Are China Southern Awards Available
 

Hi all,

I need to get from Xiamen, China to Bangkok in May. I used to book Air Asia for about $250 roundtrip, however they stopped servicing the route recently. The published fares are about $650, way more than I'm willing to pay. I have 25ku in Northwest miles and 40ku in Continental miles. Does anyone know if there are China Southern awards? I haven't seen any shown on either website. I think 25k will be enough. If so that would be great.

If anyone's got any insight or guidance, it would be appreciated.

I know that you can use your miles to go from the US to BKK, as I have done so with DL. I don't know about the intra-Asia, but I don't see why it would not be available. You may need to call.

You have to call to do it. CZ awards are standard Skyteam award tickets.

You will definitely have to call. That being said, just because they are in SkyTeam doesn't mean that they are available for reward redemption. One cannot book a reward flight on KQ using OnePass miles. I'm not sure if CZ is in the CO system for redemptions yet or not.

As for pricing, I think that CO is more expensive than that for a redemption within SE Asia. Depending on whether you get an itinerary that is a Series 8 or 8B you could be paying either 25K or 50K in Y for a standard reward. I'm guessing it is an 8B because of the partner flights, making it 50K. On NWA you can get the flights for 20K, assuming they have loaded CZ as a redemption partner.

I called both NW and CO. Both did not have availability on China Southern. The interesting thing is that the NW award is only 20k if available and CO wants 50k for the same ticket. This is a large disparity considering they are both part of skyteam.

Looks like I'll have to fork out $650 to purchase a ticket. Does anyone know a travel agent in China that sells international tickets at a discount? Published fares are extremly high.

elong is quoting RMB3,314 ($475) for RT CAN-BKK, however its english site does not offer international ticket services, you can try yoee, however, as of right now, its english site is down. You can also post your question in the China forum.

Try the Africans!
 

If you can get to HKG, there are some pretty mean deals to be had on KQ.

A non-Skyteam option that may nonetheless be also very cheap is ET CAN-BKK.

DL Skymiles on CZ
 

You can use your skymiles for award travel on CZ... subject to availability