Flight routes

[vinapu]

10 hours ago, floridarob said:

Credit card points, frequent flyer miles....buy coach and upgrades, many different ways.... I've been buying roundtrip FROM Asia to N. America, usually much cheaper than the other way around.

while your leads are accurate it's still a case of' however you turn , your ass is always behind" as all those options , while viable,  still cost more than ordinary cattle class ticket  and we all, starting from first row to last,  arrive still at the same time.

[vinapu]

6 hours ago, Keithambrose said:

Another good example of different people having different  views and priorities. All good!

indeed as rarely we can have everything we want or wish we do.

There's also factor of tolerance  for certain inconveniences. I can go days without a coffee but have friends who can't be approached in the morning, other than with baseball bat, before they have their morning sip.

[floridarob]

3 hours ago, vinapu said:

still cost more than ordinary cattle class ticket

Points gained by doing normal purchases or flights, are cheaper than buying cattle class ..... how many members, especially older ones can/want to do cattle class for 20-30 hr flights to BKK.... miles/points accumulate sometimes faster than you think.... even @Olddaddy is flying business 😉

Because of my passport issues, I had to refund my TK flight from Sri Lanka (which had it been cattle class I would've lost the whole ticket) and found a reward ticket in Business from BKK- Boston on Thai/United for 110k miles, not bad in todays redemptions.

[Milk78]

1 hour ago, floridarob said:

Points gained by doing normal purchases or flights, are cheaper than buying cattle class ..... how many members, especially older ones can/want to do cattle class for 20-30 hr flights to BKK.... miles/points accumulate sometimes faster than you think.... even @Olddaddy is flying business 😉

Because of my passport issues, I had to refund my TK flight from Sri Lanka (which had it been cattle class I would've lost the whole ticket) and found a reward ticket in Business from BKK- Boston on Thai/United for 110k miles, not bad in todays redemptions.

What do find to be the best credit card/ points to go for?

[floridarob]

5 minutes ago, Milk78 said:

What do find to be the best credit card/ points to go for?

A lot would depend on who you normally fly with, bank with and what country you live in.

[Milk78]

12 minutes ago, floridarob said:

A lot would depend on who you normally fly with, bank with and what country you live in.

I don't normally fly with any one airline in particular but that is part of the reason for starting this thread. Having shopped around for deals on cheapest fares, by the time I add in the (often) extra costs associated with travel to the airport and possible overnight accommodation, the savings can be minimal. 

I am now looking for my best option - probably Etihad or Emirates, maybe EVA. 

[Travelingguy]

1 hour ago, Milk78 said:

I don't normally fly with any one airline in particular but that is part of the reason for starting this thread. Having shopped around for deals on cheapest fares, by the time I add in the (often) extra costs associated with travel to the airport and possible overnight accommodation, the savings can be minimal. 

I am now looking for my best option - probably Etihad or Emirates, maybe EVA. 

Of those 3, EVA might be the best because you can use other Star Alliance airlines points to book with but either almost a year out or less than 2 weeks. Etihad and Emirates are hard to get points on and Emirates charges $800 plus fees on long haul points flights, making them more expensive than other options for award travel 

[Keithambrose]

3 hours ago, floridarob said:

A lot would depend on who you normally fly with, bank with and what country you live in.

Indeed. I live in the UK, so the obvious choice is British Airways.  Thus I have a British Airways premium Amex card, on which you get 1.5 Avios per pound, or 3 per pound if you book A BA flight. There are various  other schemes to add up Avios, at the moment Amex are offering 80,000 points  if you get a new card, convertible to Avios, though the card is expensive.  You can also get Avios from some hotel chains and car hire companies. If you spend £15,000 on the premium card, you get a free companion voucher. If you don't have a companion, you can use voucher to reduce the Avios need by 50%. I used this for Sydney, 300,000, down to 150,000, and also Bangkok. That was business class, economy/premium  economy requires far fewer Avios. Downside is that some destinations are very difficult  to get Avios seats. Upside, Avios can be used with other One World Alliance airlines, American, Malaysian, Finnair, etc. I travel everywhere in Europe using Avios.

