My wife and I are considering an extended trip to Thailand in about 1.5 to 2 yrs from now when I finish school. I was looking at getting a rewards card and hopefully get enough points to buy at least one of the tickets.

My first question is whether this would be worth it, and are there any programs that are better for international travel? How many miles does one typically need to earn to get an international ticket? Any other advice on getting cheap travel to this area.

Thanks

Of course it would be worth it. - And if you look through this board you will see a ton of offers that would get you the miles necessary to get there. - Especially when you have 1 1/2 to 2 years.

I just recently booked a flight to Bali, Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok for 62K miles round trip each. - That's through Continental's website but with Lufthansa and Thai Airways. I'm sure there may be better airlines if you look into it more (Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines).

where will you start the trip?.....how long is your extended trip?....where in thailand?...may or may not have a bearing on ideas....good luck

Would likely leave from Denver, Indianapolis, of Chicago. Looking at approximately 2 months (give or take a month depending on what we can afford) likely in in souther Thailand but possibly traveling around.

A slightly off-topic question: did you book multiple stopovers? I thought Continental only allowed one stopover per round trip. Thanks in advance for clarification. I nearly booked a CO trip to Bali last week before all the NYC to Europe legs became no longer available during my preferred dates.

use travelocity/expedia or other....plug in departure & destination airports to get a feel for the airlines that fly there....if 1 alliance is dominant, that may be the 1 to investigate 1st....

Sorry, should have clarified. We are spending a week in both Bali and Ho Chi Minh City and only 20 years in Bangkok. - We were able to make that connection as long as possible. If you are spending a month or two in Thailand make sure to explore northern Thailand as well. We enjoyed both Shang Rai and Shang Mai and north of there. The scenary is amazing up there, and there are a number of treks you can go on (elephant rides, canoeing, etc). Don't get me wrong, the beaches down south are amazing as well!

i love my AMEX platinum card, and their membership poitns are used across a variety of airlines, so you have a lot of flexibility. Especially if in 1.5 years you start thinking, "eh, not so into thailand, i want to go somewhere else."

if after you do all your research and you think of going down the platinum route, please consider telling them that i recommended you. just PM me before you do it, and i'll give you my name. I can earn some miles as well while you get started.

but since it seems like i'm getting something out of it, do your research on all the different cards you have in mind and then look at the platinum benefits. i think you'll find the service is worth the high annual fee.

I'm actually planning a trip to Thailand right now for this winter. I'm using miles and flying business.

I live in Denver and I'm using 50,000 BA miles to fly Cathay Pacific ORD-HKG-BKK. I'm just going to book a cheap flight Denver to Chicago.

For my return, I'm using 60,000 CO miles to go either BKK-ICN-SFO-DEN on Asiana Air + United or BKK-LAX-DEN on Thai Air + United. In business of course.

The miles are from the 100k BA card, 50k CO card, and another 10k from flying to australia.

I've found there to be decent availability for all of these routes. I hope that helps.

We have gone to thailand the past 5 winters, CO being our fav for availability and fewest miles needed at 65,000.
Just for fun I was checking recently using BA miles to thailand. Lots of availability, but 100,000 miles plus $500ish in taxes. Is that normal miles and fees for an economy seat? Seems awfully high by comparison to CO who charged more like $60 in fees for our trips.

CX from the US to HKG-BKK in BUSINESS is 100K + $400 in BA fees. They just started adding the stupid fuel charges to their partners. I just booked it. If I booked a 20 minute earlier flight HKG-BKK on Royal Jordanian instead of CX, the tariff was 240K ! Watch out for 2 partner awards obviously. wj

Class of service matters too, since different airlines have the different multipliers. For example, AA and BA are both OneWorld carriers, so you can use the same partner airlines (CX is what I booked) for travel on either airline. The awards are not exactly the same either, but from a CX gateway (including Chicago), one way flights to Thailand are 25K on BA and 35K on AA in economy, but the miles in business class class are 50K BA v 55K AA.

Another factor to consider is whether you want to have one or more stopovers. On its one partner award, BA allows free stopover(s) in Asia before your final destination without requiring a separate award, while AA does not (on its "all partner" awards for which I noted the mileage requirements above). United allows one stopover, but I think only on a roundtrip ticket. If you plan to fly around a lot in Thailand, it may make sense to compare the RTW type tickets that allow more stops, or there are low cost carriers that you can use in Thailand, and I think there is some sort of intra-Thailand pass you can buy that offers savings if you travel enough.

The third factor to consider is fees, primarily the fuel surcharge (YQ). Flying on CX with BA miles, you would have to pay YQ, but flying CX with AA miles, you would not.

Are you comparing business (BA) to economy (CO)? BA from the US to Thailand should be 50K economy (RT), while CO is 65K. But, mileage requirements on BA could increase if you cannot do your trip completely on one carrier. Similar to a previous poster, I'm using BA miles for an award flight on CX but purchasing an inexpensive positioning flight to a gateway city (JFK) separately, and flying JFK-> HKG (stopover) -> BKK for 25K miles one way in economy. Taxes/fees on BA are much higher than AA or UA because BA charges YQ on most partner award flights.

I guess it was showing 100,000 miles for me because it was for more than one partner. I was just searching for the cheapest way there. So it is possible to find flights there from cvg for 50,000 miles? That would be super if I could actually find that.

I live in LA, so -- for now -- I prefer the non-stop from LAX-BKK on Thai, booked thru CO. Maybe I missed some type of deal, but it cost me 125,000 for RT business class when I booked it in April (for flight in November - had to push my departure and return back 1 day each to get ticket). As I recall, the taxes were less than $100 (I recall them being around $50).

Once my UA and CO miles deplete, I plan to shift to Cathay, connecting thru Hong Kong, using AA miles for future flights.

BTW, according to Wikipedia, the LAX-BKK flight is the third longest non-stop flight by time in the World.

EDIT:
I priced my flight immediately after booking, and it would have cost just below $5000. As I recall, economy seats were available for around $1400 at that time and economy plus were going for around $1700. I'm a big guy, so I would've ponied up the extra $$$ for economy plus without thinking twice.

Not bad for a non-stopover!