Korean Air’s 777-300ER Prestige Suite / Apex Style Seating with Direct Aisle Access
$2709 for SGN-ICN-BOS in KE Y and BOS-ICN-SGN in KE J
I recommend that all nomads have a “base” somewhere. I have my childhood room at my parent’s house in Boston, and I have an apartment that I rent year-round in Vietnam. I don’t spent all year there, but I think it’s a nice little home-base where I can keep my seasonal clothing so that I don’t have to fly back to Boston to grab my winter coat. As my weight goes up and down I’m also able to keep clothing of many sizes. Apartments don’t cost much in Vietnam, so a home-base is something I really recommend for nomads.
Now, this summer I’m visiting Boston for the 4th of July and I started looking at flights. Typically I’m able to afford business class regional flights, but flying across the world in business class tends to be a bit out of my price range with airlines regularly charging $9,000 round-trip.
Fortunately I saw something amazing while booking. I’m helping transport a friend’s dog in cargo, so I knew I had to fly on Korean Air or Delta, plus I need to earn Delta MQDs for my SkyTeam Elite+ Status.
I selected my first two legs in economy, which isn’t too bad on Korean Air’s wide bodies, and then my curiosity got the best of me. It would be $1309 round trip, but I decided to check out the price for Delta One.
(these flights are operated by Korean Air, so technically it’s Prestige instead of Delta One).
To my surprise choosing Delta One would bring my trip total from $1309 to $2709. To think about it another way, it’s $1400 to upgrade from Economy to Prestige. People suggest that $80-$100/hr is a good guideline, but the flight from Boston to Seoul is 15 hours alone, and then we have a 6 hour flight from Seoul to Ho Chi Minh City. What a great find!
This will earn me 2600 MQDs, which will put me past Delta Silver Medallion’s 5000 MQD requirement. Now I’ll need to score another 5000 MQDs in order to reach Delta Gold to have SkyTeam Elite+ status.
Delta 2024 MQD Thresholds for 2025 Status
Silver - $5,000 MQDs
Gold - $10,000 MQDs
Platinum - $15,000 MQDs
Diamond - $28,000 MQDs
This also earns me 18,200 Delta SkyMiles, plus the 13,540 American Express Membership Reward Points that I’ll earn for buying this on my Platinum card since it earns 5x on airfare. I value MR at 3cpp, so I count this as $406.20 worth of MR. I value Delta Skymiles at 0.6 cpp, so this yields $109.20. So $515.40 of rebates in the form of redeemable currencies, not bad!