lokier

Trying to get from LAX to BKK. I'm totally willing to do the footwork, but I would rather not follow dead ends. Not looking for pricing information (although appreciated) but more advice on conducting my search. So far, I've found the following 'techniques' appealing

1) Take the best from what I find using online services and a collection of airline specific searches

2) Buy the ticket from inside Thailand and have them Fedex (how secure is this?)

3) Find a travel agency nearby that specializes in Thailand.

4) Fly into a cheaper destination on the mainland and bus/boat/tuk tuk the rest of the way.

I really don't care about comfort or mileage or any of that jazz. I would simply like to get there using the smallest amount of duckets. Thanks in advance. Sorry If I've mis-posted, new to the site

RustyC

Used to be that route would be ripe for flying as a courier, but I think the advantage there has been eroded away.

If you see an unusually low fare to some other gateway like SIN, KUL, HKG (for MFM), you could indeed potentially combine with an LCC ticket on someone like Air Asia and see two places rather than one. If there's more than about a $100-120 gap I would look at that option. Sometimes the U.S.-BKK flights, especially on U.S. carriers, are notoriously full because of capacity limits. SIN is often a better bet.

L.A. is likely the best place in the country for bucket shops and consolidators to undercut everyone else. They'll probably put you on EVA, China Airlines or something like that.

lokier

I have a friend in Thailand and he can buy tickets and Fedex them out to me. Is there really that much saving in doing this?

cj001f

I don't know, what can he but the ticket for? @:-)

I've found BKK one of, if not the, cheapest destinations to fly to from the US. ~$800 all in on China or Eva

lokier

He's looking into it, but it's a precipitous route dealing with large sums of money in far away lands.

When do you usually fly at the price of $800? Do they tax the nonsense out of it?

EmailKid

Welcome to FlyerTalk lokier !

Been a little busy with work and United canceling my return flight didn't help the situation (about an hour on the phone with an agent before they saw the error of their ways )

Um, how about right now @:-) You don't tell us your home airport, so we have to talk in generalizations, but just glanced at .bomb, and what do I see? IAH-BKK for $1,100 all in ! (for the uninitiated, .bomb would be www.united.com, so named because it has problems and crashes a lot (for instance, when it said that I changed my return flight online, gave me a confirmation, then canceled my return ticket when I didn't show up for the original return segment - of course I didn't show up on Thursday, I changed it to Saturday )

The one and same is showing $1,100 all in (as in all taxes fees surcharges) for February travel, which is very good for IAH, as it's one of the most expensive airports in US to fly from (I'm sure I'll hear from the NWA captives).

As far as flying to alternative airports: just went to visit friends BKK, and the way I did it was by taking advantage of UA's low introductory fare from LAX to HKG (believe it or not in this day of $100 a barrel oil) of $632 all in, and then flying Emirates for $250 all in to BKK. Not sure what the taxes were, but I promise you it was well under $800 for LAX-HKG-BKK. And I got to visit HKG which I wanted to do for ages (highly recommend it ^ ).

Where did I find this wonderful price ? LAX-HKG (actually the deal was only $80 more from SFO) in Mileage Run forum of this very web site, and from experience knew that there are cheap fares between HKG and BKK (as low as $140 before taxes one time on KLM). And if you take the ferry to Macao, lot of LCCs to all parts of Asia (that was my backup plan).

And above menioned Eva Air almost always has internet only specials to many parts of Asia from its departure points in US (LAX, SFO, YVR, not sure about EWR, plus that one stops in SEA IIRC). Just look for intenet specials, and if you want to live it up with extra legroom for about $300 more you can have Economy Plus (I really enjoyed it).

And even if you aren't into the mileage game, it's about 20K miles for r/t, so that's almost what you need for a free ticket domestically (normally 25K miles). Or three trips on a US airline to Asia, and you have yourself a free round trip reward (ya, ya, all you savvy posters will say they are impossible to get, but OP has lots of flexibility, and I've redeemed not one, but TWO reward tickets to Asia in past three years (without trying really hard, but checking availability often online, and I was a mere Gold back then).

Oh, the reason I way US airlines (that counts out EVA, but that's one of the reasons their prices are lower) for reward travel, is that Asian carriers are much stingier with their miles and rewards

Check out the stickies in the Mileage Run forum, they have lots of tips on finding cheap airfares, not just how to stretch the trips to maximize the miles they earn. That should get you started.

Oh, one other suggestion Oasis Airline flies YVR-HKG and has received some good reviews.

EmailKid

civicmon

I do this all the time... if you have the time, the savings can be pretty good, especially if you're flying to a place that's not served (or served well) from the states.

LAX -> HKG is a good paid flight and then find something from Macau/MFM on the LCCs.

lokier

Wow, that was like the Matrix when he gets all that kung-fu in his head. I needed a breather to absorb all the information.

Thank you immensely for all of your help. Most forum's tend to ignore newbie questions (granted most newbies get their question answered and never revisit) So I'm going to BKK from Mid-July to Mid-August, and I think I may just go ahead and do LAX-HKG-BKK (Look at me acronym'n!). I'll go wander around the Mileage Runners and see what I can find.

What about the buying from inside and avoiding the hiked taxes? Is this just an urban legend? Have you heard of anyone do this?

Thank you again for the extended courtesy

EmailKid

You can't avoid the taxes, but you can get better prices when buying in BKK. My very first trip to SEA found a reward ticket to BKK, but no return dates were available, so booked an open jaws, i.e. I flew back from MNL (have a friend in Manila I had to visit as well).

Stateside the tickets were expensive, so waited and bought the BKK-MNL in Thailand, and it was a lot cheaper from a local travel agency than anything I could find online while still in the US.

I have heard about frequent visitors to Thailand who buy a ticket to BKK and never use the return portion, but buy another r/t ticket back to the states, which in the long run turns out much cheaper, but I haven't heard about anyone having a local BKK agent buy a ticket originating in the US. I'm not saying that it isn't possible, only that I have not hear about it.

EmailKid

pvs001d

You might also try to contact consolidators or Thai travel agencies in US-sometimes (only sometimes!) you can get a better deal from them.

jefri68

This won't work for booking a ticket from Bangkok to the US, but Zuji.com offers decent deals from time to time on trans-pacific tickets based out of Singapore. The GOOD news about buying tickets on Asian-based carriers deprating FROM Asia is that they are usually unrestricted, which may save you a bunch in change fees or, heaven forbid, refunds.

jefri68

re: tickets from LAX-BKK in July, that is the ultimate high season. If you can score a ticket for 1000 bucks all-in, I'd be surprised. The consolidators advertising in local Asian newspapers in So Cal can offer good deals at other times of the year.

SirJman

If you can get an cheap flight to HKG, Air Asia are going to start flying out of them to KUL/BKK soon. If you are there before that, you can always go from MFM, or even cheaper if you have a China Visa, SHZ or CAN.