MEL to LHR: $1488 in Business. How'd That Work Out?

Back in April, I wrote about a decision I had just made for the final leg of my Fiji and Australia trip. I needed to get from Melbourne back to London, and economy fares for the sort of one-stop itinerary I would realistically book were running at roughly $900 to $1100.

Instead, I booked Air India business class from Melbourne to London via Delhi for 110,000 Aeroplan points plus $108 in taxes. A 20% Chase transfer bonus meant I only needed to transfer 92,000 Ultimate Rewards points. At my usual 1.5-cent valuation, I put the economic cost of the ticket at $1488.

The point of the original article was that I didn’t regard the $5500 cash price of business class as particularly useful in deciding whether this was a good redemption. I wasn’t going to spend $5500. I was probably going to spend around $950 on economy, so the decision I was actually making was whether another $500 or so of value was worth spending to make a journey of almost 25 hours in business class.

I thought it was. Four months later, with the trip now completed, I can see how that decision worked out.

The original Air India itinerary was reasonable enough. I was due to leave Melbourne at 7:35pm on August 20 and arrive in Delhi at 3:50am the following morning. After a 1 hour 40 minute connection, the onward flight would leave Delhi at 5:30am and arrive at Heathrow at 11:30am. Total scheduled journey time was 24 hours 55 minutes.

Air India subsequently moved the Delhi to London flight from 5:30am to 1:00pm. The Melbourne flight was still due into Delhi at 3:50am, so what had been a 1 hour 40 minute connection became a 9 hour 10 minute layover. Heathrow arrival moved from 11:30am to 7:00pm. The itinerary was now 32 hours 25 minutes rather than just under 25 hours: much less attractive, although still usable.

A later change was more difficult. The Melbourne to Delhi flight moved from August 20 to August 19, when I was still supposed to be in Melbourne. The revised booking showed a 32 hour 15 minute connection in Delhi and a total journey time of 56 hours 25 minutes, departing a full day earlier than the ticket I had bought.

At that stage I needed either a different itinerary or my points back. A refund would have been easy enough, but it would also have meant replacing the ticket in the market then available rather than the one in which I had originally booked it.

When I wrote the original article, there were several credible economy alternatives around $1000. That availability was part of the calculation. I wasn’t comparing business class with some theoretical cheapest way of crossing the world; I was comparing it with the sort of economy itinerary I would otherwise have bought.

By the time Air India’s changes made my ticket unusable, the choices looked different. The cheapest economy award I found was a Middle East routing at 62,500 points plus $296. A Singapore Airlines economy itinerary was pricing at 156,200 points plus $172, while a reasonable cash option via Hong Kong was $1203.

Business-class awards were worse. Emirates options via Dubai were showing at 202,500 points plus $1135. The next useful non-Middle East option I found was a Qantas award via Singapore showing at 677,600 points plus $423.

I wouldn’t use any of those prices to claim that my original redemption had suddenly become more valuable. They reflected the market when I was dealing with the schedule changes, not the market when I originally booked. What they did tell me was that taking the refund and starting again wasn’t especially appealing, particularly if I wanted to retain both the August 20 departure and a routing through Asia.

I called Aeroplan to see what they could do with the disrupted ticket.

Aeroplan ultimately moved me to Singapore Airlines, still in business class and without requiring any additional points. The replacement was SQ228 from Melbourne to Singapore on August 20, followed by a 1 hour 45 minute connection and SQ322 from Singapore to Heathrow.

The new journey was scheduled to take 23 hours 35 minutes. It left Melbourne a few hours earlier than my original flight, but on the correct day, and was actually shorter than the Air India itinerary I had booked in April.

There was some luck in that outcome. I had knowingly booked Air India, not Singapore Airlines, and I wouldn’t rewrite the original decision as though Singapore had been part of the proposition. Equally, the ability to resolve a badly disrupted award without cancelling it and shopping again turned out to have real value. The 110,000-point Aeroplan booking survived even though the flights attached to it did not.

The actual journey therefore started in the Singapore Airlines SilverKris Lounge in Melbourne rather than on the Air India itinerary I had expected to fly. From there I boarded SQ228 for the first leg to Singapore.

The Singapore Airlines flights, lounges and catering weren’t what I had expected to receive when I transferred the points in April. They were, however, what those original 92,000 Chase points and $108 ultimately bought.

There was another part of the original redemption that I hadn’t included in the $1488 calculation: what would happen if the itinerary changed.

