JumboJ

Hey experts! I've been diligently collecting miles on a couple of airlines over the last year or so using pointers from this board. I was sure that it would be quite some before I'd have the opportunity to really use them.. but that was before being laid off from work and coming to the conclusion that there's no time like the present. So, where to go? Being that price definitely is an object, and seeing as I've always wanted to go there anyhow, I've been honing in on southeast Asia. Here's what I have to work with:

350K AA
115K BA in one account and 105k in another
83k Starwood

What is the most mile efficient way for me to get to the region?

It looks like AA is 70K RT on a partner award.

BA says "Singapore, Singapore in Far East will cost either 120000* BA Miles or from 60000* BA Miles + USD640" which sounds ridiculous. However the BA parner award chart shows 50K for "Far East". HUGE difference. However Ive tried tons of dates from LAX to SIN or BKK and never turn up any award availability. What am I doing wrong? How would you guys go about this? Any help will be much appreciated!

Keyser

if you go to places like malaysia or indonesia then you can make great use of your spg points since there are some pretty good cat 1 properties there....

TrueBlueFlyer

I've been looking to put my BA miles to use for Singapore from NYC or LAX and found no availability until next year... you go on JAL via Narita, I found dates in early February... but no luck finding anything on the outgoing leg.

Catch23

Assuming you are based in LA, then BA miles costs (flying on BA) are expensive as they route you through London.... you go the long way round the world, but you get a free stopover in London. Routings out of london to SE Asia for BA are very hard to find - its a popular route for the brits....
This is also why the fees are so high... leaving london to fly long distance costs about $200 in Govt taxes... then theres BA fuel fees.....

pawtim

Sorry to hear you got laid off! I've been worrying about getting laid off myself, and when people ask me what I'd do, I say I'd mope for a week, then use my miles to go to Africa or something. Great use of sudden free time.

As for your question, I would be on the phone with BA trying to figure out how to use 50k to get over there (and back) -- in my opinion, I'd hoard the AA miles and use up the BA ones first.

Keyser

^^

MrAOK

First you didn't say where you live or exactly how quickly you want to travel or exactly where you want to go.

Each of those could affect the choice. Depending on how many places you go, there could be a number of inter Asian flights and that too could affect the choice. (Both Malaysia Air and Singapore offer a package that includes inter Asian flights, though the packages can force a lot of out of the way backtracking).

But my guess is that your first choice if you live on the east or west coast would be to use American miles for a Business class trip on Cathay Pacific which would be 110,000 miles. If I remember right, while you go through Hong Kong you don't get to stop there, but you might want to check.

If you live in the Midwest using AA miles for JAL would be a better option.

Oh, by the way, the airline award web sites don't work great for these searches. (because there can be several airlines involved on award trips). You generally have to call.

Also when you call, have some alternatives in mind. (Can you fly into Bangkok and out of Singapore or vice versa if there is no availability round trip to Bangkok?) An Air Asia flight from Singapore to Bangkok can run as little as $50

HoKo

This is certainly true and the same holds true for flights from KL, you can get some really cheap fares or even travel overland if you wanted to see some of the sights en route. If you do travel overland though you should keep in mind that the South of Thailand is considered dangerous (due to a low level Muslim insurgency).

JumboJ

Yes I want to avoid using BA miles on BA to avoid the surcharges. When you do your search it will ask if you want a stopover (always offering London). If you choose no stopover, it will of course say there's no BA availability for that route and suggest that you include partners in your search. Including partners will generally then find you some availability to most places (and help you avoid BA surcharges), but I haven't had any luck with SE Asia. I can't figure out how BA determines award availability. I was looking at booking a partner award to the Caribbean through BA recently. The partner was AA. On AA's site award availability showed EVERY day on the calender, for months. BA allowed awards only on a few sporadic days to and from, making it awkard to put together a RT that wasn't either very short, or very long.


This is exactly my intention! 83k goes quite far at 2k per night! Then maybe in the more expensive areas like BKK, Bali, or SIN I'll do a 5th night free award in a cat 3 or 4, coupled with a 25% off through the "rewarding returns" promo if I can earn one by then.

Happy

If you can fly from West Coast out of CX gateways, or East Coast out of CX gateways, your BA miles can be used to fly CX to SE Asia without going through London or pay BA's fuel surcharge. JL can be used in same fashion as well.

It may even worth it to buy a ticket (gasp!) from your home city to the gateway city if necessarily (versus using your AA miles for this purpose.)

You need to spend some time to learn about how each program works better in relation to your own situation.

The efficient ways of redeeming BA miles have been discussed Ad Nausea in the very very long thread of the BA card on this forum, even as late as a month or 2 ago. Do a search of keywords in that particular thread you may see tons of posts on related topic.

JumboJ

My nearest international airport is LAX. How soon? Id like to be gone already. However I dont want to pay huge expedite fees, so as quickly as possible barring that. As far as where I want to go, I'll take any flight that will get me into the region. From there it's cheap to get around. I'll take KUL, SIN, BKK, CGK, HAN, whatever.

With regard to the 110k business class award.. I'm sure I'd indeed like that but it's too rich for my blood. I'm a dedicated cattle class traveler. I'd rather deal with a mild degree of discomfort for half a day and save some miles for another trip later.

Keyser

2k on weekends & 3k on weekdays....still a great deal....

you could also do c&p for the cat 3 & 4 properties....

MrAOK

the hotels in Bangkok are still really cheap. There are all sorts of deals on agoda and asiarooms.com

The Westin in Bangkok, which is a nice hotel is 2800 starwood points and $45 on cash and points

moondog

I think BA miles might end up being your best bet. BA doesn't charge expedite fees, so you can cross that worry off your list.

From LAX, you can fly CX to HKG and onward from there to everywhere on your list. Alternatively, JL to NRT and to everywhere except maybe HAN (check jal.com).

I would book one direction at a time. In addition to giving you extra flexibility, this would allow you to fly CX over and JL back or vv.

Whatever you do, be sure to limit yourself to one airline in each direction. The pricing is 50k in C and 75k in F. For F, AA only charges 67.5k miles and you could tack LAX-JFK on as well, but they do charge expedite fees, you might want to think about using AA miles for your flight home. Oh, and AA also doesn't care how many different airlines you use.

Even though July and August are big travel months, CX and JL are pretty good about releasing award inventory ~7 days out. For example, CX has lots of availability using BA miles in C this week and next. (I didn't check JL.)

JumboJ

Wow! Good stuff here. Thank you. I was beginning to think that the 50k far east award was a myth but there it is, LAX-HKG, tomorrow even. I hadn't ever plugged in HKG on a BA award search.. just because I dont think of it when I think Southeast Asia. But it's close enough, and I could hop an Air Asia flight from there to wherever. I wish I had asked this question weeks ago. I'd probably already be gone. I really wouldn't want to backtrack to HKG to return.. and I'm not finding any return flights from the other cities on BA. Might some open up just a few days out like the CX inventory? I would feel a bit nervous heading over without having my flight back lined up though..