bleongca

I think so, even with the promo discount it was over $200 for the dates I wanted and the times are not very flexible, and are non-refundable. With the award redemption, many flights seem to be available at the times I want and it is cancellable up to 1 day before, albeit some reasonable penalties.

armouredant

5000 Amex MR points (converted to 5000 Etihad guest points), which I get for free just from using the Amex, plus 300 baht (~£8)... versus £83 (cheapest I can see on the schedule)?

I'll take the redemption, yeah.

waygora

Any tricks on finding availability? Just went through 15+ flights for HKT-USM and USM-BKK on a couple dates in January but they said every flight was sold out not only in miles, but also in cash. That seems unlikely obviously...

kkmiles

Yeah, you need to call Bangkok Airways flyer bonus program first to verify the award seat availability. Then you have about a 50% chance of those seats being available from Etihad.

Bangkok Air recently made some big changes with their award inventory severely limiting Etihad. One of the many devaluations this game has recently brought

UAuhoh

I had miles expiring at the end of October and so tried to redeem for a Bangkok Airways ticket to just about anywhere in Thailand and nothing was available for any of the dates the agent checked for me for next year. What a waste of time (not to mention loyalty) their program is.

armouredant

Encourage the agent at Etihad not to search for availability, but try directly to make the booking in the redemption class.

(I gave up and booked the Lomprayah from Koh Tao to Chumphon and a cheap flight on Nok Air back to DMK).

waygora

But trying that still didn't work? I've called a bunch of times and tried weeks and weeks of dates, never even one seat. Doesn't seem to make sense.

yerffej201

looks like EF took off bangkok airways award space too? does anyone know what fare classes awards issue in for y and j?

armouredant

I gave up and booked Nok Air cash instead, in the end.

yerffej201

anyone know about ef?

yerffej201

has anyone booked a bangkok airways business class award recently?

princesakura

I was checking out this thread earlier today and after much research just booked BKK-USM one-way in March using 5000 Etihad Guest miles and ฿105 (~3.50 USD) per person.

I checked Bangkok Airways airline partner page to see where I could book from. For my dates:

• Etihad, 10,00 round-trip. No online search function.
• JAL, 12,000 round-trip. Quirk is that JAL prices the award based on total distance of entire itinerary, using their PG award chart. So the cost of either one-way BKK-USM and round-trip BKK-USM-BKK is 12,000. Online search works, but sometimes got an error saying no fares for that itinerary, even though I'm selecting from their search results.
• Air France Flying Blue, 22,000 round-trip. At first, I saw 11,500 one-way using airfrance.us. Later, airfrance.us kept throwing up errors and wouldn't let me use BKK or USM as origin or destination. So I switched to airfrance.co.th and saw 11,000 one-way. Taxes were also lower on .co.th, at ~$3 versus €8 on .us. So, play around with location if using AF.
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, 20,000 round-trip. No online search.
• Couldn't get search to work at Emirates after a few tries. Didn't spend any more time at it. Website says 8,000 one-way for most PG routes, including BKK-USM.
• Didn't bother checking Qatar because I wanted to use Amex MR.

So, off to attempt to use Etihad Guest for the first time. I created an Etihad Guest account, and then promptly called their USA number. Call was around 0700 GMT and agent was based in Philippines. Extremely smooth experience, going from asking details, checking availability, cc info, ticketing. He saw availability on the departure flight I wanted, but not on the return flight I wanted, so I requested just one-way for now. Too bad, because Flying Blue had availability on the return, though JAL did not. After availability was confirmed, while agent was doing some work on his end, I had time to transfer points from Amex before he asked for my Etihad Guest number. Took 25 minutes including 5 to 10 minutes on hold.

Received email 30 minutes later. Contained record locator for PG. Fare class is X for economy.

I couldn't see link to select seats at PG website at first, but was able to after adding contact information for travelers. In economy-only version A319, I got error if trying to select row 1 or exit row 10 and couldn't save those selections, but was able to select and save in row 2. Seemingly the entire cabin was open for seat selection according to the chart: no occupied seats for a flight about 6 weeks out.

Overall good experience using Etihad Guest for first time. Will have to call later to see if there's availability on my desired return flight.

Sinter

Any updates on availability through EG or is it kinda luck of the draw at this point? Thanks in advance!

princesakura

I wanted to change dates for my BKK-USM award for two, departing within two weeks. First time calling and no availability on the desired date. Called again a few days later and my desired flight was available. Change fee was quoted at 100 dirhams per passenger, and then converted and charged at 855 THB to match currency of fee for the original reservation. I noticed that online availability for my desired flight was visible on both Air France and Japan Airlines, while it wasn't on the day of my first failed attempt.

Dpetryszyn

I just made an award booking and it took about 20 minutes from start to finish.

A good tool to use to check availability is the JAL award search. If you sign up for a free JAL frequent flyer account, you will be able to search award availability on any partner airline (including PG). The inventory etihad was able to see matched what I saw on JAL.

This allowed me to monitor award space without calling into Etihad until I found what I was looking for.