Country

Resort

1. Los Angeles > Geneva (LAX>CDG>GVA)

To kick-start my trip, I booked a one-way business class ticket from Los Angeles (LAX) to Geneva (GVA). I chose Geneva because it was the closest airport to Chamonix and Les 3 Vallées. At the time of my booking (April 2024), the lowest one-way business class ticket on Flying Blue was 50,000 points (Flying Blue is the miles program that Air France uses along with KLM). As of today, they have raised the minimum to 60,000 points.

At the time of my booking, there was also a 25% transfer bonus for transferring my Chase Ultimate Reward Points to Flying Blue. So, my business class ticket only actually cost me 40,000 points. Unfortunately, Air France does have high fees/surcharges that they pass down to the customer so I still had to pay $244.30 out-of-pocket.

2. Geneva > Rovaniemi (GVA>HEL>RVN)

Next flight was to leave Geneva and head on over to Finland. We wanted to visit Santa Claus’ village which is near the town of Rovaniemi so that’s where we flew into. There was no direct flight and we had to layover in Helsinki first. This flight wouldn’t have been bad but our first leg was delayed which messed with our connecting flight. My friend and I made it onto the connecting flight, but our bags unfortunately did not. 

Can I say that I’m COMPLETELY DISAPPOINTED in Finnair to the point where I never want to fly with them again. For TWO days, I did not receive my suitcase or my snowboard bag! I literally had no clothes and no toiletries. I had to go buy everything new it the middle of the Arctic Circle no less. To top it off, they ONLY offered me 50 euros for the inconvenience. Are you kidding me? Do you know how expensive Finland is and to make matters worst, I’m in like one of the coldest parts of the world. 

But if we were to put that aside, this was a good point redemption since I only used 7,500 Alaska miles to book this flight which was costing around $250 at the time. 

3. Kittila > Helsinki (KTT>HEL)

From Rovaniemi, we took a bus north to Kittila because we wanted to snowboard Levi and have a better chance to see the Northern Lights. Unfortunately, it was cloudy the whole time we were in Finland so we didn’t get to see the Northern Lights once, but we did get to snowboard Levi at least one day. One thing that didn’t even register to me was how soon it would get dark that far north. I knew it was going to get dark sooner but by 2:00 pm, the sun had already set so keep that in mind if you plan on doing the same route. 

For the flight, I also booked Finnair again with 7,500 Alaska miles. Luckily, this time though, it was a direct flight to Helsinki. This flight was already booked before the previous Finnair fiasco. 

4. Helsinki > Tokyo (HEL>HND)

5. Tokyo > Sapporo (HND>CTS)

6. Sapporo > Tokyo (CTS>HND)

7. Tokyo > San Francisco (HND>SFO)

OMGGGGGGGGGG!!! The pain and trouble that I went through for this flight is excruciating. I was trying to book ANA’s new business class “The Room” with Virgin points since it was the best point redemption but ultimately failed. If I knew what I know now, I wouldn’t have tried to book on Virgin and instead went straight with ANA. I called Virgin a million times since I saw the flight I wanted had availability, but what they told me was that even though it shows that it’s available, Virgin is actually 3rd in line for their customers to get access to these award tickets. They first release them to ANA (of course), then to United customers, and then, if by some miracle none of those customers want it, then it goes to Virgin. 

So, essentially what I’m trying to say is that if you want a guaranteed shot at getting ANA’s business class “The Room,” I would transfer my points directly to ANA. I still didn’t end up getting “The Room” because by the time I transferred the points, the award seat was gone. In the end, I had to settle for their old business class product and it was a night flight! I was considering not flying business class at all, but an idea popped into my head that eventually convinced me which I’ll explain in Point #3 below.

There are four very important things you should know about transferring points to ANA:

1. The only credit card transfer partner is American Express. There’s other roundabout ways that you can transfer like using Marriott Bonvoy points because the redemption value sucks.
2. The point transfer from American Express is NOT instant. I think it almost took two days for it to transfer and there’s a chance by then that the flight you were looking at could be gone (which happened to me). Also, once they are transferred over, they cannot be transferred back to Amex if you don’t get your flight.
3. Up until this point, ANA requires you to buy a round trip ticket for award seats so that’s what I ended up doing. I transferred 100,000 points from Amex to ANA and bought myself a round trip ticket. The first leg was this one going back to the U.S. (HND>SFO) and it was on ANA’s old business class (which I was slightly bummed about). Since this had to be a round trip ticket, I decided to book my second leg (back to Japan) far out into the future as possible. So I booked the first leg in February 2025 and my return ticket back to Japan for February 2026. I figured there’s a good chance that I’ll come back to Japan for snowboarding anyways so it didn’t bother me that I was booking this “extra” leg. But the most convincing part was that since it was a year in advance, there was a lot of availability to fly ANA’s “The Room,” albeit from New York’s JFK. Yes, I will have to buy another flight to JFK only to fly back the same direction to Tokyo, but I’ll at least I’ll finally be able to experience “The Room.”
4. For anyone deciding to book ANA’s business class, I have exciting news for you! Starting June 24, 2025, ANA will not require you to book round trip tickets on award flights anymore. So, you don’t have to do the crazy route that I had to do. This new policy sounds amazing, but in hindsight, it looks like award flights might be tougher to come by now but I guess we’ll see!

So after that long-winded explanation, I only calculated this flight to cost 50,000 Amex points. Yes, in reality, it cost me 100,000 points in total but this leg was technically only half of that. Especially since you can start booking one-way flights starting June 24th.

8. San Francisco > Salt Lake City (SFO>SLC)

9. Salt Lake City > Vail (SLC>PHX>EGE)

10. Denver > Los Angeles (DEN>LAX)

11. Los Angeles > Sacramento (LAX>SMF)

12. Sacramento > Los Angeles. (SMF>LAX)

13. Los Angeles > Denver (LAX>DEN)

14. Denver > Burbank (DEN>BUR)