Thailand for Christmas

[jordanbmz]

Morning all,

A little bit eager here but just wanted some advice on the best way to secure reward seats for BKK, December 2026.

I’ve looked at a few options and detailed some thoughts below. I appreciate this is a very popular route and obtaining seats for that time is going to be near on impossible. Anyone got experience of some ideal routes or best ways to utilise the Avios we have?

Currently have 300k Avios saved and a companion voucher til May 2027.

Option A – using companion voucher for LON to BKK
Option B – 300k Avios flying Qatar, business/first
Option C – 220k Avios with voucher flying to Singapore
Option D – Finnair, looks to be around £7k for return business seats

[Travel Strong]

Don’t forget all the options that exist if booking it as 2 one way trips.

Having just completed this round trip, have a look at Finnair redemptions from Helsinki (not starting in the UK). You take yourself to Helsinki, and from there the price tumbles on redemptions.

As usual with starting your trip elsewhere – you must leave enough time to transit even with disruptions.
We went the night before on the A350 wide body Finnair service, which was excellent (also an avios redemption)

As you are booking 2 one ways – The flight back with Finnair can be booked BKK-LHR (with a stop in HEL), and will still have low fees.

However I preferred the Qatar flight times on the return so transferred avios to Qatar and booked the return with them. Again, because it is booked as a one way and not booked as a return leaving the UK – the price tumbles.

Finnair HEL-BKK 62500 avios + £29 (yes, £29!)
Qatar BKK-LHR 75000 avios + £158

Prices are per person, in business. But need to add on the cost of getting LHR-HEL. Whilst economy cash booking is an option on this short hop, we felt the business class redemption price of 9600 avios + £133 was a very good option… And it was given the A350!

[Travel Strong]

Note: Booked the finnair redemptions via BA, but booked Qatar ones with Qatar.

You can get a few days earlier availability if you transfer to Finnair, but that wasn’t yet an option back when I booked.

[Hbommie]

It looks like you’ve got all the options in place and plenty of Avios, just work out where you want to go after Bangkok, then you may end up returning from Singapore or Hong Kong etc.

Open jaw would allow the use of the voucher, but that’s not always the best result.

[can2]

instad of SIN you may also consider KUL

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

Remember though that a 2-4-1 can only be used – for the purposes of this trip – on BA metal.

So you could use it on say LHR-SIN or HKG but an onward flight to BKK would need to be a separate booking.

You’ve seemed to not realised that you can use avios on Finnair – either by booking via BA or AY (though for AY you’d need to transfer your avios over)

Above all be flexible on both dates and routing.

[jordanbmz]

Thanks so much all! Some great advice here. I guess one factor would be not wanting the 241 voucher to go to waste. We only have enough avios for this trip and don’t currently have any route to new membership points until January 2027 (when first 24 month hits).

KUL actually looks a better option than SIN as we’d be flying back from Krabi, so this is a shorter flight and more options. So thankyou for the heads up on this – great shout.

Finnair and back with Qatar also looks a splendid option. It looks like it’ll be similar costs to BA 241 BKK/KUL but slightly more Avios.