Air Fares to Thailand 2022

[PeterRS]

Anyone done any checking on mileage tickets from/to BKK to/from UK recently? My miles are always put into the Cathay Pacific programme, Asia Miles, which also includes Qatar Airlines. 3 weeks ago I tried to book a biz class mileage ticket on QR to the UK and back for next March.  When told nothing on my preferred flights, I gave the operator a selection of other dates. Again nothing available. Merely to check, I then asked for any flight to Doha during a two week period. Although there are scheduled to be more than 50 flights during this period (and all QR flights seem to be operating), allegedly not one flight had even one biz class seat available. I found this totally unbelievable.

Asia Miles could provide no explanation. But I do recall that when Qantas used to service BKK as a stop on its London/Sydney route, it had a policy of mileage tickets only being avaiable first to its loyalty members until about 6 months prior to flights. When then made available to others, there were never any seats avaiable. Anyone had a similar experience with QR 9 months in advance?

[reader]

Govt plans to charge foreigners more than Thais for hotel rooms

Foreign tourists may soon find Thailand a more expensive destination than in the past two years with the country now planning to raise hotel rates to pre-pandemic levels to support a faster recovery of the industry.

The Tourism and Sports Ministry plans to ask hotel operators to implement a dual-tariff structure under which foreign visitors may be charged rates similar to pre-pandemic days while locals may continue to enjoy discounted rates, Traisuree Taisaranakul, a government spokeswoman said in a statement on Wednesday. 

“This is to maintain our standards of rates and services for foreign tourists, which affects the perception of country’s tourism brand,” Ms Traisuree said. “Rates that have been reduced during Covid-19 will be maintained for Thais to sustain the momentum of domestic tourism.” 

Hotels in tourism hotspots such as Bangkok, Phuket, Krabi and Koh Samui continue to offer huge discounts to draw back visitors after the pandemic pushed room occupancy rates to about 30%. 

It was not immediately clear how the government's new plan to attract more foreign tourists to Thailand - by raising prices and charging them more than Thais - would impact foreigners living in the kingdom. 

[reader]

Apologies for dual post above

[kjun12]

What an incredibly stupid action by the agency that is in charge of promoting tourism.

[fedssocr]

9 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Anyone done any checking on mileage tickets from/to BKK to/from UK recently? My miles are always put into the Cathay Pacific programme, Asia Miles, which also includes Qatar Airlines. 3 weeks ago I tried to book a biz class mileage ticket on QR to the UK and back for next March.  When told nothing on my preferred flights, I gave the operator a selection of other dates. Again nothing available. Merely to check, I then asked for any flight to Doha during a two week period. Although there are scheduled to be more than 50 flights during this period (and all QR flights seem to be operating), allegedly not one flight had even one biz class seat available. I found this totally unbelievable.

Asia Miles could provide no explanation. But I do recall that when Qantas used to service BKK as a stop on its London/Sydney route, it had a policy of mileage tickets only being avaiable first to its loyalty members until about 6 months prior to flights. When then made available to others, there were never any seats avaiable. Anyone had a similar experience with QR 9 months in advance?

The issue might be that Asia Miles does not have access to all of QR's inventory of award seats as you surmise. This is a frequent occurrence among alliances where not all partners have access to the same seats. I recently was able to book Washington to BKK on QR using AAmerican miles for March. Of course Cathay is in a lot of financial trouble these days, but they had a pretty decent business class product. Do they not offer LHR-HKG-BKK flight options for your timeframe? I have been searching for return flights for my trip and the cheapest business class option is on CX from ICN via HKG and JFK. I try to avoid Chinese airports whenever possible though so I would pay a bit more if I had to in order to avoid them.

[CurtisD]

22 hours ago, PeterRS said:

Anyone done any checking on mileage tickets from/to BKK to/from UK recently? My miles are always put into the Cathay Pacific programme, Asia Miles, which also includes Qatar Airlines. 3 weeks ago I tried to book a biz class mileage ticket on QR to the UK and back for next March.  When told nothing on my preferred flights, I gave the operator a selection of other dates. Again nothing available. Merely to check, I then asked for any flight to Doha during a two week period. Although there are scheduled to be more than 50 flights during this period (and all QR flights seem to be operating), allegedly not one flight had even one biz class seat available. I found this totally unbelievable.

Asia Miles could provide no explanation. But I do recall that when Qantas used to service BKK as a stop on its London/Sydney route, it had a policy of mileage tickets only being avaiable first to its loyalty members until about 6 months prior to flights. When then made available to others, there were never any seats avaiable. Anyone had a similar experience with QR 9 months in advance?

This is exactly my experience. Nothing available business or first over January or February. After an hour searching any airline in the network the agent managed to find me a quirky route at much higher cost than normal.  I will keep checking to see if something more logical opens up.

Others have covered the likely reasons well: some airlines have not resumed flights to Bangkok so in aggregate there is less availability; business travel has resumed; people have more cash after two years of no travel and are happy to up-grade; people want the greater personal space in business and first due to continuing Covid concerns. 

[PeterRS]

15 hours ago, fedssocr said:

Of course Cathay is in a lot of financial trouble these days, but they had a pretty decent business class product. Do they not offer LHR-HKG-BKK flight options for your timeframe?

I must have flown well over 2 million miles on CX and like the biz class product. But the rules for mileage tickets were changed a couple of years ago. Since I am not going to London but another UK city that is served by QR, I now would have to use one set of miles for one ticket BKK/HKG, another for BKK/LHR and then a third from LHR to my final destination. This would be a complete waste of the first and third sector miles since short distance flights proportionately require many more miles. I could of course purchase economy tickets for those two sectors, but that would set me back around 18,000 baht plus the extra charges for going through Heathrow on QR. That plus the hassle of two plane changes make the whole route not worth it.

