01 Feb 2015
Looking at my mileage balances, a thought keeps running through my head - is it really worth it?
There are a few schools of thought when it comes to mileage and airline loyalty, one of the newer ones being that we should ignore all of them.
It is, in fact, the most cost-efficient to ignore all brand loyalty and sign up for the cheapest flights all the time. The amount of money we can save from that is pretty significant right now, if we compare budget flights with full-service flights. Often, we can save half the money we would have spent on a full-service flight if we book a budget flight with no food and minimal luggage.
So, is it worth it?
I'm currently sticking with CX because of the service. So far, I've been watching it in a few airports and the lowest Marco Polo tier has been grouped with other passengers only in Singapore, while in Hong Kong and Seoul, they are entitled to priority boarding with the Business and First classes.
The issue now is that CX fares are becoming increasingly expensive in comparison to other airlines flying their routes and there rarely is any serious promotions. It is pretty hard for a Green member like myself to find a reason to fly CX other than brand loyalty when airlines like EVA can fly SG-SanFran for about half the price and has a decent reputation. Priority boarding doesn't count for that much relative to that price difference.
Staying Green is easy, so I may just do that; a return trip annually on CX is not a problem.
What I'm more concerned about is where I should focus on accumulating mileage. My current theory is to forget the airlines and just think about the points in my credit card. This way, I can be very flexible in where I get my Business class flights.
05 Feb 2016
So I have taken a look again at the new CX Marco Polo that will begin soon and compared it with the old, and two changes were clear:
First, members who did not get the 100 club points needed to stay Green (the lowest tier) will have to renew their annual membership by paying the US$100 fee. That's twice as high as the original US$50 that I paid a few years back.
Second, the 100 club points are much harder to earn than the 4 club sectors that we currently need to stay Green. For example, a short flight between Singapore and Hong Kong nets me 1 sector, so two return trips on economy will get me there easily. In comparison, a similar flight will only get me 10 points in the new MPC, so a return trip of this distance is only worth 20 points, ie I will need to make FIVE trips to get it. However, a lower tier Business class flight between the two airports will get me 25 points each way, earning me 50 points in a return trip, ie it only takes two such trips to stay Green.
A return trip from SIN to HKG on Economy Core (subclass M) in late Oct and early Nov costs about S$700, or just below S$600 on Economy Special (subclass L). Both M and L gets me 10 club points per flight, except L cannot be upgraded with miles. On Business Save (subclass I), it costs about $2100.
A return trip from SIN to SFO on Economy Special (V) on those dates cost just over S$1900 and earns me 35+10 points each way. Suddenly, it's clear - the new system encourages long-haul flights! This trip costs less than thrice the price of the short trip but earns me 4.5 times the number of points!
Similarly, a return trip from SIN to YYZ (Toronto) on the same dates costs less than S$2300 but earns 100 points for the entire trip. This trip costs over thrice the price of the SIN-HKG trip but gets me FIVE TIMES the points!
You know what this means? Screw the short flights on CX! I'll go to Hong Kong on budget flights and do only the long ones on CX!
But upon checking the price of a return trip from HKG to YYZ on the same dates, I discover that there is no Economy Special; the lowest being Economy Core, raising the price to just over S$2700. Apparently, flying from Singapore is cheaper than flying from Hong Kong, even though flying from Singapore requires a transfer in Hong Kong.
Absence of logic from my angle aside, this means I'm going to have to suck it up and fly CX from SG. It's cheaper and more convenient, it seems.
24 Feb 2016
So I've decided to take upon a task that may be one of the greatest in my life.
For Van's grad trip in August 2017, I shall organize a train trip from Singapore to London.
So far, two others have expressed interest in it, one a well-heeled traveler and the other the opposite. It's only been two days since everyone agreed on this so everything is still vague and fluid. However, there's already a conflict on this trip - the route. Van likes the cold and wants us to stay North in Europe while someone wants to go South like the Italian Riviera since it will be summer.
IMHO, all countries make sense in that part of the world so my compromise is to go to both in a Z-shape route.
One path is to go from St Petersburg to Finland to Sweden to Norway to Denmark to Germany to Luxembourg and back to Germany then to Austria to Italy to France and finally to London. This is my first draft route and the plan is to come up with a few more before letting them choose.
14 Mar 2016
So it's been over two months since my last post. Here's a little something: I have a sous vide machine, the bags and the bag sealer now!
Tried it with eggs to make the shoyu eggs from ramen shops that have solid whites and thick gooey yolks. Internet recipe from Serious Eats didn't work, so I'm going to have to do my own experiment and make my own chart of time vs how cooked each egg is.
Upcoming train ride to Penang will be crazy on the 18th. 8.40am JB Sentral to 9.45pm Butterworth, plus a short one at 8am Woodlands CIQ to 8.05 JB Sentral!
Not sure what I'm going to do during the ride.
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