Asia on Mileage

This is a trip planned recently involving a 3 week trip to Vietnam in October using miles from a Continental OnePass account.

The first thing to consider when using miles to book a flight is flexibility. Airlines generally release space to mileage reservations when they believe the seats will remain vacant at the time a flight departs. The best chance for landing one of these vacant seats it to allow for several departure and return dates and accept peculiar or indirect routings. Remember that aside from taxes these flights are available for free and on predicted 'space available' basis so travelers usually won't find the most popular flights or routes available to mileage reservations.

This trip needed to start at one of New York's three airports on or about October 4th and would return on or about October 23rd. The travelers asked to spend most of their time in Vietnam but also wanted a short stopover in a major city outside of the country. Additionally the use of OnePass miles from their Continental account meant that travel was restricted only to airlines in the Star Alliance partnership.

This trip made the most of two lesser known reward ticket policies. The first is an open jaw which allows travelers to fly into one destination and pick up their return flight from a second destination, providing their own travel between the two. In this case flights into Saigon would be arranged with a return from Hanoi. Since internal Vietnamese flights are very inexpensive by western standards it will be easy and cost effective to jump between the two cities.

Looking into the outbound leg revealed a few options. Initially the expectation would be to fly with a single connection via a major Asian hub. Indeed one of the available options was on Asiana airlines with a stop in Seoul. Unfortunately the layover in Seoul was many hours and due to the departure time of most flights to Asia from the east coast long layovers were inevitable no matter what city the stop was in. A caveat to this route in particular: it can be faster to make two shorter connections, first via Europe before going to Asia, than a single longer connection anywhere else. Available was just such a combination. The travelers chose to depart New York-JFK in the evening of October 3rd on a red-eye Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. Landing in the late morning of October 4th they'll connect to a second, early-afternoon, red-eye on Thai Airways arriving at Bangkok in the small hours of October 5th. Finally they'll catch a shorter, morning flight to Saigon landing around 10am.

Sound indirect? Consider that flying directly to Asia from New York involves a lengthy flight over the international date line and a long connection (mentioned before). Flying the Frankfurt-Bangkok route allows the travelers to arrive 12 hours earlier in Saigon and is only a few hundred flight-miles further. They were fortunate that tickets were available on all the flights they needed for this option.

Availability on the return leg from from Hanoi was much more restricted and but this where the second lesser known policy helped identify available flights. The stop-over policy allows travelers to make one or more stops in cities which are considered to be along the direct route of travel. As there are no direct flights between Hanoi and New York a stop is necessitated at another airport (or two) where travelers can spend a few days enjoying the sights. Major Star Alliance hubs in the area include Singapore, Bangkok, Tokyo and Seoul. Available reward seats from Hanoi to Tokyo were hard to come by in late October and seats on flight back to North America were non existent. Seoul is far enough north such that the weather in October is sufficiently cool to dissuade the travelers from spending much time there. Flights to both Singapore and Bangkok were available from Hanoi and after considering onward connectivity to North America, flights were reserved on October 18th to Singapore. This stop gives our travelers the opportunity to spend a few days there before heading home.

Returning to New York by the 23rd means one has to leave Singapore aboard an evening red-eye on the 22nd (excepting the 19 hour non-stop Singapore Airlines flight to Newark which is not bookable for award tickets). Unfortunately very few flights are available on that date so this is a good example where flexibility on timing and routing is important. While not the most direct route an available pair of Turkish Airlines flights through Istanbul were identified. These depart Singapore in the evening on the 23rd and arrive in New York the following afternoon making only one connection and of about 4 hours. Considering that connecting through Istanbul adds less than 1,000 flight miles over the non-stop to Newark (which, again, isn't bookable), this was the best option.

So that's how you can visit three different cities, a thousand miles apart, on a single award ticket. For OnePass members this itinerary used (per ticket) 62,500 miles in coach, 125,000 miles in business and 145,000 miles in first. Taxes were around $80 per ticket and cover fees for airport use, security, customs and immigration. For comparison the cheapest coach seats on Kayak were over $2,000.