Vietnam flight advice

We’re fairly experienced travelers, so this request is almost a bit embarrassing. But, this trip is a little more complicated than we’ve done in the past.

We’re looking to go to Vietnam with 3 passengers total for the first two weeks in March 2016. The issue is that we want to travel in business class (or, at least economy premium or the like) on the long haul segments, but sometimes it doesn’t add much more to do business on the hop from DFW to the west coast. So, I’m trying to find the best flights and cost and each segment could be on a different carrier.

I’m not looking for specific itinerary set up, but rather, is there a resource that would be best to try and put this all together? This is the first time in nearly 20 years that I’ve thought a travel agent might actually be worthwhile. Any starter advice?

I posted this on Flyertalk in the Asia forum, but maybe there is a better place to ask?

Google flight?

Cash or airline miles?

Chris,

This is something that would keep me on the computer for significant time. First, I’d go to Kayak and enter the raw data. That will pull up various combinations for multiple airlines. I’d also go to each individual airline web site and plug in your itn. If you google airline consolidators, you’ll get additional information on flights (that should be cheaper). Keep us posted.

Ah, yes. That’s what I need. Been out of the convoluted international travel world since my 6 year old was born. Looking like a novice now. Thanks!

Could be either, but I kind of doubt I have all the miles I need to get what I want. Wife and I have about 300K of SPG miles and maybe a 150K of AA and some residual BA miles totaling about 90K.

Plenty of points to make that happen. Best routing would be dfw-lax-hkg-sgn on Cathay pacific with the domestic leg on aa. 110k points pp round trip, so you’d need to transfer enough spg points to aa to top up your aa balance. Cathay usually releases a decent amount of J award space so you should be able to make this happen. If you don’t want to go through the headache of checking space frequently I’d recommend hiring an award booking service, this could run about $100-$150 pp.

I had a route booked of ATL to Seul (A380 1st class) the Seul to Vietnam. The ATL flight was 15 hours and the next leg was about 5 if I recall correctly. All legs were booked on the front of the bus.

Hope this helps not sure from which coast you want to depart

Tyler has me thinking about using miles… I’d probably use one of those award booking services just because it seems like it could be a mess trying to figure it all out for myself and needing 3 tickets.

SPG question: Does anyone know if I can transfer SPG points into my wife’s AA account? Probably need to consolidate all our miles in the biggest account.

Thanks for all the suggestions thus far!

I did find business all the way from DFW to SGN for $3700 using China Southern. That was significantly better than any other price.

You can transfer points between spg accounts within your same household freely, so I would transfer your spg points to your wife’s spg then to her aa.

Quick question about using AA miles to get to Tokyo. (I found an award flight available from Tokyo to SGN on Japan Air, so I just need to get to Tokyo on AA and put the itinerary together.) When I use aa.com to search for any award seats from DFW (or even LAX) to NRT, the best I can get for 3 tickets in business class is 825,000 miles needed. I thought I would be able to do business for about 150,000 each. Am I just SOL and this is the only way, or is there another way to go about this??

Use BA for reward searches I think? (I could be wrong)

Anytime awards on AA metal can be very pricey. There is, however, only one level of award for partner airline travel, and that is less than anytime, even with Saver, I think. Problem is, there are fewer of them available. As Charlie says, use the BA site to search those, as AA site does not list partner awards.

Thanks. Yes, that’s what I used to find the NRT to SGN seats on Japan Air. I understood that once you find your routing with availability of seats with partner airlines, you call in to AA and give them the routing info. You only are charged in miles the big overseas global price (US to Asia) in this case. However, I was surprised to find there was no availability on AA on any of the flights from DFW to NRT unless you moved up to their “Business Anytime” category which makes each ticket cost about 275,000 miles. I didn’t know if there was a back door into booking for a more normal amount, like 150,000 miles.

It appears that the route between the US and NRT is pretty much always 240K-310K miles round trip in business. I tried multiple routings and that’s what kept popping up.

Give me dates and I’ll run a search for you, doesn’t sound like you doing it right.

Unfortunately, I think you are doing it right. Saver awards on AA are hit or miss, and seem to be getting harder and harder to come by. It could very well be the case there are none available between DFW and NRT, and Anytime is your only choice. I do not believe there is any trick to make Saver awards available except booking a back-up and waiting to see if something opens up closer to the date. But that’s only a viable option if you have enough status to get full refund of miles and taxes without penalty.

Sending you a PM. Thanks for any assistance, but don’t waste too much of your time. I wasn’t looking to try and find someone to do the work for me. I just need to make sure I’m looking at it correctly to determine my options.

Thanks Sarah. I was kind of coming to that conclusion. We may go ahead and purchase reasonably priced business class tickets via China Southern and get those refunded if something pops up.

If all else fails, we’ll do Economy Premium (or whatever they call it) on EVA out of LAX. Those are about like domestic first class on narrow body AA here and are ok. We’ve done that in the past. Was just hoping to find something better if possible.

F-4 Phantom, burners lit, and jammers on

Economy plus on Eva air is excellent. Food is economy level food but the seats are comfy

We used them about 7 or 8 years ago on another trip to Vietnam and thought they were a very good value. But, the inefficiency of going through LAX has us trying to make this a one-stop jump. It’s looking like our best options boil down to sucking it up in Korean Air coach for $1325 or $5000 in business (x3). That delta is probably too much to overcome in my mind (that’s a lot of wine!), so we’ll probably sit in the back.

Anyone have any personal experience with Korean Air coach? Seat guru and others seem to indicate you get an extra couple of inches of leg room compared to AA coach for reference.

If you can wait and your dates are somewhat flexible, Cathay Pacific seems to make 2-4 Business seats available from LAX-HKG within the last 2 weeks or so before departure. Some availability from SFO as well, but it seems to be less than from LAX. Korean has pretty good availability of premium cabin flights and SPG now partners with them. I’m not sure if March counts as off peak (but I believe it does), so it would be 75k for business class each way. They will place award seats on hold for at least a month, even without any miles in your account. Their system is a bit funny, in that you need to sign up for frequent flier numbers for everyone travelling and prove that the other two travelers are indeed related to the holder of the miles by providing them with copies of marriage licenses or birth certificates (takes 1-2 weeks to clear).

You could certainly book one way on Korean with SPG points and the opposite direction on Cathay Pacific with a combo of your AA and BA miles.