Budget Travel - Far East to USA

Can anyone please help, i am looking for the cheapest route from pretty much anywhere in the Far East to the US, preferably the West of USA.

To date the best route ive found is HKG - LAX.

Dates are July if this makes a difference.

Thanks

LAX will likely continue to be your best bet on the US side. You don't mention what things you've tried so far.

Hope you've used www.kayak.com, the airline sites themselves, some like Expedia or Priceline or Travelocity, etc.??


Also, the ITA software matrix.itasoftware.com. Especially the month-long search. It is made for your sort of question.

Some of them will let you do searches on various airports within so many miles. Some will let you do searches on multiple airports like LAX/SEA/PDX.

Dates make a huge difference. Can you really travel any time in July?

Mid-week tends to be cheaper. Sometimes right on holidays can have some good rates - i.e. July 4. (Christmas day is often a good one, too.)

Why don't you post the best price you've found so far, with details as to where and how you found it, and dates and start and end points and such? That will make it a lot easier for people to see just where you need help. Maybe you've already found a good deal....

Romelle

[Deleted. I messed it up while editing! My apologies. If you need any info about ITA, search or ask again.]

Thanks for the warm welcome and helpful tips.

I didn't post details because i saw a thread which i read to say that i couldn't ask for price help.

Nonetheless I am traveling the world with my children and will have made it to Beijing by July 6th. I have every connection sorted out except for the hop across the pacific.
Now, the problem lies in the fact i am detailing the journey and am predominantly focusing on traveling with children on a global scale on a budget. So as im sure you can understand i need to make sure i get the cheapest possible flight.
I had hoped to get booked on a freighter but my daughter is only 4 and this is not allowed. Having looked extensively at cruises i feel our only option is to cheat and take a flight.
My dates are so flexible since i don't need to be in New York until late August for our cruise back to the UK.
Essentially i can travel from Beijing as far south as Singapore or even to the Philippines or Japan.

Additionally i am driving across the US so can't book a car until the Pacific crossing is sorted out.

The best i have found so far is from HKG to LAX at £1120 for 1 adult and 2 children ages 4/7

It might be worth noting i have approx 100k miles with VS and am willing to use these.

Thanks again

Thank you for providing the link. The best i have so far is actually flying to Vancouver from Seoul at £930.

Thank you so much.

The best i have found so far is from HKG to LAX at £1120 for 1 adult and 2 children ages 4/7

That's a decent price for July. Practice ITA fare search (matrix.itasoftware.com). Try to sort out a few basic decisions:

For example, if you are already in Beijing, wouldn't you prefer to fly from there? How much extra would you be willing to pay for this convenience?

Or, is your travel from Beijing to a "far east" city free of cost and you'd rather undertake it even to save small amount?

Do you really wish to drive from West Coast to East Coast, or are you just assuming that it would be chepaer to fly to West Coast (probably so, but renting a car is also expensive)? If you found a great fare to NYC or Chicago, would that be attractive?

At ITA, use the syntax city1;city2;city3 to indicate you can fly from/to any of those cities. Change the "sale city" to LON if you want to see prices in GBP; for USD, leave it as BOS, the default setting.

A few sample fares (one-way, 1 adult+ two children) from a casual check, mostly Air Canada:
Beijing-Vancouver £ 1227
Beijing-Seattle/SFO/LAX £1287
Seoul-Vancouver £846 (July 6 only, £945 on July 7,8)
Seoul-Seattle,SFO,LAX £1098 (July7, a little more other days)

Available fares change all the time. Allow yourself some time to understand what is possible, but then if you see a great fare, book it. However, whether flying from Beijing, Seoul or HKG, be sure to allow enough time to get there and catch your flight. Tickets are highly restricted and any change will be very expensive.

Any questions or doubts, feel free to ask. Here or by pm. Good luck.

I looked at those VA miles. I didn't check dates, but interestingly enough, VA says they will let you get one-way mileage flights (many airlines don't). Might be a good way to spend them. The problem is, the flights seem to first go to London, so are going the wrong way around for your plan? Might be worth poking at their site for a while, and then paying cash for the third ticket.

I can see a Korean Air round-trip NRT-LAX on ITA for $771 (Loosely 500 pounds). The price goes up to $900 something as soon as I try for one-way. So, you buy the round but just don't fly the return. Goofy, but sometimes necessary. $1983 for one adult and 2 children.

There are some other threads on this site about ways to get one-way fares. Might be able to do better with some companies that specialize in that sort of thing. I'm not familiar with them though.

I'd urge you to try to learn the ITA software, as the last poster also did. Lots of instructions under the Help button. Start easy and work up. I used Month-Long Search and coded:

NRT
LAX

Used a start date of July 1, and set the time frame to "About one month".

Then just hit the button and it did all the work.

Romelle

Thanks for taking the time to look at this and help me. I really appreciate it. So far the help you have given me has saved me a couple of hundred pounds so i am extremely grateful.

Best wishes

^