Qatar Airways: Moscow to Ho Chi Minh in Business for £816 return
 

There is a great fare at the moment with Qatar Airways between DME and SGN.

You can depart on 05/10 and return 12/10 for £816 return - book your flight through Skyscanner here

It is a great fare for accumulating Avios as well as BA TP - especially interesting if you are in eastern europe

Nice find, im guessing you still need Visas for Russia even if you are just transiting through?

If you stay airside you do not need a visa, but check in facilities are landside

And if you miss your connection/have an IRROP you'll be stuck sleeping on the airport's floor, as I experienced most unpleasantly...

Bought LED-DME-SGN a month ago for 1000€,same promo but LED is much more convenient for me. Same fare difference if would purchased a feeder segment in separate ticket but only 5TP. BAEC 600TP total, S7 booked in Y so 20TP per segment. Also U6 was offered LED-DME but no TPs or miles.

As I understood from another thread on another forum - DME is well prepared for such situations - there is a transfer desk and they have people, who will pickup your luggage and get your boarding passes from different airlines - I have no experience by myself, however this was widely discussed back in the days when the EU/US sanctions were imposed on Russia and tickets to Asia with Aeroflot costed a bargain, due to the Rubl exchange rates..

Does SU even fly to DME? I thought they are SVO only...

You're right, Aeroflot does not fly to DME, SVO/VKO only.

My bad, this story was from SVO.. :(

Though the airline checking you in for your positioning flight may not be so well prepared, and you may find yourself with quite a battle at check in.

double entry transit visa should cover you in case of snafus and irrops. You can also make a quick visit to the city. From DME it's about 45 min to Red Square by the elektrichka + metro.

I can confirm from very recent experience (LHR-DME-DOH) that air-side transit without a transit visa is very much possible at DME also. Can't speak to the ability to have someone retrieve/check-in bags (as I was travelling HBO), or to the ability to have your boarding pass printed (I had a printed QR boarding pass with me) but there certainly was a transit "check-in" desk staffed by a single person even in the middle of the night. The transit security check did involve a couple questions to confirm I was in direct transit from, but otherwise was pain-free.

BA check-in at LHR were more paranoid than the folks at DME were - two phone calls were needed to confirm I was ok to be checked-in without a Russian visa, and one more verification from a supervisor at the gate before I was allowed to board. Having my printed onward QR boarding passes helped tremendously there, so would strongly recommend having those handy when checking in for your positioning flight.

I did this last year with the €522 flights from DME-DOH-TYO with Qatar. In the end I decided to get a transit visa because I couldn't get good connections with BA from LHR to DME. QR decided to change the DME-DOH and DOH-DME timings delaying the departure by 6 hours which meant I had a 6 hour layover in Moscow on the way out and a 9 hour layover on the way back (both overnight) so I ended up leaving the airport and going to the AirHotel.

For me, £816 is too much for a flight from Moscow if positioning from London, even though BA RFS avios flights are cheap. If you don't get the visa then you could potentially be waiting for a long time in the lounge at DME and it is nothing like Hamad International. And if you misconnect, I imagine it's a bit of a nightmare to sort out and you may end up having to come back to London if you can't get on the following Qatar flight to Doha. If you add in the cost of the Russian transit visa, you might as well wait until the next Qatar sale and pay a little extra to fly from Scandinavia or Western Europe.

This sale ended on 20 August, however, QR launched another 'sale' from today with Moscow - Bangkok at USD 1,250. I think the prices were not loaded yet though.
Hopefully, there are better offers from other starting points as well.

At this moment I'm seeing SOF-SIN for €1,235. Looks wide open until March 2018. Even for departures tomorrow :)

Example for December:

https://www.google.be/flights/?f=0&g...SOF0QR227;sc=b