Convert Skymiles to Singapore, Cathay, or Thai?
 

Anyone know of a reasonable way to "backdoor" Delta Skymiles into award seats on Singapore, Cathay, or Thai airways?

Delta is incredibly poor on decent partner airlines to Southeast Asia for some reason.

Not so pure i would say i used korean airlines to get back from there

I just flew Korean Air Business Class. Absolutely terrific.

Within SE-A, there're also some KLM routes on big birds.

Thanks. Unfortunately, Korean Air is blacked out for a month from late May thru June.

I will look into KLM.

The only backdoor I know is to stick around long enough to gain access to Coupon Connection, and then trade SkyMiles for SQ etc miles. Expect a rate of 1.33 SkyMiles per 1 SQ mile.

where and how is access to Coupon Connection granted?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/techn...ed-issues.html

However, based on your number of posts, you are not yet eligible to use this FT feature.

Vietnam Airlines generally has good award availability. The hard product and service are nothing spectacular, but it gets the job done. The Delta agents seem to have a hard time seeing their inventory though. I spoke to two who insisted the flights I wanted were unavailable, yet the third agent was able to snag and book the seats. I think the Air France website and/ or the KVS tool show Vietnam Airlines award availability.

Alternatively, China Southern, China Eastern and China Airlines all tend to have very good award availability, however, then you're connecting/ transiting China/ Taiwan which can be inconvenient for getting around Southeast Asia.

And with China Southern's A380 flight from LAX to CAN (Lay flat Business and a great time) we have good options and don't forget China Airlines or Malaysian. I actually think Skyteam has good options to SE Asia

Do you recommend Malayasian via KUL or China Southern a380 via Guangzhou?

Both leave from LAX.

Does anyone know a service who helps do award booking via Delta? I am a newbie and it sounds like you need to be a vet of sorts to figure it all out, potentially.

Anyone know of any 3rd party that can help?

Possibilities:

http://bookyouraward.com/
http://pointmetothemiles.com/need-awardtravel-help/

The third party services are really bad with SkyMiles. I'd stay away from all of them, honestly. You can check CZ on ExpertFlyer (and sometimes airfrance.us). They have flat beds on their A380, while MH doesn't have them on their TPAC aircraft. Fuel surcharges on CZ are also much lower than on MH.

+1. In my n=1 experience with one of the booking services, I was certainly not wow'd by the person's knowledge or initiative with my DL award. Though, when it came time to booking and dealing with the agents, I am glad he took care of that. There were multiple screw-ups along the way on the part of the phone agents but ultimately it was sorted out.