General cost of the flight from U.S. East ~ LB-69

I've been searching for about a month - and searching pretty much every week from now until January for a decent fare to BKK from NYC and I can't find anything under $1200 - and that isn't a direct flight either!

Any travelers from the East Coast of the U.S. willing to give me some tips? I search Kayak, search for middle-of-the week flights, flexible, etc. I don't mind spending the money if I could stay for a month - but for 2 weeks it seems like a lot - coupled with the fact that I'll be spending an entire day flying each way makes me second-guess my trip.

Is this just the way it's going to be with the price of crude oil where it is? Should I just jump at the $1200/$1300 flight when facing the possibility of higher fares in the near-term?

Try on http://us.bestfares.amadeus.net/, but there is nothing under $1200-$1250. Depends on the dates.

Just did a quick search myself and returned this...

http://www.cheapflights.com/flights-to-bangkok-intl/new-york-city/

Needs further exploration, but some did appear promising.

Cheers
Koykaeng

Ladyboy Hunter Joined: 04 Jun 2006 Posts: 101 Points: 100

I think the days of cheap air travel are well behind us.

Soaring fuel prices, global credit crunch and other factors have led to cutting of routes and schedules, so personally i would grab a $1200 flight for xmas, as i think they will only get more expensive as time goes by.

Ladyboy Lover Joined: 11 Apr 2007 Posts: 30 Points: 52

This is an easy way to get 21K FF miles; about 35% of the miles needed for a free flight New York to Thailand (or New York to Bali with a stopover for as long as you want in Thailand) using Star Alliance Carriers in the United Milegae Plus program.

http://www.firstusa.com/cgi-bin/webcgi/webserve.cgi?partner_dir_name=united_signature_21k_afw&page=cont&mkid=6VNL

Btw, Continental just announced that it's joining Star Alliance which is great news for New York travelers that prefer using EWR.

Ladyboy Lover Joined: 11 Apr 2007 Posts: 30 Points: 52

Here's another good way to pile on miles:

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,1360,50719,00.html

and

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,,3133,00.html

Awesome, thanks for those links SwineCanine. Unfortunately, I opened up a Fidelity Brokerage account in February - I'll see if I can somehow get the miles. Good plan.

By the way, I found a flight on AA for $1190 for December but I haven't pulled the trigger yet.

I'd jump on that $1190 price if I were you if taxes and fees are inclusive. It seems prices have been on the rise. I have not seen a better deal than that and I look almost daily at every travel site you can think of, but I'm looking for January 2009 at the moment as I already have a flight booked for September. The cheapest flight I've found for January is $1314.

Does anyone know if you can use American Airline air miles to reduce a ticket price to BKK or upgrade to Business class? And if yes, what is the process? I have about 100k air miles.

Here is a list of some of my favorite sites for airline tickets from the US to BKK:

http://www.mobissimo.com/search_airfare.php

http://www.kayak.com/?tab=flights

http://www.bt-store.com/

http://www.flychina.com/

http://www.vayama.com/

http://www.sidestep.com/

Swine, I was able to get 25,000 FF miles from Fidelity even though I opened my account in February (> 90 days) - they were really cool about it. Unfortunately, the best price was available through American Airlines. I wonder if it would be worth it to pay an extra 300 bucks for a United flight to accrue some miles... I'm new to the whole Frequent Flier thing.

Stonefre, I think you can go to the AA site and check out the AAAdvantage links - you can use your points to upgrade but using the points to pay for a flight seems rather hard to do. I think they charge 30 points per 500 miles (upgrade.) United charges 120k miles for a free flight to BKK - not sure about AA - their site seems a little harder to navigate. I did find this through Kayak (check the Buzz section:)

$1041+ Asiana Airlines - Jan 6 (Tue) through Jan 17 (Sat) - 11 days / 1
$1041+ Asiana Airlines - Jan 4 (Sun) through Jan 19 (Mon) - 15 days / 1
$1121+ Asiana Airlines - Jan 8 (Thu) through Jan 21 (Wed) - 13 days / 1
$1121+ Asiana Airlines - Jan 2 (Fri) through Jan 17 (Sat) - 15 days / 1
$1121+ Asiana Airlines - Jan 15 (Thu) through Jan 31 (Sat) - 16 days / 1
$1121+ Asiana Airlines - Jan 1 (Thu) through Jan 12 (Mon) - 11 days / 1
$1121+ Asiana Airlines - Jan 1 (Thu) through Jan 12 (Mon) - 11 days / 1
$1206+ American Airlines - Jan 28 (Wed) through Feb 18 (Wed) - 21 days / 1
$1206+ American Airlines - Jan 28 (Wed) through Feb 18 (Wed) - 21 days / 1

horneddesi, those must by NYC prices on those flights. Nothing like that flying out of my airport in the south. I'll keep checking though. I'd never looked in the Buzz section before. Thanks for the tip.

Ladyboy Lover Joined: 28 Apr 2007 Posts: 35 Points: 61

hello, my friend flew from Michigan to Phuket earlier this year for somewhere between 600-700 US dollars, maybe that is just a dream now. The site where he booked the ticket was: http://bt-store.com/

this may be of some use to you Tapioca

stonefre: You might want to look at a connection via Atlanta.

I just booked RT to BKK from PBI (West Palm Beach) for Oct.

This is via Delta/Korean Air with connections in Atlanta and Inchon: $1350 (with taxes, surcharge etc). Interesting point is that it was cheaper from PBI to BKK than ATL to BKK (same flights).

There was a cheaper (~$100) flight path via United through Chicago but with longer connection times everywhere.

Atl to BKK= 23 hrs, BKK to ATL= 20 hrs.

The arival time is a tad late: 9:10 PM BKK

This is my first trip to LOS. Would it be reasonable to assume I can get throught imigrations, customs, bagage claim and taxi to Pattaya with an ETA of Midnight ?

Would it be wiser to overnight in Bangcock (Dynasty ?) and head off the Pattaya the next day ?
===========================

Another interesting alternative for the US East Coast is to go East. There are several Direct flights from hubs in Europe to BKK. I found a Path MIA(Miami) to AMS (Amsterdam) to BKK that was just under $1400. Catch was long layovers in Amsterdam ... however stopovers ARE allowed. About the same flight times with only one connection.

Amsterdam might be an interesting sandbox to play in. I do note that the city fathers are "cleaning up" the red light district. They have closed casa rosa, banana bar and about 1/3 of the windows. Isn't progress wonderfull Crying or Very sad