At the beginning of the month I blogged about the Star MegaDO launch party in DC, that was where details of the upcoming event were revealed for the first time.
It’s the ultimate frequent flyer adventure, where 150-200 enthusiastic folks get together, charter an aircraft, and go on behind-the-scenes tours of airlines and aircraft, while picking up swag and tons of miles and elite status along the way.
To get a feel for what a MegaDO is all about, you can read a sample of some of the past media coverage. January’s oneworld MegaDO was featured on the front page of the business section of USA Today and also in an Associated Press story that hit about 70 papers.
The January domestic charter portion of the trip sold out in under 20 minutes. It’s a hot ticket. This upcoming event in November (dates and pricing here) will offer 25% more seats, but demand last time on day one was twice capacity. We do what we can to make seats available to as many folks as possible, but inevitably there’s more demand than capacity (the economist in me says ‘raise price’ but the idea here is that above a certain threshold the reason folks wouldn’t participate shouldn’t be price, and we raise lots of money on the trip for charity already anyway).
There are seats on the charter set aside for folks that will also do the international portion of the trip.
MegaDO organizer tommy777 posted today that you can now grab international pre-sale seats that will also ensure your ability to purchase a seat on the charter.
Only international economy seats are available right now. Discounted business lass seats will be made available at the beginning of the week.
Here are the details of the economy pre-sale.
- The trip will begin in Los Angeles, not Washington Dulles as originally planned, in order to fly on Lufthansa’s new 747-800. It will be your job to get yourself to Los Angeles for the start of the international trip.
- The return flight is non-stop from Zurich to San Francisco. The plan is to have 100% of the business class cabin booked on this flight.
- The flights are:
- November 11, Los Angeles – Frankfurt, 3:20pm – 11:15am+1, Lufthansa LH457
November 12, Frankfurt – Zurich, 1:35pm – 2:30pm, Lufthansa LH1192November 13, Zurich – San Francisco, 1:05pm – 4:25pm, Swiss LX38
Cost: $1056.01
- There will be a total of 35 coach pre-sale tickets available at the prices above (there will also be 45 tickets in business class at the beginning of the week). If you purchase any one of these seats, you’ll be eligible to pre-purchase a seat on the Star MegaDO domestic charter.
- To pre-purchase a coach international seat, email melinda -at- ftef.net. First come, first served. You will receive instructions on the information you’ll need to provide, and will have 48 hours to provide the information.
- If you fail to respond with your information before the end of the deadline, you will lose your spot.
Once your tickets are issued you will receive a private link to secure a seat on the domestic charter, and you’ll have 48 hours to book it.
I was a little late on the email ahhh do we know if the 35 spots are filled?
Last I looked only 21 of 35 spots taken
It would be really helpful to know the price in C class. Does anyone have this info, so we can decide which class to pick? Also, does the quoted price apply only to the international portion of the itinerary?
The price is for the international itinerary only. Business class pricing won’t be finalized until the beginning of the week.
I haven’t received an email back yet??
Can you choose C class on the international, and Y on the domestic?
@Explore – no, you must book same class in both directions
Looks like biz will be north of 3k. Definitely not below 3k per tommy777
Gary, do you get to write off cool trips like these for the blog?
As of now when I was looking at the MilePoint post, all 35 spots are filled. Sent a note to Melinda to be added to the not-sure-it-exists waitlist.
Also, to answer @Explore’s question, I would believe that buying C on the international and Y on the charter is fine (I believe @LufthansaFlyer is saying it’s all Y or all C on the international portion only).