Has anyone flown to ULN? What route did you take?
 

I am planning a trip to Mongolia for 2015 as a present for the o/h. I want to make full use of earning TP and Avios along the way, but BA don't fly to ULN. Have any other BA travellers done this route and if so, what route did you take? At the moment, it looks like LHR-PEK with BA, then followed by a PEK to ULN flight with a different airline is the option, but that's quite expensive, as PEK - ULN return itself is about £400 pp.

Thanks

Beijing is indeed the best way, and I've done LHR-PEK-ULN, with an overnight stay. It is cheaper but incredibly slow to take a long distance coach from Beijing, or the train (30 hours), not that I've done either. Ulan Bator is pretty fascinating, if a little cold in the winter. You need some patience when dealing with transport there, they check passports and paperwork every hour, on the hour.

Hi

There aren't too many options for this route, but I travelled to Ulanbataar last February and flew BA to Seoul, then connected to a wide bodied Korean Air flight, which was also an excellent standard.

An alternative I looked at was flying Turkish Airlines via Istanbul and Bishkek, but they used much smaller aircraft like 737's and you wouldn't be able to use your Avios on this route of course.

Hope you find something suitable?

Thanks - I also just had a peek for reward availability for LHR-PEK (for 2014, as a benchmark for next year) and it is suprisingly good, compared to the routes for LHR - HKG. What airline did you fly from PEK-ULN if you don't mind me asking? £400pp seems quite a lot, but I definitely would opt for flying rather than any form of transport which is going to take a long time, and I am hoping to be able to use my 241 voucher for it which I suppose is a big saving in itself.

Thanks for the tip on the transport. I have always been an independent traveller rather than tours, but Mongolia seems to be one of those places where it's not really traveller friendly so probably best opt for a tour with a small group. How did you find it? Do let me know if you have any tour recommendations.

MIAT Mongolian fly from Berlin TXL via Moscow direct to ULN a few times a week, and Aeroflot fly from Moscow SVO as well.

Alternatively, you could get the train?! ;)

Thanks Chris - will definitely bear this option in mind if the LHR-PEK route reward availability dries up. I've been to both Beijing and Seoul and my preference would probably be to spend a day in Beijing than Seoul... and save the 20k Avios points too, of course!

I went there on business, and I was on my own, but I was able to do sightseeing as an individual, and there are plenty of older German couples who seem to be independent travellers there. My particular interest was horse riding, which I was able to do there. They are horse mad there and they were very interested in photos of my horses.

I flew into ULN with Air China, which is part of Star Alliance, so I don't know if you can research into leveraging Miles and More for this, though I seem to recall it's not an easy one for redemptions (in other words Air China enjoy making money on this route). As you say PEK is relatively wide open for availability, and so in Chengdu, though that isn't geographically helpful.

When I went to Mongolia then I did go by train!

Colleagues have flown either via Moscow or Berlin with MIAT. Although Berlin is stopping and is changing to Frankfurt from the end of March.

From what I recall from my trip, the Mongolians don't like the Chinese so much (historical reasons) so connections to/from China are limited. But I think there are good connections to Tokyo (although a long way round).

Thanks dj_jay_smith - I would have been happy to fly via Moscow and Berlin (rather than flying further East and flying backwards again), except for the fact I'm probably going to book it as a reward booking, and I don't think either of those airlines are OW partners (or are they?). When I search on BA, they are usually quite good at showing where their partner airlines have availability, but when I search ULN, it just comes up saying that they don't fly this route.

P.S. - shouldn't the chinese dislike the Mongolians, given it was the Mongolians that invaded China...?! :confused:

Corporate Wage Slave - thanks for your tips. I will probably end up flying Air China (using cash) and (grudgingly) pay the c.£400k! I'll monitor prices as it comes closer to the time as I know certainly that for internal flights it fluctuates wildly depending on the time of booking...

Miat has significantly better on time performance on that route so I would choose them over CA if the prices are comparable.

Of course, it is a very good route to use *A miles on. Meanwhile ST miles can get you there from ICN. And, if you happen to collect DL miles, you can presumably get there for a pittance from BKK or SIN because DL thinks Mongolia is in "South" Asia.

I've been traveling to ULN (Ulaanbaatar, which is the correct way of spelling it) since 2009, mostly the slow and cheap way (by bus and train) from PEK. It's true that Miat is significantly better on time performance than CA, but recently (last few months to half a year) the prices of Miat have been much higher than CA.

400 pounds is roughly $600 usd right? Usually RT from PEK is about that price, while RT from ULN is lower, I bought for $400 USD twice in the last half year.

Sadly you can't get to Mongolia on OW flights. Only *A on CA and KE on ST as people above said. So if you are looking at booking rewards ticket with OW, your best bet in still to fly to PEK and then buy a RT cash.

Hope this helps. :)

Be aware that flights departing from mainland China airports are notorious for being delayed (due to the military strictly controlling China's airspace) so make sure you leave plenty of time between connections if you're not able to book your flights on the same PNR.

PEK-ULN is very different than PEK-SHA/CAN/SZX/HKG because there is very little traffic on that sector (in addition to PEK-ULN itself, there are only around 25 flights to Europe that use it.... v. ~200 in the PEK-HKG corridor). That having been said, getting a takeoff/landing slot in Beijing is a variable that applies to all flights.

How long before QR start flying there?

I took the train there from Moscow. If you have the time to do it that way, it's a fantastic journey and something special about arriving to such a far flung place overland after so many days! Also flew onto Beijing from Ulaanbaatar on MIAT but definitely paid a lot less that £400.