FYI

For my fellow members with kids planning to visit the in-laws this summer, just want you to note that seats in cattle class from the US to Thailand and return are booking up quickly, at least through my nearest gateways, SEA and YVR. I just made my reservations for the family and we had to make slight changes to accommodate for seat availability, with mid-August returns, everyone trying to get back for school, especially dicey. I was not able to book fares on the China Air flight direct to CNX and seats returning to the US in August out of BKK were already dwindling.

In my 25 years of flying in and out of LOS, I have never seen summer seats book up this quickly. Only two more years and the kids are out of school and I do not have to book during the summer anymore.

FYI

For my fellow members with kids planning to visit the in-laws this summer, just want you to note that seats in cattle class from the US to Thailand and return are booking up quickly, at least through my nearest gateways, SEA and YVR. I just made my reservations for the family and we had to make slight changes to accommodate for seat availability, with mid-August returns, everyone trying to get back for school, especially dicey. I was not able to book fares on the China Air flight direct to CNX and seats returning to the US in August out of BKK were already dwindling.

In my 25 years of flying in and out of LOS, I have never seen summer seats book up this quickly. Only two more years and the kids are out of school and I do not have to book during the summer anymore.

What kind of pricing are you encountering?

It could have been a problem associated with the specific dates you wanted to fly, or China Air has limited lower-fare class availability in order to increase revenue? Or possibly China Air flights stop somewhere en-route and one of the legs is subject to higher loads?

I've ticketed four trips for May, June, July, Aug between THA and USA in the past few weeks on UA, absolutely no problem getting promotion fares (W, the lowest priced bucket). I use a consolidator in the USA for my tickets. I look at the seat-maps frequently, sweating out upgrades, and loads on my flights (Y/Economy and C/Business) look light to me?

In general there are always seats available even for flights departing today, its just that you might have to pay more as you move through the economy fare buckets Y/B/M/H/Q/V/W, with "Y" being full-fare economy, "W" being the cheapest economy ticket. Once the "W" bucket sells out, say 10 seats in that bucket, then you have to buy a V fare and pay more. (I've left out 'refundability', changes and advance purchase requiremetns to keep it simple.) Airlines always keep a few seats, or intentionally oversell based on no-shows, for last minute travelers who might be willing to pay 2.5x what you paid for a seat months ago.

FYI

For my fellow members with kids planning to visit the in-laws this summer, just want you to note that seats in cattle class from the US to Thailand and return are booking up quickly, at least through my nearest gateways, SEA and YVR. I just made my reservations for the family and we had to make slight changes to accommodate for seat availability, with mid-August returns, everyone trying to get back for school, especially dicey. I was not able to book fares on the China Air flight direct to CNX and seats returning to the US in August out of BKK were already dwindling.

In my 25 years of flying in and out of LOS, I have never seen summer seats book up this quickly. Only two more years and the kids are out of school and I do not have to book during the summer anymore.

What kind of pricing are you encountering?

It could have been a problem associated with the specific dates you wanted to fly, or China Air has limited lower-fare class availability in order to increase revenue? Or possibly China Air flights stop somewhere en-route and one of the legs is subject to higher loads?

I've ticketed four trips for May, June, July, Aug between THA and USA in the past few weeks on UA, absolutely no problem getting promotion fares.

I also use a consolidator, and for the first time ended up on United at about $1200 for the two return seats in August, less for the returns in October. I have the mileage plan with Northworst, but again no seats at the cheap prices (but less expensive than in UA) available on the week I need to return. Problem was finding availability on return flights about the third week of August when everyone is returning to the US for school and college. There may be better deals out of LAX as there are more flights, but I am getting too old to add the extra hours of travel to save money, so I didn't bother to look and US domestic flights down to LAX in the summer are not cheap.

China Air has only a single flight a day direct to CNX and they were asking $1600 with many days on that third week of August booked, or, as you imply, available at higher rates that the agent did not even bother to quote me.

I was surprised that the least expensive seats are on US based airlines, unless I wanted long transits in Seoul, and the higher prices of the Taiwanese airlines. This may be a result of the declining $US.

The exciting part is not knowing which Bangkok airport we will be flying into. : )