LAX to SGN
 

I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction on an itinerary I'm hoping to book in the next couple of days.

I have accumulated just over 1 million AMEX Membership points and would like to take 4-5 people on business flights from LAX to SGN at the end of January for about 13-15 days.

What do you think is best? I would love to fly EVA, but is it possible? If not, maybe transfer the points to Delta?

Thanks so much!! ;)

LAX to SGN
 

Obviously check availability before you transfer. I would also check Air Canada for Air Japan flights through NRT.

If you are thinking of booking at the last minute you may not be happy with the results. Many flights in the Chinese New Year time period may be harder to get.

I personally would not use the awards for DL flights. With their new 5 tier award chart, you might pay 300-400k. For just one ticket. Way better flights on other carriers should be available.

I would say you're in a very difficult situation. Getting 4-5 business class seats on any long-haul flight (especially on airlines where you have no status) is going to be a tall order indeed. Add to that the Chinese New Year high level of bookings. I would check availability first on the various airlines you can transfer to, but you may have to split up your flights. Even if you do find a carrier that has the seats open, they may be gone by the time the transferred miles show up in the count you transfer them to. I know it sucks, but with such short timing you may not have a lot of luck.

The best option IMO is to transfer your points into British Airways' Avios points and redeem for Cathay Pacific awards, for the best combination of seats, routing, and schedule.

For the absolute best seat, you'll want to transfer into Aeroplan (Air Canada) and redeem for Singapore Airlines. Good luck finding availability. You'd also have to backtrack to get to SGN from SIN.

Also noteworthy is Japan Airlines' new J product, which you can redeem Avios for as well. I personally prefer JAL over ANA.

And if you like Hello Kitty then it's Eva via Aeroplan.

And yes, Chinese New Year and Tet will make it more difficult. Perhaps split into two parties of two?

Good morning!

Thank you all so much for your advice! Okay so Laxative, it looks like Eva is an option through Aeroplan? I would of course check availability before I do any transferring, but for EVA could I check availability on their website? If there is.. transfer to Aeroplan, call Aeroplan and have them book the Eva flight? I signed up for the free trial of Expert Flyer and they're showing availability on Korean Air. Is this award travel availability?

I would be interested in Avios option too because of their current bonus, but would their be high fuel charges?

Thanks, I'm fairly new to all the booking and transferring.

If you don't mind sharing the exact dates, I'm sure one of us can have a look to see if there are ward seats available.

No problem!:) I appreciate the help in any way!

I have a card in the US. I went to the AMEX website, just not too familiar with options through those 6 airline options they show. I would like to book 1 flight around Jan 15 coming back around Jan 30 and 4 more flights going around Jan 20 coming back around Jan 30. I have a flexible schedule to do a week before or after these dates as well.

Based on a very quick scan, you can get the following (I'm actually a little surprised at the availability):

Out
15 Jan: JL and BR each have one seat in C
20 Jan: JL, BR, and CX each have four seats in C

In
2 Feb: OZ has five seats in C

These are only in the trans-pac flights, I didn't have time to go into the detail of connecting C availability, but each of these will eventually get you to/from SGN in award seats. I also didn't check SkyTeam, but this is pretty much it for three days either side.

I don't know about the Amex transfers in the US for these...

Just in case: I reserve the right to disclaim anything I might have posted earlier, since it was on my cell phone on the tail end of my waking cycle, not the beginning :)

I'm not familiar with EVA awards (sorry), but all the Star Alliance carriers (including Asiana, Eva, United (lol), Air China, THAI, and Singapore) should be available through Aeroplan.

For Korean Air, you'd transfer to Delta (other SkyTeam members you could use are China Southern, China Eastern, China Southern, Vietnam with connections).

I did forget about BA-imposed fuel surcharges... those will indeed be hefty. But if CX is available, that's my favorite route to take to SGN, especially if you'd like to spend the night in HKG (2-3 flights daily HKG-SGN).

I'm also looking forward to trying JL's new Sky Suites in J.

What I see now as well is that Etihad is an AMEX partner, and I've heard good things about their service (if you ignore the recent news about fog problems in AUH).

Based on the availability LondonElite posted, perhaps redeeming one-way awards would be the way to go, if those respective programs allow for it (I know BA does, don't know about DL or AC).

Yes, this is what I was thinking too. Aeroplan certainly allows it, and this may be your best strategy.

Thanks for your help! I'm leaning more towards Aeroplan, but it's charging almost $300. Is that reasonable/normal?

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Aeroplan assesses surcharges of some airlines, but not on others. For example, if you can find Aeroplan award space on flights operated by United, you will pay no surcharges.

So far... transferring to Aeroplan I've found 4 business tickets for 600k points and $1944.00. Think that's the best I can get?

Oh and this is on Asiana Airlines both ways.