How to Fly Roundtrip to Hawaii with a Stopover for 25,000 Points!

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I wrote an earlier post on Hawaii award redemptions when I first discovered this particular loophole.  When I wrote about it, I was simply presenting the basic strategy, because we had not yet booked our trip.  I am happy to report that we now have an AMAZING trip on the books – including two days in Sonoma Valley and thirteen days in Hawaii!!!  Our entire roundtrip flight cost only 25,000 points + $33 per person!!  Read along to find out how we did it… 

This strategy is alarmingly simple on the surface, but requires just a bit of effort to pull off.  This article specifically addresses roundtrip economy award tickets for 25,000, but you can also book roundtrip first class tickets for 45,000 each.  I’ll break down the process in steps.:

Step 1:  Acquire 25,000 Transferrable Points (per person)

There are three very efficient options to grab these miles.

Option 1 – Chase Sapphire Preferred Card

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card comes with a 50,000 Ultimate Reward (UR) Point bonus + 5,000 Points for adding an authorized user.  To earn this bonus, you will need to spend $4,000 in 90 days.  With this bonus, you will have enough for TWO ROUND TRIP TICKETS!!  Chase UR points convert directly to Korean Air Skypass miles at a 1:1 ratio, and the transfer is instant.

Option 2 – Chase Ink Plus Business Card

The Chase Ink Plus card comes with a LIMITED TIME 60,000 UR Point bonus!  This will be more than sufficient to get you and a companion to Hawaii.  You will even have 10,000 points left over if you need to top up your Hyatt account for a hotel while you’re in the islands!

Option 3 – American Express Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) Card

The Amex Starwood Preferred Guest card and Starwood Business Card both feature a bonus of 25,000 SPG points. To earn this bonus, you must spend $3,000 (or $5,000 for the business card) within 90 days.  American Express recently announced Korean Air as a new transfer partner for Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) points.  When transferring SPG points to airlines, you will receive an extra 5,000 miles for every 20,000 points you transfer.  Transferring 20,000 SPG points = 25,000 Korean Air miles!

If you do not use your SPG points for Korean Air miles, they are great for booking free nights in Hawaii.  We booked 5 nights at the Sheraton Kauai Resort for 48,000 Starwood Points!

Step 2: Create a Korean Air Skypass Account

Once you have earned your Chase UR or SPG points, you must create a Korean Air Skypass Account. Register for an account here.  Korean Air also allows you to use your miles to book tickets for immediate family members.  If you plan to do this, your family member will also need a Skypass account.  Once they create an account, you must submit a Family Registration Application.  According to the rep, the online application is processed much more quickly than the paper application.  Mine and Brooke’s family application required us to scan a copy of our marriage certificate for proof.

Step 3: Find Award Seats on Delta

Yes, you read that correctly.  Delta is a sky team partner with Korean Airlines, therefore seats on Delta flights can be booked using your Skypass Miles.  Head over to Delta’s website to locate the flights you want.  You must have a sky miles account to view award availability, so go ahead and create one.  When you search, make sure you select “Show Price in Miles.”  To see which seats that Delta is making available to partners, you may want to do an award search on Air France or Alaska Airlines.

This is where it gets fun!  Korean Airlines has pretty generous routing rules.  They allow one stopover (connection lasting more than 24 hours) en route to your destination and one open jaw (fly into and out of different airports) at your destination.  All segments must be booked on Delta flights, because Korean Air does not allow multiple partner airlines to be booked on the same itinerary.  I chose to create the following itinerary:

Price in $$ – Incredible Redemption Rate of 4 Cents/Point!!

MCI –> SFO (2 day stopover) –> LIH…(open jaw)…OGG –> MCI

When you search for a route, you do not have to use these exact cities.  You can schedule your stopover in a completely different city, and you can use different islands for your open jaw.  Use the Multi-City search function to play around with routes.  Other possible itineraries could be:

ORD –> SEA (4 day stopover) –> HNL…(open jaw)…KOA –> ORD

JFK –> MCO (3 day stopover) –> OGG…(open jaw)…HNL –> JFK

As long as your route follows these rules, and delta shows award space at the saver level (45,000 – 60,000 Skymiles), you should be able to book the round trip for only 25,000 Skypass miles!  Write down the specific details of your itinerary, including flight times and numbers for the next step.

**NOTE – You MUST find your own transportation to complete the open jaw portion of your trip!  More on that in Step 7.

Step 4: Call Korean Airlines to Hold Your Itinerary

Now that you have an itinerary selected, and you have taken thorough notes, you need to call Korean Airlines at 1-800-438-5000 and speak to an agent.  The agent will take down your selected itinerary and schedule a call back from a booking agent within 24 hours.  If you ask nicely (especially if there is limited availability on your routes), they may be able to transfer you directly to the booking agent.

The booking agent will use the information you provided to determine if the seats are actually available.  It took me three calls to the booking agent before my itinerary was finalized.  On the first two calls, they had no availability on my flight of choice.  Sometimes this happens, and you must be willing to adapt.  Simply thank them for their time and re-work your itinerary.  They will also confirm whether your selected itinerary is within the Korean Air routing rules.  If everything checks out, they will hold your itinerary while you handle the next steps.

Step 5:  Transfer Points to Korean Air Skypass Miles

At this point, you will need to transfer the Chase UR or SPG Points that you earned in Step 1.  Chase UR points transfer to Korean Skypass Miles at a 1:1 ratio and transfer instantly.  SPG Points transfer at a ratio of 1:1.25 if you transfer in increments of 20,000 points and can take a few days.

1:1 transfer ratio

Extra 5,000 miles with 20,000 points transferred

Step 6:  Submit the Award Application Form

The final step to booking your ticket is to submit the Award Application Form.  You will need to fill out the form, print, and sign it.  Then, scan and email the form and a copy of your passport(s) to engskypass@koreanair.com.  If you are booking tickets for your immediate family, they must appear as family within your Skypass account (see Step 2).  If you plan to travel with people who are not immediate family, each passenger must submit this Award Application Form, and book with miles from their own accounts.

When your application has been accepted, you will receive a call from a Korean Air representative to collect the taxes of $11 per segment.  After paying, you should check back within your Skypass account under “my trips.”  Look for international tickets, and your tickets should appear within a few days.  Congratulations, you’re going to Hawaii!!

Step 7:  Complete the Open Jaw (optional)

If you chose to include an open jaw in the Hawaiian islands, you will be responsible for getting from your arrival airport to your departure airport.  For our trip, we land at LIH, and depart from OGG.  To close the jaw, we are using American Airlines miles to book island hopper flights on Hawaiian Airlines.  Simply search for the flights on American Airlines’ website.  They only cost 5,000 AA miles per segment (4,500 if you have the Citi AA Platinum MasterCard)!  We are flying LIH –> HNL –> OGG using this method.

Use AA miles to “close the jaw.”

I hope this guide has been helpful to book your dream getaway to Hawaii!  What route to Hawaii will you choose??  Check out these links for a full review of our experiences in San Francisco/Wine Country, and our Complete Guide to Hawaii.  Cheers!

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