From NY to Ho Chi Minh?
 

Is there a reasonable way to use miles to get tickets from BUF to SGN (Buffalo, ny to Ho Chi Minh)? I'm starting to rack up some miles with Skyteam (Delta) and would like to use my miles for future trips to Vietnam for me and my gf (has family there). I'm just not sure if that is reasonably possible with SkyTeam?

Thanks
aero

Af Jfk-cdg-(bkk)sgn

KE JFK-ICN-SGN is also an option

Another option is to get most of the way there on SkyTeam and finish it off with another carrier. NW can get you to BKK from NRT, which you can get to on NW or CO from the USA. You can then connect to AF (which is an all-SkyTeam routing) or any other carrier at that point for the short hop BKK-SGN. Or EWR-HKG on CO and then a slightly longer hop HKG-SGN on one of the many carriers running that route.

Thanks for the info guys. Does anyone have any idea how many miles that should take? They aren't showing flights from BUF to SGN or even EWR to SGN. But I can find EWR to HKG (one leg of the trip) and it shows 60,000 each way. So just that part is 120,000 RT. Would it typically be the same getting to SGN or would it take more than that? I don't want to call them and go through trying to book anything and find out because I wont be actually doing this for a while yet. Just looking for some input from someone that has done something similar before.

Thanks
aero

From NA to South East Asia is available from 60.000 Miles RT in Eco. You need to have a little luck, book in advance and be flexible to get these. Otherwise it will be double of that.

Depending on the carrier you use to book, I believe that there is a requirement that Asia rewards from US carriers fly via the Pacific, which will prevent you from redeeming on the AF routing. If you want that you'll have to book it as a RTW. The 60K each way to HKG is the EasyPass price since CO makes very few seats available for normal/discount rewards on that flight. From an availability perspective, the US-NRT-BKK-SGN/HAN route is going to be your best bet, and even then no guarantee. You could also do some strange routing like US-NGO-GUM-HKG using a mix of NW and CO Micronesia to get to HKG, but that will take a long time.

Also, most carries do a very bad job of showing all the routing options online, so you can try to look some of them up using the web (www.nwa.com/jp is a great place to start) but you'll proabably have to call in to get things like the BKK-SGN/HAN flights figured out.

S.

There is also an irregular KE flight YYZ-ICN

Keep in mind, you can also get cheap flights on LCC to SGN from BKK or SIN, sometimes for $100 RT

Actualy I believe that in the case of the Af flight this is NOT correct as Dl codeshares on that particular flight.

AF CDG-SGN is DL codeshare as is KE ICN-SGN