Booking with UA miles on Thai Airlines
 

Last year using UA miles I flew on Thai Air to BKK. I was able to book that off the Continetal (pre merger) website. Loking at the UA website I don't see flights on Thai air. Is it possible to book on Thai air using UA miles?

I found some Thai Air flights . I gather their seats are released later than the UA seats?

We (3 of us) were very lucky to fly on Thai using FF miles, and we all got seats on the A380 in first class. Absolutely JOYOUS experience. I am no longer seeing 1st class availability on this plane; not even business class right now. I'll wait though, because closer in I just might get what I want for a trip to BKK in April.

Hi! We flew Thai 1st class last year and it was wonderful. Do you think its better availability to wait closer to departure as opposed to booking early on with miles?

I booked ORD to DEL with an overnight in BKK and a week stay on the way back and Thai is our carrier from Narita to BKK, then to DEL and back. We also,used miles and our flights are on UA partner carriers inc. Thai. Just booked a month ago or so for Oct.

Thanks for the info. I want to use saver miles for Biz Class. What I'm seeing is that they open up a date at some point in the night and when I check in the am there are no flights available at all in any classes. This is very different from my usual experience booking FF tickets with UA. So it seems that I would be better off waiting a bit before trying to book as opposed to when the the seats first become available. For you the seats became available about 8 months or so out. We want to fly into BKK and home from DEL. We originate from IAD.

I don't get it either. I did see biz saver awards and ended up calling UA. Perhaps that may help. Good luck.

FWIW, I booked saver awards on Thai for NRT-BKK-HKT (Phuket) and HKT-BKK-DEL, first leg in F and the rest in business, in May of last year for travel late December.

yestravel, I hope are planning to do as jacketwatch did and book IAD-BKK-DEL-IAD on one award with BKK as your free stopover.

Two of our first class A380 seats were booked in August for January. One ticket was booked just about a week for January departure date! You just have to keep watching regularly. I have "phantom" dates in my head all the time, and I am checking every day to see what might be available. I have to book PAID tickets too, or I'll lose my 1K status w/United. It's a toss-up which ones to do PAID and which ones to do as FF awards.

FWIW, I usually find 1st class more available than business class. If you've got the extra 10k miles, 20 for r.t., it's well worth it. I love access to the first class lounges, with the one in Bangkok (if you fly TG in F) is one of the best IMO. I also do two one-way tickets instead of a r.t. FF booking. That way, I can fly around the globe in first class and no one is any the wiser... I've never looked at trying to book a 'round the world' trip, so I don't know if I'm getting the experience for any fewer miles by booking 2 one-ways???

@mrwunrfl -- you helped me last year with my tixs for SEAsia, so I appreciate you checking in again. We plan to go from BKK to Myanmar and Bhutan to DEL Not sure what you mean on one award. I had planned to book IAD - BKK (60K miles) and then DEL to BKK (60K miles). Is there something else I should be doing?

@simpson - thanks for the info. There has not been First availability either. I started looking last week just to see availability for Dec 2013. We would not be leaving unit Jan 2014 -- so very far out. I gather I should keep paying attention and figure I can book later in this year.

Burma and Bhutan? What is the complete air itin you are planning? It sounded like you wanted an open jaw: IAD-DEL, BKK-IAD and getting a separate ticket for DEL-BKK. If that was the case then you could have IAD-DEL-BKK-IAD with BKK as a free stopover. IIRC, jacketwatch had that plan but in the opposite direction.

Maybe you made a typo? DEL-BKK should be 40K miles for biz class, not 60K. I did a quick search to confirm this (though I knew it was true) and when I put in DEL-BKK for November I did see 40K.

An interesting thing was that for that route at ~11 months out the searches didn't find the Thai nonstops and only offered connections (interestingly including SQ via Singapore). That goes along with your premise that Thai flight availability is limited. Based on my experience last year I expected to find both TG nonstops DEL-BKK to be available on every day.

That is to say that last May when I searched for one-way HKT-DEL that HKT-BKK-DEL was widely available. Basically, every flight HKT-BKK and both BKK-HKT flights were available on just about any date. Multiple seats.

OT, here is some FF search strategy that I use:

1) If you find the avialability that you want, book it.

2) If you are not quite ready to pull the trigger and book an award, even if you find availability that you MIGHT want, then do a search for multiple seats. If there are a lot of seats available then you don't have to buy right away.

For example, I wanted HKT-BKK-DEL but was undecided on when I wanted to depart. I could depart HKT any time, connect in BKK, and then take the night flight to DEL. Or, I could fly HKT-BKK, spend the night in Bangkok, and then fly BKK-DEL the next morning.

So, even though I only wanted one seat I searched for 4 seats, maybe more, just to see availabilty. If still found lots of options, so I debated for a few days. I figured that maybe a traveling pair might come along and snag a couple of those seats but there would still be a seat for me. That was the case, I chose the itin with the night BKK-DEL flight.

Another example, there are at least 6 economy saver awards for DEL-SIN-BKK on Nov 20, so no need to by now if that was a trip I wanted. I think the chance that all 6 will be gone in the next few days is very, very, small.

"fly HKT-BKK, spend the night in Bangkok, and then fly BKK-DEL the next morning"

In case anybody reading that didn't know: you can make a stop of 24 hours or less on an international award without that stop/connection being considered a stopover. So the above costs the same miles as a same-day HKT-BKK-DEL trip.

Sorry for the confusion. Appreciate your help. We haven't completely figured out our itin. yet. But we plan to fly from IAD to BKK, spend a couple weeks in Thailand and then travel over the next 6 weeks of so ending in DEL and flying home from there to IAD. Wasn't planning on using miles to travel within Asia. For example we will likely fly from BKK to Yangon. May go back to BKK and from there to Bhutan. Haven't priced out the best routes yet.

I see that your only choice for Bhutan is Druk Air. From lonelyplanet: "The Druk Air rules say that if fares are increased after the ticket is issued, they may collect the difference when you check in." Nothing like a monopoly.

Ok, so your award itin would be IAD-BKK, DEL-IAD.

You could add RGN to that: IAD-BKK (stopover) BKK-RGN, DEL-IAD all on one award. But there are reasons why you might not want to do it.

Before starting travel you would be able to change the BKK-RGN segment date/time. Other changes, like dropping that segment, would mean starting over. After starting travel you would have to fly it as booked because dropping it at that point wipes out your return.

It is 12.5K/17.5K in economy/biz for a one-way award between RGN and BKK.

Hope you have a wonderful trip.

Thank you! Yes, Druk Air is the Bhutan airlines and yes, they do have a monopoly.

Our plan is to spend more than 24 hours in BKK. I will keep watching the flights available with miles.

I just saw a thread on flyertalk about this. Explanation is that Thai has not published fares for travel after October 26. I checked CNX-BKK and, sure enough, there was TG available Oct 26 and a few days before but not on the 27th and a few days later.

I saw the other day that Thai was selling tix for November, but (per ft) that is based on previous schedules.

Well, here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ds-ticket.html

Thanks for the link and the info. Guess that explains it.