I had booked Air India flights, but I had booked them with Aeroplan points. When Air India’s schedule changes eventually produced an itinerary I couldn’t use, I wasn’t limited to cancelling the award and shopping again at the prices then available. I could go back to Aeroplan and ask it to find a workable replacement for the ticket it had issued.

In this case, that produced an outcome I couldn’t have replicated myself. Singapore Airlines business-class awards weren’t available to me for 110,000 Aeroplan points, and the alternatives I could see were far more expensive. Yet Aeroplan moved the disrupted booking onto Singapore Airlines business without asking for any additional points.

I wouldn’t assume every partner-airline schedule change will end that way. But it exposed some optionality in the original booking that I hadn’t priced. I had an itinerary I was happy to fly at a price I was happy to pay. When Air India changed it beyond recognition, Aeroplan was able to rebuild the journey using options that weren’t available to me as a new award booking.

That changed how I think about the program behind a partner award, particularly where schedule changes are a realistic risk. The program issuing the ticket and how it handles disruption can have value alongside the points price, taxes, routing and cabin. I hadn’t assigned any value to that in April. In this case, it turned out to be worth quite a lot.

The 1 hour 45 minute connection in Singapore was much closer to the journey I had originally booked than the 32 hour 15 minute Delhi layover Air India had eventually given me.

There was enough time to move through Changi and use the Singapore Airlines lounge before SQ322 to London.

SQ322 was the longer of the two flights, taking me from Singapore through to London. The food included an excellent spicy seafood congee, which ended up being one of the more memorable dishes of the journey.

More important was the basic proposition I had been trying to evaluate four months earlier. I could eat properly, get some sleep and spend most of the journey in a seat that didn’t make 24 hours of travel the dominant feature of the following day.

The original article reduced the choice to numbers because that was the useful way to make the decision. Economy was about $950. I valued the business award at $1488. Was the difference worth ~$500?

What the spreadsheet couldn’t show particularly well was the value of the other end of the journey. I wasn’t flying to London for a holiday where I could write off the arrival day. The attraction of business class was partly the prospect of getting off the aircraft and getting on with my day.

The eventual arrival gave me a fairly clean test of that assumption. SQ322 touched down at Heathrow at 5:15am. I was off the aircraft at 5:33, through immigration at 5:43, had my checked bag at 5:53 and was landside at 5:54. I caught the Elizabeth line at 6:05 and reached Paddington at 6:34.

That sequence later became the basis for a separate article about how long it actually took me to get from a Heathrow arrival to central London. In the context of this trip, it also completed the calculation I had started in April. Less than an hour and 20 minutes after landing from Singapore, I was at Paddington with the whole day ahead of me.

It would be easy to finish this by looking up the cash price of Singapore Airlines business class and calculating an impressive cents-per-point number. That would miss the same point I was trying to make when I booked the ticket.

I didn’t choose between $1488 and the cash price of Singapore Airlines business class. In April, I chose between an economy ticket I was prepared to buy and an Air India business-class award that cost me ~$500 more on my own valuation of the points. That was the information available when the decision had to be made.

The trip also exposed something I hadn’t included in that calculation. Air India changed the schedule repeatedly and eventually produced an itinerary I couldn’t use. Had I taken the refund, I would have been buying again in a much less attractive market.

Instead, Aeroplan preserved the original 110,000-point price while rebuilding the ticket onto Singapore Airlines. My 24 hour 55 minute Air India journey became a 23 hour 35 minute Singapore Airlines journey, on the correct departure date and without another point leaving my account. That doesn’t retrospectively make the original redemption more valuable on a cents-per-point calculation, but it does reveal some value in the Aeroplan booking that my original calculation missed.

The most useful comparison is still the one I made before any of that happened. I had been willing to spend ~$500 more than economy to avoid finishing a long trip with almost 25 hours in an economy seat. I eventually landed at Heathrow after 23½ hours of Singapore Airlines business class and reached Paddington at 6:34am.

On the question I actually asked when I booked it, the answer was yes. The extra $500 was money well spent. And the trip exposed something I hadn’t priced at all: when the original itinerary fell apart, the Aeroplan ticket proved more useful than the flights I had originally bought.

Melbourne to London: I Paid $1488 (not $5500) for Business Class

LHR: From Gateside to Curbside

Singapore Changi Airport: Business Class Adds Less Than You’d Expect