pricesquire

I've done a few searches...nothing comes up on point for Southeast Asia specific flights.

Me: 330k AA miles, 80k United, 35k USAir

Wife: 100k AA, 110k United, 70k USAir

Willing to apply for more cards.

Trying to get to Vietnam and/or Thailand for 8-10 days anytime between November - January.

Any ideas? Best use of miles? New cards?

Any and all help appreciated.

UA Fan

Where are you flying from?

japaik

Assuming that you are flying from North America, given the large # of AA miles you have, you could do either Cathay or JAL to Bangkok. Both fly an excellent product via NRT or HKG. It may be easier to book the Bangkok-Vietnam flights with cash as opposed to miles.

There was a promotion that JAL was running on Bangkok Airways flights that was very good for short distance flights (Koh Samui, Chiang Mai, or even Cambodia), but I'm not sure if it's still available.

adamak

AA will be the easiest. Assuming you're from US, x-JFK-HKG-BKK on Cathay is relatively easy to book. 110k each for business class. HKG-BKK is usually more open than HKG-SGN or Danang. Phuket is hard. Just get yourself to either BKK or HCM City, then buy intra-Asia tix out of pocket. And fly back on CX from your destination city through HKG.

fulthrust7

Do Cathay F w AA miles to Thailand and return from Vietnam if you want to
Visit both. Though w 10d. You're only talking about 3-4d in each place + travel time. Might be best to stick w one country and go to a few places within. AA will allow 2 one ways so you can return from another city/country. Get a cheap one way to travel within. Cathay F is a solid product. 135k pp RT

pricesquire

Apologies on the omission, leaving from JAX (East Coast US).

Is this 135k # being quoted a basic number for anywhere in the region? I.E., Bali..would that be 135k too?

I like what I'm seeing Re: AA from USA to BKK.

Lastly question: big difference b/w the 110k in biz and the 135k in F?

Assuming I'll need to call AA to book.

dukerau

Yep, same cost for the region, so Bali would be the same as BKK. You do have to call AA to book. As for J vs F, I can't give personal experience, but J gets very positive reviews. Since you have such a stash of miles, you might want to give F a go. J availability is easier to come by, though, and wanting 2 on the same flight might make F too hard to get to work, especially both ways.

Thunderroad

Agree fully with fulthrust's advice, including perhaps limiting yourselves to one country, except s/he is being understated in describing CX F as simply a "solid product". It is superb, one of the best commercial travel experiences possible, and worth the extra miles to fly it instead of CX J. CX J is also excellent, but F is a special experience. Among other things, unless you're both really large you and your wife can sit across from each other in one of your F suites, with the smaller of you two comfortable on the buddy seat/ottoman, for pre-departure bubbly and dinner in the air. Like the Orient Express at 30K feet.

Best routing for you might be CX F JFK-HKG both ways, but if no availability on that there are other options such as from SFO, LAX, I believe ORD and probably Canadian departure points.

Yes, you will need to call AA to book. AA CSRs are usually pretty good about finding availability. But one small glitch I've found is that sometimes they need to break down the trip to individual components. E.g., you may need to ask them to search JFK-HKG and HKG-Bangkok individually to find the flights.

If AA doesn't find you what you want, awardnexus.com is a good service that provides limited free use to FF members, so you can search there to see about CX F availability (and then call AA to check on this). For a charge, it also includes a membership option that will send you email alerts if what you want opens up later.

The only other advice I'd offer is to allow several hours gap between your arrival at JFK (or wherever) for and departure from there. And the same for transiting through HKG on your return, though on the way home it won't be quite as crucial. You wouldn't want a delay in making the first flight to screw up your connection for your transpacific trip.

Happy trails!

japaik

Agreed on CX F being one of the best out there. You also have the option of doing J one way and F the other way since getting 2 F seats is fairly difficult as it is. JAL's award search will be best for searching for award space as phantom seats have been showing up on other partner airline searches.

You could also consider doing BKK-NRT-JFK-x on JL as another alternative if you need additional availability (JL J and F are also pretty awesome)

pricesquire

Great advice here. Really, thanks.

And yeah, worried about finding 2 F tickets at such peak times. We'll see what happens I suppose!

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"Is this 135k # being quoted a basic number for anywhere in the region? I.E., Bali..would that be 135k too?"

It depends.

With the AAdvantage program, in order for the one-way in F to price as a single award (67.5K miles), the over-water carrier must have a published through-fare between origin and destination that permits the particular routing. I'm not sure if CX publishes a JAX-DPS through-fare.

Thunderroad

FWIW, my own experience with finding two F CX tix is pretty good. But it could hinge on bagging them sufficiently in advance and/or being somewhat flexible about flying dates. Also, as I've mentioned above, awardnexus.com has an email feature that alerts you if availability opens up. Expertflyer.com has a similar feature, but I haven't used that for CX and am not as sure if it's as good as the awardnexus option.

pricesquire

Never used Award Nexus of Expert flyer. I don't want to pay for a service, as I only book maybe one major award ticket per year. I'll look into it..

dukerau

The Wandering Armanean (travel blog) has a free award search with limited alert capability (I think you can have 10 free). I recently cancelled Expertflyer as it satisfies my needs, though it certainly is not as robust as EF.

wandr.me

SingaporeDon

OP may also find CX availability for partner redemption via JAL website.