My wife and younger daughter are headed to Poland in July for a group trip visiting many of the Jewish memorials and sites from WWII. If you’ve seen the movie “A Real Pain,” it’s basically a tour like that (although we didn’t really love that movie). As the tour is just for women, I’m obviously not going.

That leaves me with about 10 days sitting at home with the cats. Or I could plan something fun for myself! One of the reasons I haven’t flown many of the world’s best first-class products is simply due to availability. Most of the time, only one seat opens up for booking with points on any given flight. Also, a seat often doesn’t open until a few days before the flight which limits our ability to plan trips.

We have flown on Lufthansa First Class twice as I was able to book those seats a few days before the trip and cancel and redeposit our existing American Airlines bookings with no fee. We’ve also flown British Airways First Class which is a step below the world’s best first-class products. Next weekend, we are flying Cathay Pacific First Class from LAX to Hong Kong (and then business class onward to Bali). I was able to book those seats almost a year out when there was some availability dropped by Cathay which was quickly snapped up by alert travelers.

So, given that I have both the freedom of solo travel and the flexibility to book things fairly last minute, what am I going to do? I started my search by looking at Emirates as they have two different first-class products I’ve been wanting to try: The 777 Gamechanger (pictured above) and the A380 First Class Suite (with the onboard bar and shower).

I found an award seat on a Gamechanger-equipped 777 from Chicago to Dubai on a Sunday, the day after my wife is due to leave on her trip. As these seats are hard to find (there’s only six seats in the cabin), I transferred 164,000 points to Emirates and booked it. At 163,500 plus $800 it is pricy, but this will be a 13+ hour flight. I’ve grabbed a Delta flight to O’Hare using SkyMiles to arrive about six hours before Emirates flight and will just hang out in the SkyClub to wait.

My plan from there is to spend the night near Dubai airport at a Category 1 Hyatt Place for 3500 points, then continue on the following day on an A380 First Class flight. While no first-class seats are available yet, I’ve seen plenty of open seats on flights to Bangkok, which should open up about 30 days out. Once one of those seats opens up, I can call Emirates and add the segment. It should reprice the whole itinerary to something that costs less than booking the two flights separately. Unfortunately, Emirates does not allow mixed cabin award bookings, so I’ll need to piece this together as availability opens up. If, for some reason, a first-class seat doesn’t open up in time to modify the booking, I can always book business class and then pay with points to upgrade to first class, but that will cost significantly more points.

Assuming I can get to Bangkok on Emirates, I have a few options from there. I’ve booked two nights at the Grand Hyatt as I expect I’ll need to catch up on sleep and I wouldn’t mind spending another day or two in Bangkok as we had a very quick visit when we were there in 2018. The simplest potential option (and perhaps the one I am most likely to take) is to fly Qatar Airways First Class on their A380 to Doha with an overnight in the Al Safwa First Class lounge before a direct flight to Atlanta in A350-1000 QSuites (which we are also taking on the way back from Bali in a couple of weeks). This will cost 190k Avios plus about $200 in taxes.

But, there might be other options. Etihad flies its A380 with the Apartment suites (and onboard shower) between Abu Dhabi and London, Paris and New York. If I can somehow find availability on a New York flight, I could fly Qatar First Class to Doha, still spend an overnight layover in the Al Safwa Lounge then take the short hop on Qatar to Abu Dhabi. While I looked at London and Paris options, the problem there is finding a way home from those cities as saver award availability in the summer is difficult. Of course, I could then go all the way back to the Gulf and fly home from there, but it would add two days to the trip.

Another potential option is to turn this into a complete round-the-world trip. I’ve seen availability in first and business class from Bangkok to Tokyo on Japan Airlines using American Airlines miles for 30k/40k. From there, I would need to find first class space on either Japan Airlines (via AA or Alaska miles) or ANA (via Virgin Atlantic or ANA directly) back to the US. These can be difficult to find but seats do pop up from time to time. I do have 200k ANA miles expiring next year (from when we had to reschedule our SE Asia trip in 2024). I could book a round-trip Japan-US trip (as required by ANA) and just throw away the second leg.

My biggest issue here is to be patient. It will be tempting to just book the Qatar flights from Bangkok all the way home, but where’s the fun in that? I will just have to wait and see what opens up. Worst case, it should not be difficult to get back to the US from the Gulf region in the summer.

Some other things I’ve looked at and may consider are Singapore A380 Suites/777 First Class and Starlux Business Class from Taipei. I’ve also got that last minute possibility of Lufthansa First Class to get back from Europe if I need it (and it’s available).

As I build out this trip, I’ll post again with some updates. I’m really looking forward to trying out these “bucket list” seats and lounges.

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