Precision1

You can also fly air Canada through Toronto Calgary and Vancouver. Great business class and awesome lounges in TO and Van.

pduan87

Hi all,

I was wondering what the best strategy would be to get enough miles for myself and gf for a roundtrip flight from SFO to BKK for 2 weeks in Dec. of this year.

I have 102K AA miles and 10K United. She has zero. I currently have the AA Citi as well as ~10K TY points and will be utilizing the Citi 5% for 6 months card very soon.

What is weird is that when I search through AAdvantage, I don't see any availability. Is it because they don't fly there through miles or are they just completely booked up?

My spending is around $1K/month and FICO is mid 700's. Not sure about gf's.

Thanks!

TorontoSingh

Get your gf to apply for 50Kmiles X 2 AAdvantage visa and Amex using the double browser trick (search on flyertalk for info).

As for AA, it doesn't fly to Bangkok but they are part of the OneWorld alliance so you can redeem 70K AA miles on their partners, either Cathay Pacific or Japan Airlines for a r/t economy ticket to Bangkok. The tax and fees on Cathay is a little less than Japan Airlines or so and shouldn't exceed $100 in both cases.

Alternatively you both can also try accumulating United miles by applying for the Chase United Explorer card with 50K miles first use bonus as well as the Chase Sapphire card. Each of you will need 65K miles to fly economy either on United or their Star alliance partners which could include a combination of ANA, Thai, Asiana, Singapore Airline.s and Air China.

You can't search for CX and JAL availability via AA site but you can check it through BA site and call AA to book seats.

Best of luck

milevalue

Sign up for a free British Airways account, enter the site, and click on Spend Avios and Book Award flight. That will show you the Japan Airlines and Cathay Pacific availability, then you have to call AA to book.

bubers

My husband and I have 285k Diners Club miles, 170k AmEx points, and a smattering of airline miles. We would like to take a trip with our not-quite-2-year-old to Thailand (preferably an island and/or Chiang Mai, so with a short hop flight from BKK) and Beijing (2-3 days) in early November (max 14 days total, leaving as early as Oct. 29 and returning no later than Nov. 13). We're planning to have our kid as a lap child unless there is some restriction on local flights. We would also be open to visiting Hanoi, if for some reason that makes sense.

I'm getting the idea that there are better ways to do this than booking straight through the DC website using miles, but I am nowhere near understanding what that means in practical terms. I would be very grateful for any advice or redirection, if this has all been covered elsewhere.

jimrgraham

The flights in and out if CNX are very inexpensive. I don't know if I'd waste miles for that. You can get a $21 each way between some of the islands and CNX on airlines that don't show up in normal searches. I use Skyscanner.com to show all the flights and Agoda.com for hotels. You can get 4* rooms for less than $30 per night all over Thailand. Save the miles for a trip to EU? That's what I do anyway. Have a wonderful holiday in the land of smiles!

bubers

Thanks, Jim! I was definitely hoping to fly a local cheapie airline for the internal stuff. The help I need is more about whether to use DC or AmEx miles/points and how to do it. For example, I saw a recommendation to another poster from back in March about using DC miles to buy US Air miles because of a bonus - I don't really understand the difference between using DC miles (you can search and I think book on their website) and buying/transferring miles to an airline.

mia

When you book travel through Diners Club or American Express you are essentially converting your points to cash at a fixed value of $0.01 per point. When you transfer points to miles and redeem for award tickets they are potentially worth twice as much, perhaps more. There are many variables that determine which approach is better, and you will need to invest some time and effort to understand the process.

Where will your trip begin? In which class of service do you plan to travel? Do you prefer to travel on a specific airline or with a particular alliance due to elite status or other considerations? What would be the cost of the tickets if purchased with money?

bubers

Thanks, Mia! We're based in Los Angeles, traveling coach, and we're agnostic when it comes to airlines or alliances. Based on the DC calculations we would be looking at about $2500 for the two tickets if we were to pay cash (which we won't be doing - we're trying to make this an almost-free vacation).

I'm happy to invest time and effort, I'm just a bit overwhelmed and need help figuring out how to attack it. What you said about transferring points to miles vs. booking directly is exactly the kind of information I need. Is there a guide for newbies buried in the forum here somewhere?

mia

I have moved your question to MilesBuzz! forum where there is more traffic.

