anon14143

Hi all,

First time post here. I'm trying to book at Star Alliance award flight for Christmas Day from New York to SE Asia.

I don't have a definite itinerary set so am somewhat flexible on destination (HKG, SIN, BKK, etc). I've also tried to be flexible on departure city but no luck so far finding a business / first class award ticket that doesn't waste 14+ hours on an inconvenient layover.

My question for those with more experience is: reading the tea leaves what do you think the odds are of more availability coming to market over the next few weeks / month? Or do you think this is as good as it gets?

Appreciate any insights!

JVPhoto

Do you want to ARRIVE in SE A on Christmas Day or leave NY on it?

I signed out of my account as I'm not sure how much being 1K would reflect what is shown in any event I don't see much that whole week. Things MAY come up closer to the date (I would probably bank on it being from UA's own flights) but as you are in the same boat I would say there are many other people who have no problem traveling on Holidays like that.
i.e. I'm flying to South Africa on Thanksgiving Day.

anon14143

Thanks - plan is to leave NY on Christmas Day. I'm United Platinum for what it's worth. Looks to me like the nearest availability for an award ticket in Business is the 27th and I was curious if anyone had a sense for when United, or other Star Alliance partners, open up more availability (ie: only a couple weeks beforehand or could improve in the next month).

KevinInRI

Well if you're platinum you can always change or cancel an award booking for free. So you might as well book something now and then see if anything better comes up. One of the online travel blogs seems to indicate that Eva Air (based in Taiwan) opens up additional award availability around 3 months out. So you may have some luck if you look in about a week or two. You may also want to do your search from west coast airports (LAX, SFO etc). Domestic award availability is pretty scarce around the holidays. But if you can get the transpacific flight you could always buy the other domestic leg or at worst redeem 25k more miles for a standard domestic economy award.

JVPhoto

If you have to leave on the 25th then I would check maybe every 2-3 days for space. Of course if you have a day or two of wiggle room your chances could go up.

If you just want to leave on Xmas what about checking flying to Europe for a stopover and then continue onto SEA?

ORDnHKG

You are contradicting from what you said. If you can't handle it might involve a 14+ hours on an inconvenient layover, you are not being flexible at all !

F awards are scarce, and from NYC to HKG/SIN/BKK, it will involve with at least one stop, not unless you fly UA EWR-HKG nonstop. Many times if you do a search for NYC to HKG/SIN/BKK, you will hardly find anything, similar to ORD-HKG. However, if you try doing segment by segment, you will have a different result, not to mention, if one segment is not available, don't think it is really not available, as if you just change for one day for one of the segment, then you will find availability, and that's why many times on these premium awards involve overnighting somewhere in order to make it works.

ORDnHKG

West coast airports like LAX or SFO is even harder than NYC, as those cities have big Asian population, students and families will go back to Asia for holidays no matter how expensive the ticket is, BR is especially hard to get anything out of those two airports no matter far out or close in, usually people will look for SEA or YYZ instead.

Even though OP doesn't like long layovers, but one of the better ways to Asia from NYC is actually flying east thru Europe instead of TPAC. TG is easy to come by, as well as OZ thru FRA.