wassala

My husband and I are planning a trip to Thailand in Nov., but unable to get first class reservations on NWA using our frequent flier miles, nor a month before or after. Does anyone know a way around this besides using the the NWA operator. I read somewhere to ask for the represenative agent. Has anyone heard of this. Would appreciate any help.

glorialf

First -- it is always better to try to talk to a representative for ff miles. I would also see who their partner airlines are and see if there is availability on any of them.

Gpanda

Try some of NWA's partners for tickets. NWA FF miles will work with them.

rhkkmk

n/w can do tickets on korean, delta, continental, air france, malaysian.....their FF desk can help with this...

i just tried for november, yesterday, and also had no luck and i was only doing coach.....

call them every day and try it on line....

keep calling back until you get a nice person who wants to help you...

KimJapan

If you have status with NWA, there are more awards available to you.

Perk Pass seats are almost always available...it's Perk Saver seats that are very limited. If you have the miles and Platinum status, you could book in Perk Pass level and then change free of charge if Perk Saver level become available. If you are not platinum, there is a $50 (I think) fee to change your award tickets.

Look for seats one at a time rather than in pairs. Often there is one seat, but not two. Book them seperately as they become available. You have a bit of time. We've found seats become available sometimes as the departure date gets closer.

The route to Tokyo should not be hard to get seats if you are flexible...check through Detroit, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle. The Tokyo - Bangkok route is tough because the planes are smaller and World Business Class is frequently full with paying customers.

There is hope, however. 3 of us flew WBC NRT-SIN and BKK - NRT last August. 2 of us could get Perk Saver on the route to Singapore and the other used Perk Pass. Two of us needed to use Perk Pass for the BKK - NRT flight, though. We booked 330 days in advance, and checked pretty much daily. I booked us individually.

The NWA board at flyertalk.com may be helpful for you, too.

deptrai

Call multiple times every day. If you get an agent that isn't helpful just say "thank you", hang up, and call back. We got our Perksaver Biz tickets this week. It only took about 3 days and 10 phone calls. You need to be flexible with dates. We are usually flexible with destinations also. We are spending 21 days in Asia in November at 3 or 4 cities.

Remember to ask for availability on Korean & Malaysian. We ended up on Malaysian. If you end up on NW metal you can get a free stopover in NRT, if you go Korean you can get a free stopover in ICN, and the free stop on Malaysian is KUL (and maybe TPE).

Intra-asia flights can be cheap so think about trying to get to an alternate city with miles (say SIN) and purchase the intra-asia ticket with cash.

If want more advice visit the NW forum on flyertalk.

TC

First you need to know that NW doesn't have "first class" sections on their planes. So look for business class. Their web site is a bit confusing on that issue.

We purchased the least expensive coach tickets that were upgradable. You can look this all up on their web site. By doing that we had Business/First seats for about the price of coach.

I do agree with calling, calling, calling. The status changes on a day to day basis. I also like to call late at night, as those res agents seem to have more time to be helpful.

mrwunrfl

You could ask them to check availability in first or business for home-Tokyo and then for first/business on the next day.

Assuming you are flying from the U.S. then you would be arriving in Tokyo in the afternoon - after several flights have departed NRT for BKK. If you stay over the night (or make a longer stopover) then maybe you can continue on to BKK.

Another (sub-optimal) option would be to downgrade NRT-BKK.