[Travelingguy]

25 minutes ago, Keithambrose said:

Indeed. I live in the UK, so the obvious choice is British Airways.  Thus I have a British Airways premium Amex card, on which you get 1.5 Avios per pound, or 3 per pound if you book A BA flight. There are various  other schemes to add up Avios, at the moment Amex are offering 80,000 points  if you get a new card, convertible to Avios, though the card is expensive.  You can also get Avios from some hotel chains and car hire companies. If you spend £15,000 on the premium card, you get a free companion voucher. If you don't have a companion, you can use voucher to reduce the Avios need by 50%. I used this for Sydney, 300,000, down to 150,000, and also Bangkok. That was business class, economy/premium  economy requires far fewer Avios. Downside is that some destinations are very difficult  to get Avios seats. Upside, Avios can be used with other One World Alliance airlines, American, Malaysian, Finnair, etc. I travel everywhere in Europe using Avios.

Finnair has a very nice business class with direct flights to BKK from Helsinki with Avios with much lower fees than BA. Just always set your location to Finland before looking for availability on Finnair. 

[PeterRS]

On 4/21/2025 at 11:13 PM, billyhouston said:

Cathay now seems to be getting its act together once more and I'm hoping to return to MAN - HKG - CNX. The connections in HKG are just over 1 hour each way making for short total flying times.

Cathay's connecting times have always been good - on paper. And to be fair, they have always worked for me. But when I went to Europe last month via HKG I was on the last flight out of BKK with a 65-minute conection to the last flight to LHR where I had an internal UK connection on BA. The CX inter-line minimum connecting time is 50-minutes.

Fortunately I have Flight Radar on my phone. Throughout the entire month of January I noticed that that last flight was ON AVERAGE 1 hour and 8 minutes late in departing BKK. Sometimes the flight times were shorter and it might just have been possible to make the transfer. But as I knew, incoming flights at HKG are now almost always routed on to the new 3rd runway which is a good 15-20 minute taxi to your gate depending on where it is located. It was perfectly clear that had I been flying that month on average I would have missed the london flight most days, had to spend the night at the airport, be put on the 08:30 flight the next morning if it had seats available and then spend a lot of cash on a new full fare UK flight.

As I was on a mileage ticket, getting CX to put me on an earlier flight out of BKK was near impossible. They said they could change me to the 06:30 morning flight with a wait of around 13 hours for the London flight. When I rejected that, they said they always held last flights to accommodate late incoming connections. Persistence finally paid off and thanks to an understanding supervisor they put me on one departing BKK at 17:45. 

As for holding flights, the flight ex-HKG to London pushed back from the gate exactly on time! In future for long haul, I will always allow considerably more than that 50-minute minimum. 

[vinapu]

9 hours ago, floridarob said:

.. miles/points accumulate sometimes faster than you think....
 

I find that mildly offensive

[floridarob]

16 minutes ago, vinapu said:

I find that mildly offensive

🤷‍♂️

[PeterRS]

35 minutes ago, vinapu said:

I find that mildly offensive

I wonder why. Miles accrue not merely from flights but also from things like credit card spends. I frequently was never certain how many miles I had actually accumulated unless I checked both the airline and credit card sites. This take time and i never bothered too much about it. Often, had I done the calculations, I would have discovered I had more airline miles than I had thought.

[vinapu]

22 minutes ago, PeterRS said:

I wonder why. 

it looks that miles accumulate faster than you think , lol

[PeterRS]

25 minutes ago, vinapu said:

it looks that miles accumulate faster than you think , lol

They can do. But why "offensive"? Merely curious.

[Keithambrose]

8 hours ago, Travelingguy said:

Finnair has a very nice business class with direct flights to BKK from Helsinki with Avios with much lower fees than BA. Just always set your location to Finland before looking for availability on Finnair. 

Yes, I have used them often. Their new business  class seats are excellent!

[thaiophilus]

7 hours ago, PeterRS said:

They can do. But why "offensive"? Merely curious.

Implies he's a slow thinker 😀

[vinapu]

1 hour ago, thaiophilus said:

Implies he's a slow thinker 😀

not that it's inaccurate but why to scream about it loudly, lol

[floridarob]

4 hours ago, vinapu said:

not that it's inaccurate but why to scream about it loudly, lol

That's why I left it with.... 🤷‍♂️