Booked! 2 Business Class Award Seats to Asia During Peak Travel Time

As I mentioned in my earlier post about my 2026 travel plans, my son and his friend are going to Thailand at the end of the year. This will be his college graduation present. Due to their class schedules, the only time they can go is over the Christmas/New Year’s holidays.

At first, I was going to search for economy award seats both ways. After all, they are young, and they can handle those seats better than I can at my age. However, my son was the only one in our family who flew Economy to/from Japan this summer (the rest of us had Premium Economy seats). And, the flight time to Thailand is quite long (actual butt-in-seat flight time from DFW is ~19 hours!). So, I figured I’d at least try to find Premium Economy award availability.

However, December is peak travel season for Thailand, and I knew my chances of finding premium award seats were low. Fortunately, timing and luck was in my favor!

Vietnam Airlines

I was sitting on 180k+ Air France/Flying Blue miles because last year I transferred points from Chase during a 20% transfer bonus for a specific award flight but then ran into phantom award space. I then used the miles to book flights home from Asia for a different trip, but my trip dates changed and I wound up cancelling those award tickets.

I knew that a nonstop 16-hour flight on Vietnam Airlines from SFO to SGN (Ho Chi Minh City) was possible with partner Flying Blue miles since I had booked it before. But I seriously doubted I’d be able to find business class award space over the holidays.

Wrong! The award flights appeared as usual, up to 4 seats per flight in J class (business). The cost was 93,500 miles plus $253.50 in taxes per person. Technically, my miles cost was less since I transferred the majority of my points at a 20% transfer bonus last year. From Saigon, the boys will hop a shorter flight to Thailand.

As of the time I wrote this blog post, I still see 4 business class award seats available for Dec 30, Dec 31 and January 2:

A few things to note:

• This flight from SFO to SGN only operates 4 times a week on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. I’ve only ever seen Business award seats available, no Economy or Premium Economy seats.
• When you search far out on Air France/KLM, pick the last day on the calendar in the first screen. Then, once you enter that date, you can usually toggle to find awards one or two days later. For example, yesterday, the search screen would only let me input as far as December 31. But once I got into the flights, I could toggle to as late as January 2 and see award availability for this flight.
• Bank credit cards (Chase, Amex, Citi, Capital One) often have transfer bonuses to Flying Blue, which makes these awards cheaper.
• The Air France/KLM Flying Blue website can be wonky. I often have to clear my cookies, and when I booked these award flights, my credit card payment didn’t go through. I had to call Flying Blue and enter my credit card through a secure line for the flights to be ticketed.
• If you cancel an award flight, you must pay $75 USD per ticket to get your miles back. You do get the taxes refunded after paying this fee. I also had to complete this over the phone for my last cancellation.
• When you input multiple travelers in the search engine, the miles will reflect the total needed for all passengers. For example, 4 passengers looks like this:

Final Thoughts

I successfully booked Business Class seats on Vietnam Airlines with Air France/KLM Flying Blue miles. Sixteen hours is a long time to be on an airplane. I hope that with these lie-flat seats in business class, they can get some sleep on the flight and hit the ground running on Thailand. Was booking business class seats necessary? Absolutely not. But, I had the points, so why not?