped down to $295.36 from $800+. Why the price dropped? No idea but it helped to bring down my bucket list
Siberian Express is too harsh for me but I will stick to my next bucket list "Patagonia"
Awesome! Would have loved to hear the AP agent’s reaction when you started listing all the flight segments. Did you start the conversation with, "So I’m going to Perth, Australia…….here’s the routing…"?!
Hah! When I book things like this, I usually start the call with "I’m trying to book a very complex roundtrip" and proceed to delve into the flights one-by-one.
Good luck on this crazy trip!
Out of curiosity, have you tried pricing it out to see what you get in terms of value for your points?
I have not, since I don’t think any search engine out there would be able to price it out! I’m content with "a stupidly high value" 🙂
Drink some coffee and stay awake — that’s a lot of consecutive layovers you have to do haha. Anything more than 2 layovers really tires me out — even if I’m flying in business 🙁
And the YYZ-PER for AP mini-rtw is great 🙂
Awesome! Was just planning a rtw too and curious if you can chime in on:
YYZ-LAX-ICN-SYD
SYD-SIN-FRA-YYZ
Doing crazy research too and trying to hit as much first class as possible..
Do you have any recommendations on routing to check out the best first class offerings instead of the ones above?
If your goal is to maximize First Class, you might want to route both ICN-SYD and SYD-SIN via Bangkok in order to try Thai First. Also, Lufthansa doesn’t fly First Class to Toronto, so you’ll have to connect via the US East Coast.
Settled with yyz-lax-icn-bkk-syd-yvr-yyz business as the mrs. wanted to come! Taxes and fees about cad2013 all in. I know a bit high in fees but visiting family too… thanks for the inspiration!
How long are you staying in Perth? Are you flying to other parts of Australia too?
This seems like an amazing but exhausting trip!
I especially like the island hopper and hope to use your research to build a similar hop in that area.
Two days in Perth. No trips to elsewhere in Australia.
I’ve never been to Australia or New Zealand before, and my thinking is that when I do go, I’d definitely want to bring Jessica with me. Since I’m going on this trip on my own, though, I’m okay with a quick in-and-out stay in Perth just to get a feel for it (but mainly for the MPM).
The same is true for Africa – I’d love to visit Morocco, Egypt, or South Africa, but I know Jessica would be sad if she missed out on those places. On the other hand, West Africa is a less glamorous destination that I still find intriguing, so I figured this was a good opportunity to visit.
Get in touch if you want to brainstorm about the island hopper – there’s certainly lots of fun things you can do!
Awesome itinerary!
I guess the only way around the 16 segment limit is to book a pair of one-ways, but of course, you’d lose two stopovers that way. Still, there’s gotta be someone out there crazy enough to try it!
That would be really rough – can you imagine 15 consecutive 23-hour layovers? If someone pulls it off, I’d certainly love to hear about it!
That is one impressive redemption!! This makes my YOW-YUL-ZRH-IST-BKK-SIN-PER itinerary look positively pedestrian 😉
Hey Ricky – Awesome website btw – For the last couple of weeks I have been tinkering with the almost exact same routing to unload some of my Aeroplan miles before 2020. I’ve done some, not as complex, travel with Aeroplan miles through Asia, but your definitely takes the cake.
I’ve got a question for you, from YYZ to IST, did you book online or had to call the support centre? I don’t seem to find anything stopping through West Africa, but rather going through Cairo or Germany, which is not ideal based on the hefty surcharges from AC and Lufthansa.
If you could shed some light I would tremendously appreciate it!
P.d. Are you planning on any gatherings in Toronto soon? I was actually on a crazy Aeroplan redemption last June when you gathered here in Toronto and would be interested in doing some networking, as my friends are (kinda sick) of hearing talk about miles, points, etc.
Cheers!
Juan
Hey Ricky – Awesome website btw – For the last couple of weeks I have been tinkering with the almost exact same routing to unload some of my Aeroplan miles before 2020. I’ve done some, not as complex, travel with Aeroplan miles through Asia, but your definitely takes the cake.
I’ve got a question for you, from YYZ to IST, did you book online or had to call the support centre? I don’t seem to find anything stopping through West Africa, but rather going through Cairo or Germany, which is not ideal based on the hefty surcharges from AC and Lufthansa.
If you could shed some light I would tremendously appreciate it!
P.d. Are you planning on any gatherings in Toronto soon? I was actually on a crazy Aeroplan redemption last June when you gathered here in Toronto and would be interested in doing some networking, as my friends are (kinda sick) of hearing talk about miles, points, etc.
Cheers!
Juan
You have to search segment by segment in order to construct itineraries that the search engine won’t spit out by itself. So in my case, I searched Newark to Abidjan, Abidjan to Accra, Accra to Istanbul, etc. and then called Aeroplan to book.
The process of route research is outlined in further detail in this article: https://princeoftravel.com/blog/how-to-book-an-aeroplan-minirtw
Good luck! In terms of Toronto get-togethers, there’s the upcoming PointsU Conference in September: http://pointsu.ca. Hope to see you there!