For the past few months, I’ve been planning an incredible round-the-world trip with my best friend Mike. We both recently turned the big 5-0, so we decided to do something we don’t normally do and splurge on ourselves. We purchased business class tickets with a mix of cash and miles. Here’s the breakdown of my itinerary:
Los Angeles to Toronto on American Airlines (via Dallas)
Since AA doesn’t fly nonstop between LAX-YYZ anymore, I’m going via Dallas. I was going to buy a non-stop flight on Air Canada but the ticket was $353, and that was without paying for a seat towards the front of the plane or in an exit row and without paying the baggage fee. Since I’m in bed with American’s frequent flier program, I figured I might as well stay with them to earn the miles and start putting spend towards retaining my Executive Platinum (EP) status for next year. I could have flown economy for $230 but since I wanted to start my birthday trip off right, I splurged and purchased business class for $503 since the LAX-DFW portion is on a 787 in a lie-flat seat.
Toronto to Singapore (via London and Helsinki)
I’m going to Toronto (YYZ) because that’s where my ridiculously low business class fare ($1,582) to Singapore (and Hong Kong) originates. Besides, my wife grew up in Toronto so I have a place to stay and can spend the day doing errands for my mother-in-law. From Toronto I’m flying YYZ to London (LHR) on a British Airways A350. Then it’s LHR to Helsinki (HEL) and finally on to Singapore, both on Finnair’s new A350.
I have a three-hour layover in London, which is just enough time to take a shower, hang out in the first class lounge and get some good food. In HEL, the layover is eight hours so Mike and I are planning to take the train into the city (30 minutes), tour around and go to dinner before returning to the airport. In Singapore, we’re going to spend a couple of nights at the swanky Marina Bay Sands Hotel, which was featured in the movie Crazy Rich Asians. I’ve been to the hotel but never swam in its surreal rooftop infinity pool so I’m really looking forward to it.
Singapore to Bangkok to Hong Kong (and then home to Los Angeles)
We decided we could squeeze Thailand in for 24 hours so we could get our Thai food fix and flights from Singapore to Bangkok to Hong Kong (HKG) on Cathay Pacific were just 22,500 American Airline miles total for both business class tickets.
The plan is to spend three nights. I really only wanted two but American Airlines’ HKG-to-LAX flight had confirmed upgrade space on the Monday night so I decided to spend an extra day. The coach ticket was $534 but I had confirmed space for my system-wide upgrade (American EP members receive four system-wide upgrades a year to use on any flight as long as space is available).
Coronavirus: Should I cancel my trip to Asia?
Then in early January the news about the coronavirus started trickling in. Obviously, we’ve been monitoring the situation, and it just keeps getting worse. Both Mike and I have two little kids at home, we’re not traveling for work, and we don’t want to cause our families anxiety. So now we’re asking ourselves: Should we cancel our trip?
We both have travel insurance through Allianz (I’m one of their brand ambassadors) but I don’t imagine insurance will cover all the tickets since they don’t all involve China. However, before I go down the road of filing an insurance claim, I’m going to call the airlines to see if they will refund the tickets. My buddy Mike called Delta Air Lines about his New York-to-Budapest ticket and the agent surprisingly told him they would refund him in full since they understand the concern. I was shocked because his ticket was a one-way just to Europe and his Asia portions weren’t on a Sky Team partner. Good on Delta! Now let’s see what American, Finnair and Cathay Pacific have to say (I will update the post once I contact them).
Obviously, I’ll be really bummed if I have to cancel this incredible trip. Southeast Asia is my favorite destination to travel to and I haven’t been in four years. But when I asked friends and family on Facebook what they would do and the overwhelming response was to cancel and stay home (even from a lot of seasoned travelers).
Maybe the media is making this a bigger deal than it really is, but many sources say that the numbers of cases are being underreported. As of this writing, the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in China is more than 8,200. The death toll has risen to 171. To put that in perspective: In the U.S., the CDC estimates that there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses and more than 8,000 deaths so far this flu season.
What scares me most about traveling to Asia (besides getting the virus and infecting others) is that right now, if you do go and you come down with a fever, you could be quarantined for up to two weeks. I recently read about a flight from Singapore to Shanghai (I think, as I can’t find the story) that had two people with fevers so they quarantined all the passengers. Then in Italy just yesterday, a Chinese cruise passenger showed signs of coronavirus and they quarantined the whole ship of 6,000 passengers!
What would you do?
As much as I love travel and the Asian continent, I just don’t think it’s worth the risk right now because I have a wife and two little kids. If I were single, I would wait until the day before to decide to go. What do you think? Should I cancel my trip to Asia? If you were in my position, what would you do? Please leave a comment with your thoughts in the comments below!
Allianz says the coronavirus is considered an epidemic, so they will not accept that as a reason to cancel your trip. I called them to ask and it also says so in the fine print of the policy email. So unless you have a “cancel for any reason policy” they will not refund your money.
I agree you should definitely delay your travel that involves China and Hong Kong for now as you won’t be able to travel to those places anyways! We happen to be headed on a cruise Feb 15th and our ship had to change the Itinerary to avoid Hong Kong entirely or we’d be turned away from all ports and possibly quarantined.
