johndoe123

Starting point: ORD (Chicago, IL)

I am looking for a Skyteam low award redemption option for a 7-10 day trip to Vietnam and Cambodia during late December 2013. I will also consider a cash ticket if the price is right in economy (less than $1,000), but If I do award I'd prefer at least one of the two tickets to be in business class.

I am looking for any recommendations you may have on how to plan this trip on Skyteam. I am not getting anywhere on delta.com, as it's only offering $9k business seats when I search for economy seats, and saying no availability when searching for awards. (I actually test searched some months prior due to far out availability issues).

I get the gut instinct this may not be on the Delta route map and may require going through Hong Kong or South Korea, but I'm certainly open for suggestions. Certainly, I have quite a bit of time to book this.

If it helps, I might be able to buy a cheap one-way ticket to make this work as an open jaw.

A bit off topic, but I'd also consider visiting other countries in the area (Thailand, Philippines), but with only 10 days I don't think there's time unless I'm told otherwise.

luv2ctheworld

Helps if you mention where you're starting from, as sometimes it's just as difficult getting to your international gateway using Skymiles (because of the domestic "medium/high" redemption being the only one available, despite "Low" being available for the international leg).

Look @ the Skyteam site, along w/ DL's own partner page. Understand the route network, and you will likely be able to come up with something. China Southern/Eastern, KE, and CI come to mind, along with Vietnam Airlines... keep in mind you may have to use a combination of airlines.

Do some creative thinking when using the route map; it will come to you.

Finding availability and avoiding blackout dates, well, that's another matter.

Edited to Add: a paid subscription to KVS or ExpertFlyer will help tremendously in the search effort. And reading this is mandatory before starting anything:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...er-thread.html

DeltaFan4Now

VN has a lot of availability in J. Check out Wandering Aramean http://www.wandr.me/ for availability. Be careful though, VN is changing the booking codes for both Y and J and for some reason my VN legs are having a hard time "sticking" in my reservation...

mattsteg

It's too soon to search for inventory, and the partners you want will not show up on Delta.com.

Hong Kong is not a natural connecting point for Skyteam/Delta and is not likely the answer. Late December is usually blacked out on KE so that would remove Korea as a routing option as well. CI is blacked out as well.

I believe VN has good availability intra-asia, so the main concerns are getting across the ocean and potentially most problematic from your origin to a gateway domestically. If you want to fly Delta metal, going via Japan is likely the best option. Other options would include CZ through CAN or MU through PVG.

johndoe123

Sorry, ORD is the departure city. I typed this message twice, the first time it being lost due to my login session token timing out, and had to annoyingly re-type the message.

mot29

More than you want to spend but you may want to check out Premium Economy on AF --pretty comfortable seats -- you could open jaw into PNH and out of SGN (not sure if AF actually operates CDG-SGN or if it is code shared). If you plan it right you should be able to price in A on AF through Paris for about $2500 or so. And you get a stop in Europe thrown in (not just CDG, you can connect to another AF destination). Earns a 25% base miles bonus and a 50% EQM bonus as well.

DeltaFan4Now

However, if you can somehow get to ICN on DL metal, VN has an ICN-HAN and ICN-SGN - both nonstop.

mtkeller

Don't rule out routing ORD-DTW-PVG/PEK/ICN. I tend to see more TPAC award inventory on those flights than to NRT, and then MU (PVG) and VN (PVG/PEK/ICN) become viable options to Vietnam. Having only spent two segments to get to Asia, that leaves room for needing to connect somewhere, too. (ORD-DTW-PVG/PEK/ICN-Vietnam(stopover)-Cambodia, for instance, should be totally feasible. Then return from Cambodia, using an open jaw if desired.)

JoelA

Also check Narita as a connection point.

I had very good luck getting NRT -> HAN on VN award biz tickets. That flight seems to be a little easier than SGN for award.

Also, I think VN runs a NGO -> HAN (at least during the summer).

Use the wandering Armenian tool as noted above. It gives you a great place to start.

I ended up buying the tickets inside Vietnam and Cambodia as it is not all that expensive and I think we made 5 separate stops...

Wonderful places to go and well worth the research to get the tickets set up.

mattsteg

Any experience if connecting at other japanese airports is viable? The DL routing rules for revenue tix are MPM-based, but some of the fare rules seem to dictate the location of interline transfers between Dl and VN.

mtkeller

No experience, but the only fare rules that matter are the award fare rules. The routing rules come into play, but restrictions on number of transfers in a region or number of segments on any given carrier that might be in revenue fare rules won't apply. I suspect that the HKG-MU-PVG-DL-NRT-DL-ATL-DL-OMA routing I got ticketed this summer would not have flown as a revenue fare (although at least I'm changing carrier at a hug) and the SYD-MH-KUL-MH-LHR-KL-AMS-KL-FRA that I flew (well, at least up to the LHR stopover) would be problems, too. I think you should be able to pull off a transfer just about anywhere. Now whether the airport is set up to handle such a transfer could be a completely different animal.

mattsteg

That sounds reasonable, and in that case, from an availability perspective DTW-NGO-SGN/HAN looks like a pretty viable option. Actually it looks like this is even in the allowed transfer list for at least one revenue fare originating ORD as well.

rajsh

I'd also check out using Delta to get to Singapore and from there using VN. Last year I was going to Cambodia and paid for a pretty low priced ticket to Singapore from NYC. From Singapore I took a VN flight to Siem Reap. What I found was that the VN flights were pretty decent (I traveled in economy) and for your purposes VN does go from Singapore to Vietnam.

So you might want to consider that path or at least price it out whether you decide to use $ or award pts or a combination of them.