We are flying to Luang Prabang from BKK at 12:40 p.m.. We are coming from Phuket that morning. We can take a Bangkok Air Flight that arrives at BKK at 11:25 a.m. or an earlier Air Asia flight. On BKK air the connection time is only 1 hour 15 minutes. More for the Air Asia. I have some trepidation (Bob, that means I am concerned/worried) about Air Asia regarding reliability of time and luggage restrictions. Which flight would you choose? Thanks.

I'd choose Bangkok Air for the reasons you gave as long as your connections are at the same airport (I assume you have already checked on this). I'm generally not comfortable with tight connections while on a trip like yours and go out of my way to avoid them - know your options in advance in case things get screwed up - though nothing can be worse right now than our own domestic situation, air travel-wise...

Andy, which airline are you on for the LP flight? What time is the air asia flight arriving in bkk? Last, how fast can pandas run to make it to the LP flight?

Sorry to jump in on your thread, but I had a question myself regarding BKK airport.
I was wondering if anyone can tell me generally how long it takes to go through customs (I'm assuming they do this) and get the luggage.
Basicall, my question is "how efficient is BKK airport).
I have approx 1 hr 40 min between my flights.

Again, sorry to jump in but would appreciate any response.

i've arranged for the elephants to pick you up in phuket....they anticipate (andy--that means 'they think') it may take 6 days from phuket to bkk....

how did beth ever miss this in her planning for the trip??

"I was wondering if anyone can tell me generally how long it takes to go through customs (I'm assuming they do this) and get the luggage." *******

You are cutting it pretty close! I have passed through immigration, picked up my bag and passed through customs in less than a half hour. BUT - there have been one or two times that so many flights arrived at the same time or there were too few passport checkers - the time came close to an hour!

Most of the time it is a quick process getting through the procedures, much faster than in the U.S.

I hope you do intend to see Bangkok and not brush that city off! Bangkok is worth a visit too!

We've deciddi to go with the Bangkok Air flight. Hoping we can get the tickets linked in their computer, so we can have luggage sent through and maybe even get boarding passes for BKK-LP flight when we check in at Phuket. We;ll see.

Further proof that Pandas just appear to be helpless.

When planning our trip, I booked a BKK Air Discovery Pass for three of the legs, but decided to use Thai Air for the Phuket-BKK leg because the BKK Air connection time seemed a little tight (note this post). However, booking the early Thai Air flight slipped through the cracks and did not happen. When Beth was completing our grid for the trip (thankfully, she is conscientious), she noticed no E-mail confirmation of the Thai Air flight.

I said don't worry, we'll just book it now. Of course, the flight is full. This lead to the afore-mentioned dilemna. i.e., Air asia two hours connection or BKK Air 1 hour 15 minutes connection. We went with BKK Air in the hopes that we could check through in Phuket both luggage and boarding passes and just go gate to gate in BKK. As many of you might imagine, there was much "discussion" concerning my failure to book the Thai Air flight and the negative consequences.

Here's the good part.

In checking remote other possibilities, including flying to BKK a day early, I noticed that the time of the BKK-LP flight on the day after, i.e., November 24, was 1330, not 1240. I checked on November 23 and it was the same. I called BKK Air to confirm and was told the BKK-LP flight had been moved back 50 minutes. We now have 2 hours and 5 minutes. We may still miss the connection, but it will no longer be my fault. Panda saved by fortune, again. Perhaps this is the lingering effects of the Red Sox Kharma thread.