No luck with Malaysian Airlines

[philip13]

Has anyone had any success using their Avios points to book with Malaysian?
Trying to book Business Class from Kochi (India) to Sydney with no success whatsoever – i am trying to avoid the dreaded phone call to BA!

[RK228]

I booked a business-class reward flight using Avios from Kuala Lumpur to Bali with Malaysia Airlines a few days ago.

[Jon]

Booked LHR-KUL in Suites a couple of months ago using Avios.

You don’t say when you’re intending to fly. It looks like Malaysia Airlines’ schedule for the COK-KUL leg is quite limited at the moment, with most of the options being codeshares on Sri Lankan, Qatar, Oman etc. (though that may open up the option of a multi-carrier redemption, which may (or may not) work out cheaper).

Have you tried checking Avios availability for each sector separately? One of the (many) challenges I find with BA’s booking engine is that it appears to only show a limited selection of partner redemption options for any given route and no way to force it to use specific airlines. You’d likely still have to call to make the actual booking on one ticket though, but at least it you know there’s availability that should make it easier.

Might be worth signing up for a free trial of Expert Flyer and using that to work out which flights have reward availability (you’ll need to check the exact fare class – IIRC it’s I on MH for Business redemptions, not sure about others).

[polly]

Very little J award seats on MH atm. We also nabbed J flights ow from Bali back to Pen vis kul. J to KL, then Y to Pen.Also y from sin to kl, then j from kl to dps. But got those weeks ago for Nov 22.

[pointsarb]

Hi all, planning a trip to KL and Bali however the KUL-DPS avios leg with MH is putting me off due to rumoured safety concerns for this airline. Never flown MH before.

For those here that have flown MH, any feedback on the flying experience please?

Anything to be concerned about?

Thanks!

[Roberto]

Flown MH quite a few times mostly in and out of KUL to Langkawi, Penang and/or Singapore and been pleasantly impressed with their setup both in J and Y.

We do have a MH one way avios booking from Melbourne to KL in business in November which was booked on BA.com which I am looking forward to. Also have an economy booking three days later KUL back to SIN to connect with our BA 241 F class return back to LHR.

Booked premier suite at the Shangri-la in KUL on a 342 night deal, our go to hotel in KL. So much bang for your buck in a Horizon Club room or suite.

[Jon]

pointsarb wrote:

Hi all, planning a trip to KL and Bali however the KUL-DPS avios leg with MH is putting me off due to rumoured safety concerns for this airline. Never flown MH before.

For those here that have flown MH, any feedback on the flying experience please?

Anything to be concerned about?

Thanks!

Flown with MH many many times, no qualms whatsoever. On-board and in-lounge experience is generally superb. I have no safety concerns.

[pointsarb]

thanks for the responses and peace of mind folks!

[philip13]

Thanks all for your comments – having spoken with BA today, it looks very unlikely we are going to be able to book.

[Jon]

How essential is it that you fly with Malaysia Airlines? You could fly COK-SYD via
Colombo with Sri-Lankan, or if you wanted a stopover in KL, you could book it as separate tickets, COK-KUL with Sri Lankan and KUL-SYD with Malaysian. There was moderately decent Avios availability, bookable online, for both of those on the random dates I looked at later this year. But obviously it gets trickier if you need several seats or very specific dates.