Originally Posted by
guywhofliessometimesbutnotthatmuch
Hey all, still very new to the forum, hopefully this is in the right place - please feel free to redirect me if it's not.
So I've had the dream to visit SE Asia for a while now - and my goal is to get it done before I hit 40 (running low on time.) I've been considering trying to take a month off to do it over the holidays this year since that's probably when it's least disruptive to my work. I live in a mid-sized city (Pittsburgh) which has a decent airport with a couple of international flights, but it hasn't been a hub since like the mid 90s. My goal is to fly into bangkok, hit Thailand, Vietnam, (maybe a quick stop in cambodia), and possibly even end the trip in the philippines and fly back out of Manila (though I could do Thai Islands at the end instead of Palawan - if a round trip is much easier than a multi destination.) The main thing is booking the main legs of international travel so either PIT -> BKK MNL-> PIT or just round trip between PIT and BKK. I've looked at what seem like a ton of of flights, but I'm still trying to figure out how to best optimize this.
I'd mostly likely to try to keep it to one epic flight and the connections in the US and asia as short as possible. I've seen things that fly out of JFK or Detroit and go to Hong Kong, Taipei, or Singapore with a shorter connection to BKK after that. The idea being that one 15-17hr flight sandwiched between two 1-3hr flights is vastly preferable to having to get to the west coast first and take another huge flight, or stop somewhere like germany or the middle east and have two very long international flights. My problem is finding a flight like this that a.) can I actually book out of pittsburgh?. b.) often they have a massive layover (basically the better part of a day) and c.) isn't stupidly expensive (I'm willing to spend quite a bit, and have even considered business class on some options as I've been saving for this for a while, but some prices for less awful flights seem absurdly outrageous and I don't know if I justify the differential. I've basically seen good flights out of JFK that I want (they are a little pricey) but I can never get them if I put PIT in as my initial destitanition. I know Pittsburgh flies to JFK some, and to newark like every 3 seconds basically - so I have considered just trying to get to a major airport on my own and book the international travel out of there. What do people think about the risks/advantages of a centering flight? Is there any kind of agency or website one would recommend to plan this? I'm open to any and all suggestions on this!
Thanks so much!
(p.s. Also I have quite a bit of points on my chase sapphire preferred card - its not going to cover the whole cost of the trip - but it's enough to seriously drop the cost - so any situation in which I could use those is a nice bonus)
I'd recommend flying separately from PIT to NYC and then leaving from NYC. You're always going to have better prices there because of the sheer amount of competition + volume of NYC flights. The other alternative would be to get to LAX and leave from there for the same reasons.
I'd book one round-trip ticket to and from that US location. That's going to be the cheapest option. You can try open-jaws (eg flying from JFK to BKK and then from MNL to JFK on the flight home), but usually, flights to the same destination are cheaper. Once you have those flights booked, there's lots of low-cost airlines within Asia that can get you to and from where you need to go. You can also use some of your Chase points to transfer to Aeroplan to book cheap flights within Asia for 8,000 miles one-way. You can also include a stopover for 5,000 miles, so you might be able to fly something like HAN->BKK->PNH with a few days in BKK and a few days in PNH for a total of 13,000 miles.
There are points services who will help you use those points most efficiently/effectively for a trip at a flat rate. They might be able to find two one-ways that allow you to book your flight to/from Asia and then flights within Asia without needing to pay much cash out of pocket beyond taxes. You should be able to book all of your flights without maxing out your 250,000 points. Flying over the holidays will make this tougher, but not impossible.
As an example:
On 12/8, you can fly from EWR to PNH through LHR and SIN for 60K Aeroplan miles + $130 CAD. You can fly the LHR-SIN and SIN-PNH flights in business for an additional 27,500 miles + $7 CAD. If you want to have a stopover in SIN, you can add that for 5,000 miles.
On 1/2, you can fly from BKK to JFK through SIN and FRA for 44K Singapore miles + ~$137 USD.
That's 104,000 miles that transfer to Chase partners and about $230 US out of pocket to get to and from Asia.