You probably need to redeem through a program which would allow you to book a flight from Los Angeles to Beijing with a layover in Thailand. You do not necessarily need to be able to transfer to the program of the airline which operates the flights, you should be able to book through another airline in the same alliance.

Membership Rewards and Club Rewards have several transfer partners in common which would allow you to pool your points from both programs if required:

Alliance members

• AC Air Canada (Star Alliance)
• BA British Airways (OneWorld)
• DL Delta Airlines (Skyteam)

Independent airlines

• LY El Al Airlines
• F9 Frontier Airlines
• HA Hawaiian Airlines
• VS Virgin Atlantic

sk8uno

As a starting point, make a chart of all the airlines you could potentially transfer your miles to. Then go to the airline website and find out how many miles it would take for a round trip ticket to Asia. Compare that number against the number it would cost to book straight through DC or MR. If the number through the airline is lower, then you need to engage in some further investigation. For example, you need to find out if there is award availability on the days you want to fly, and you need to find out what the rules are regarding stopovers, open jaws, etc., on award tickets. These rules will vary by airline.

You will quickly see that it's not just a straight comparison until you price out several different options. (e.g. round trip to PEK with stopover in BKK? OJ into PEK and out of BKK? and so on...)

Also, don't forget that you need to get a visa for China and Vietnam!

mia

$2,500 / 2 = $1,250 per person = 125,000 points. I think it's safe to assume that most programs offer coach awards between LAX and Asia for well under 125,000 miles roundtrip? If I understand correctly that bubers is planning to travel in November 2012 (next month) finding award seats may be impossible, but I hope someone can guide her to the most likely programs.

strummerjones

Using ANA's website to search Star Alliance flights, I found availability for two adults in coach (see sample below). Most days in between are available for you to build in a stopover in Beijing or to choose different departure/return dates. You also should be able to build an open jaw that allows you to fly directly into one city and return from another (e.g., Chiang Mai, Phuket), which will save you from having to buy at least one interior flight. There are a number of Asian airlines who are part of Star Alliance (Asiana, Thai, Singapore, ANA, Air China), so you have a lot of options for the leg that will not include the stopover in Beijing. I'm no expert, so you'll need to research and confirm this information (especially the open jaw and stopover rules for the particular airline chosen).

Date Flight Route Depart Arrive Aircraft Type Terminal Class Seat Duration
10/29 (MO) CA984 Los Angeles Beijing 01:40 05:30+1 773 2 Economy 2 12:50
10/30 (TU) CA959 Beijing Bangkok(BKK) 13:40 18:05 738 3 Economy 2 05:25
11/13 (TU) TG614 Bangkok(BKK) Beijing 10:10 15:50 330 - Economy 2 04:40
11/13 (TU) CA983 Beijing Los Angeles 21:00 17:00 773 3 Economy 2 12:00
Required mileage 65,000Miles x 1 (130,000Miles)

Note that the mileage requirement listed above is for ANA. ANA does levy fuel surcharges on award tickets (though not huge fees like BA), so you may want to use a partner program (e.g., Air Canada or Singapore). The mileage needed may differ depending on the partner you choose. For reference, the above itinerary is approx. $1000 right now. So if there are substantial fuel surcharges, you might be better off paying for the ticket and earning miles, rather than using them for a small discount.

Good luck and safe travels.

azepine00

I strongly discourage booking 40 hr of coach with lap kid as this represents an unimaginable pain and suffering nobody (including your fellow passengers) should endure. Bassinets are of no use at that age. Book in business of first with lap kid where space is less of an issue or three seats in coach. Seriously. Try it at home - get a chair and sit there hding your kid for say 5 hr straight - see how it feels.
You will also pay 10% (or more on CX for example) of full coach fare when reddeeming award for lap kid - likely several hundred $.

kstew

In January, I'm taking my 4th trip to Chiang Mai in 8 months. Each time I've flown it's been on Korean Air's A380 through Seoul (ICN). The layover is really short in ICN, but there are play areas in the gate area for young ones. My experiences have been fantastic on Korean. I've had several toddlers on those flights and the FA's are great in serving both mom and child.

AirAsia has lots of cheap/inexpensive flights in and out of CNX. Worth checking out.

Have a blast.