[t0oL1]

Having a bunch of cash tied up at Delta.com (March 2019 cancelled flight) and a planned two weeks off at the end of August I thought I'd see how much extra tickets were these days to catch a friend's birthday in Pattaya. Holy shit -with 6 weeks advance notice they want $4700 for cattle class!! Maybe I will have to wait until things settle down and vacation in February for the next wave of CoVid.

Small midwest USA city flight to Atlanta/INC/BKK. 29 hours total one way

 

[fedssocr]

wow. Did you check business class? It might actually be cheaper

[scott456]

1 hour ago, fedssocr said:

wow. Did you check business class? It might actually be cheaper

He was planning to attend his friend's birthday, so the date is fixed.  Without flexibility, it may be difficult to find cheap airfares.

[Sky]

As discussed above the mileage tickets are extremely difficult to get in biz class or even economy with any decent routing. Just checked.

Seems like some airlines are not even releasing their prime inventory for mileage  and are simply selling it.

I posted previously that an airline agent told me people are happy to pay the price for economy or biz, as they have not traveled for two years.

This is all part of the post Covid realignment of travel and things are not yet normalized. Who knows if and when things will become the same as before. 

The price of hotels has also increased dramatically due to inflation and many people finally traveling.

Don’t wait for fares/prices to drop, as there may be no availability for those who wait.

[t0oL1]

Seriously $4700 was the cheapest om the time frame and OTHER ticket selections were already in he asking range for $9400 round trip cattle class. Initially. I was surprised when I noticed tickets were quoted as one-way prices. Lower priced tickets had worse routing. and longer arrival times.

 

[reader]

One work around is to check prices for international segments of trip for lowest fares. Then price separately flights from your home airports to those.

A month ago I booked a $3400 biz class trip from Chicago to Bkk on ANA. If I booked it from my home airports it would have been $5700. 
 

Then it was just a matter of booking separate flight from home to O’Hare for about $300.

Don’t be married to one carrier for frequent flier miles any more. Those miles are becoming increasingly losing value. Go for best price and connections.

 

[fedssocr]

but he said he had money tied up with Delta due to canceled flights so I definitely understand looking for ways to spend that value instead of new money. I think the idea of searching by segment can make sense, although depending on how small your origin airport is you might not have a lot of choices. 

I guess it's all about tradeoffs and deciding how much your time is worth.

[alvnv]

8 hours ago, t0oL1 said:

Seriously $4700 was the cheapest om the time frame and OTHER ticket selections were already in he asking range for $9400 round trip cattle class. Initially. I was surprised when I noticed tickets were quoted as one-way prices. Lower priced tickets had worse routing. and longer arrival times.

 

Try kayak.com and look for transatlantic travel vs. transpacific on Delta.

[tm_nyc]

My impression is that Delta is the most aggressive US carrier in terms of 'post-Covid pricing".  Also I think that, as reader points out, it's cheaper booking from a hub than from a smaller airport.  My sister lives in Charlotte, NC & I am shocked at how much higher the international fares are there, as opposed to flying out of NY, even in Economy.

 

[fedssocr]

Isn't Charlotte pretty much an AA fortress hub? That probably also accounts for high prices. Without competition they can charge a lot more. 

[18past19]

17 hours ago, t0oL1 said:

Having a bunch of cash tied up at Delta.com (March 2019 cancelled flight) and a planned two weeks off at the end of August I thought I'd see how much extra tickets were these days to catch a friend's birthday in Pattaya. Holy shit -with 6 weeks advance notice they want $4700 for cattle class!! Maybe I will have to wait until things settle down and vacation in February for the next wave of CoVid.

Small midwest USA city flight to Atlanta/INC/BKK. 29 hours total one way

 

pretty similar route with mine with one less stop over.  it is about $5000 for an economy return ticket for summer months. 

to my surprise, last night i just found a very reasonable price (quite comparable to pre pandemic times) on delta (will be operated by KE).  $1100 for an economy return. 

[scott456]

That's why you should avoid traveling during peak seasons: summer, long weekends, Christmas, New year's day.

[18past19]

24 minutes ago, scott456 said:

That's why you should avoid traveling during peak seasons: summer, long weekends, Christmas, New year's day.

definitely! 

especially this summer is quite unusual and way more expensive for multiple reasons listed above by many other members. 

even peak season around christmas doesnt seem to be this bad as of now (for cattle class tickets).  

[paulsf]

September 15 is traditionally the date airlines use to start to drop fares for fall and winter from summer fares.   I noticed a couple of good price drops this weekend for late September, October and November. They will come down a bit, but maybe not as much as we’re used to till fuel prices drop. 

[t0oL1]

Kayak.com through Quatar or American only wants $1700 round trip in August.

Hmmm maybe late birthday in September would be ok too. 

Do I need insurance or anything to get visa?

[18past19]

2 hours ago, paulsf said:

September 15 is traditionally the date airlines use to start to drop fares for fall and winter from summer fares.  

Thank you so much for the information.
It is quoting around $5000 or more for an economy seat from my hometown (on the east coast) to BKK for this month. So, I gave up my hope and was aiming for peri Christmas season. As of today, Delta or KE will cost me around $2100 for peri Christmas. So, when I found a $1100 for end of October, I couldnt believe my eyes. 

[paulsf]

I start out in Miami so I understand long east coast trips.   Delta has been the worst.   ANA and Japan Airlines have been having decent fares this summer and now showing signs of coming down for fall.    My last two trips I booked Japan thru American code shares for really good fares.    Fares change constantly. Most people have more important things to do than check airfares all day long, but if you do for several days you can come across some deals.   

[fedssocr]

you can search in Google flights and set up fare alerts to let you know when the price drops

flights.google.com