Thai Airways has released lots of new Business Class award availability on its flights from Sydney to Bangkok, with onward connections available to destinations across Asia and Europe.
Thai Airways is a Star Alliance airline, meaning you can redeem points or miles with many Star Alliance frequent flyer programs to book award seats with the Thai flag carrier. Options include Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles, Air Canada Aeroplan points and United MileagePlus miles.
On some Thai Airways flights, there are even up to 4 or 5 Business Class award seats available between Sydney and Bangkok. However, seats are not available on all dates.
At this stage, it appears that Thai Airways has only released Business Class award seats to/from Sydney on various dates between now and the end of March 2022, with blackout dates from 2 December 2021 until 20 January 2022 where no award seats are available. Seats are available on other dates, but only in Economy Class.
Thai’s Sydney-Bangkok route is currently running four days per week with a Boeing 777-300ER. Unlike the Thai Airways Boeing 747, which previously served this route, there is no First Class on the Boeing 777-300ER. But the lie-flat Business Class seats on the Boeing 777-300ER are laid out in a comfortable 1-2-1 configuration.
Prior to COVID-19, Thai Airways also flew from Bangkok to Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. The airline has not yet restarted any of these flights, although flights between Melbourne and Bangkok are now on sale from April 2022. At this stage, only Economy award seats are available on the Melbourne-Bangkok route.
If you’re travelling to Europe, Thai Airways has onward connections available in both directions between Bangkok and Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Munich, Stockholm and Zurich. There are typically short connection times in Bangkok (1.5 to 3.5 hours) in both directions when flying between Australia and Europe.
Thailand reopened to vaccinated tourists earlier this month. It is also possible to transit via Bangkok en-route to another country. However, there are some requirements to enter or transit Thailand including a minimum level of travel insurance including coverage for COVID-19 medical expenses.
How to book a Thai Airways reward seat
If you happen to have Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus miles, you could of course redeem these to book award seats on Thai Airways. But Thai’s own frequent flyer program does not offer good value.
If you have Amex Membership Rewards points, which can be transferred to a range of frequent flyer programs including Royal Orchid Plus, you would be better off transferring your points to Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer and using KrisFlyer miles to book instead.
You can also transfer points to KrisFlyer from many other Australian credit card rewards programs including ANZ Rewards, Westpac Altitude, St George Amplify, NAB Rewards and HSBC Rewards Plus. In fact, if you can even earn KrisFlyer Elite Miles (which count towards Singapore Airlines status) by transferring points to KrisFlyer by 28 February 2022!
If seats are available, you can book with KrisFlyer miles on the Singapore Airlines website. On the results page, this website shows Singapore Airlines flights by default – but you can find award flights on other Star Alliance airlines by clicking on “Show flights for Star Alliance” at the top of the page:
If you have Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles, you can obviously redeem them to fly with Singapore Airlines as well. But Thai Airways is another option if there aren’t any suitable Singapore Airlines flights around your dates – or they’re all waitlisted.
If you book a round-trip Star Alliance award using KrisFlyer miles, you can even get a free stopover in one direction.
Another option is to redeem Air Canada Aeroplan points, which you can even buy directly from Air Canada.
Redeeming United MileagePlus miles is another option.
Unfortunately for people with Avianca LifeMiles, only Thai Airways Economy seats appear to be showing on the LifeMiles website at this stage.
Award seats are not available every day. But you can easily search for award availability across a whole month at a time using the United Airlines website. Simply conduct a “Flexible dates” search and select “Book with miles” to bring up a calendar of award availability. You can also filter the results in the calendar by class of travel and choose to only display non-stop flights.
Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: Lots of TG J award availability to/from Sydney
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