In February, my husband and I used 140,000 Aeroplan miles each to do a “Mini-RTW” traveling around the world in 23 days. Our first flight from Toronto to Montreal in business class was what I consider to be typical for Air Canada after several years of frequent flying for work: good and friendly service, comfortable seats and on-time performance.
Our second flight, from Montreal to Zurich, was on SWISS in first class. Oh baby. First class is something else, and I highly recommend saving up your Aeroplan miles for first class travel. My husband has since informed me that all of our future travel is to be in SWISS F. Even if it’s just to the grocery store.
We had arranged our flights with long layovers in each city we visited so we could experience even more places—and truth be told, spend more time in airport lounges! Our first short stop was Zurich. Our next flight was to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines, but at 2.5 hours was pretty bad—like WestJet! There were no power plugs, awful seats, no entertainment at all and the food was nothing special. After spending a few days in Istanbul, Turkey we flew to Sydney, Australia by way of two nine-hour flights and about 12 hours in Bangkok. Our flight from Bangkok to Sydney was on Thai Airways in first class and we visited the Thai Airways spa for business class and first class passengers, which was amazing. The plane was an older model and our seats were not as fancy as you’d find in first class on the newer planes but the food and service were great. We left Sydney on South Korea’s Asiana Airlines and were in Seoul overnight before visiting Tokyo for a few days and returning to Montreal on Air Canada.
Name:
Cameron
(@c_9 online)
FFP miles spent:
280,000 Aeroplan miles
Hotel points spent:
0
Approximate fees:
$400 per person
Airline(s) / Routing:
YYZ-YUL-ZRH (half-day layover) ZRH-IST (stopover) IST-BKK (half-day layover) BKK-SYD (stopover) SYD-ICN (overnight layover) ICN-NRT (stopover) NRT-YYZ
How booked:
Over the phone
Type of award(s):
First/business class
Hotel(s):
5oda.com in Istanbul, Morgans in Sydney and Shinjuki Prince in Tokyo
Month/year of trip:
February 2011