We also were told by the ship, if any of our flights happen to go through Hong Kong 14 days before boarding the ship, we will be turned away. (my partners Singapore Airlines flight DID stop in Hong Kong so we had to rebook going through Tokyo). The cruise line offered a full refund if we chose not to go, but the travel insurance informed us that unless we were ill or this was a “terrorist event” they would NOT refund our flights, or any other costs (tours, transfers, hotels, etc) we would lose associated with this trip. (we were going on to Tokyo for 6 more days after the cruise.) So much for insurance!!
We have decided to go on the cruise (originates in Singapore and stops in Vietnam, Thailand and we’ll go to Angor Wat for a couple days), and our cruise line is giving us what results in a 17k credit towards a future cruise for the inconvenience in addition to other credits.
I am not concerned with traveling to these other countries or on a ship because 1). I am a younger, healthy person with a strong immune system, 2). Am OCD about washing my hands and what I eat and drink, 3). Will be on a ship with access to great medical care and doctors.
The reality is, I was an anchor/report in television news and know how this works…sadly, the virus makes a “great story” and despite the fact one person has died of the virus in Hong Kong (way more people die of a common flu and pneumonia every day), the world is lumping Hong Kong into that category, so they are being shunned. China, on the other hand, has the serious problem, hence why I would never consider going there now or anytime soon even if they were letting foreign tourists into their country, which they’re not right now.
Good luck with your insurance. I hope they come through for you. And have a wonderful trip when you do go!!
I agree you should definitely should delay your travel that involves China and Hong Kong for now as you won’t be able to travel there anyways! We happen to be headed on a cruise Feb 15th and our ship had to change the Itinerary to avoid Hong Kong entirely. We also were told by the ship, if any of our flights happen to go through Hong Kong, we will be turned away from boarding. (my partners Singapore Airlines flight DID stop in Hong Kong). The cruise line offered a full refund if we chose not to go, but the travel insurance informed us that unless we were ill or this was a “terrorist event” they would NOT refund our flights, or any other costs we would lose associated with this trip. So much for insurance!!
We have decided to go on the cruise (originates in Singapore and stops in Vietnam, Thailand and we’ll go to Angor Wat for a couple days), and our cruise line is giving us what results in a 17k credit towards a future cruise for the inconvenience in addition to other credits.
I am not concerned with traveling to these other countries or on a ship because 1). I am a younger, healthy person with a strong immune system, 2). Am OCD about washing my hands and what I eat and drink, 3). Will be on a ship with access to great medical care and doctors.
The reality is, I was an anchor/report in television news and know how this works…sadly, the virus makes a “great story” and despite the fact one person has died of the virus in Hong Kong (way more people die of a common flu and pneumonia every day), the world is lumping Hong Kong into that category, so they are being shunned. China, on the other hand, has the serious problem, hence why I would never consider going there now or anytime soon even if they were letting foreign tourists into their country, which they’re not right now.
Good luck with your insurance. I hope they come through for you.
Have trip to Thailand in 10 days. Will be staying a week. My immunity is ok but not 100 percent from a prior illness. Should I cancel?
I don’t want to tell you what to do. If it was me I would try and postpone by month or (three) to see if things are improving.
I am travelling to Perth via Singapore in two weeks. I have type 2 diabetis,not sure what to do.
i’m traveling to japan in march/april. no plans on cancelling but bringing facemasks.
I agree with some of the other posters that if you can skip Hong Kong, you should just go. Maybe even with Hong Kong, after all there have only been like 20 cases there out of a population of over 7 million. To put it into perspective, you are probably more likely to die on the car trip to/from the airport than you are to die from the coronavirus on your trip.
Everything we do has some risk, and we each have to weigh the risk of an activity against the benefit of doing it. You are not a bad person if you take on some small incremental risk in order to enjoy your trip.
In a similar situation now for a trip in 2 weeks. I’ll say cancel considering the route you are taking. All countries have confirmed cases of the new virus. It won’t be an enjoyable trip with the mood right now at airports
Hi Johnny,
I would definitely cancel my trip to Asia if I were you; but unfortunately, I am an Asian.
Coronavirus has been a serious issue in the world as it is deadly and reports have shown the terrible impact of the virus. Until today, more than 200 affected people had died and many more are still under supervision. In this situation, traveling in Asian countries could be an unwise decision. Like you mentioned, many aircraft and planes to Asian countries are canceled. According to the reports, more than 10,000 flights are canceled in 6 days.
Yo Johnny
No brainer, cancel! You just started your family. Go another time when the dust settles.
Stay safe!
I’ve been living in Shanghai for the past few years and I just left to go to Thailand for the holidays on January 23rd. Being there myself as well as around southeast asia since this started, here’s what I can say:
Singapore: is just as safe as the US, if not more safe. They are very clean there and have strict entry requirements combined with a smaller population. All of my Singapore friends are fine and nothing is different there except that Chinese people aren’t getting visas right now to visit.
Thailand: I’ve been here for the past week and a half now traveling around different cities including Bangkok. It feels exactly the same as it did when there wasn’t a virus except that you see some Chinese people wearing masks more often than normal. Again I’d say the risk in Thailand is about the same as if you were in the US.
Hong Kong: I’d say this is the only place on your itinerary that actually has any risk higher than just living normal life in the US. But if your insurance covers Hong Kong flight cancellations, maybe just replace this leg of the trip with somewhere else.
Bottom line I’d say you’ll be fine minus Hong Kong. Honestly it’s a shame you probably can’t get any cheaper prices in hotels because of the outbreak. I plan to go back to my home in Shanghai in a few days unless things get worse.
CANCEL! nOT WORTH THE RISK.