A full lowdown of what the Bangkok Airways and how it can save you money

So I was thinking about what to write next and I started to go back to what I did this summer and realized there are a ton of things I learned that I can bring forward for anyone looking to go to Asia in the future.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m looking to create some “Top 10” lists, summaries of each country and other super tips for saving money.

What I want to write about today is how you can save money on flights with the Bangkok Airways Discovery Airpass.

What is the Bangkok Airways Discovery Airpass?

• Allows you to purchase a group of one way fares together by leveraging the Bangkok Airways and Lao Airlines network.
• Buy tickets at a fraction of regular prices
• Geared towards tourists

How Does It Work

• You basically get a system of coupons (flight tickets) that allow you to fly domestic for a fixed fare or some international flights for a fixed fare.
• $88 USD  for domestic
• $120 USD for international

Possible Routes

• Here for all official possible routes with the Discovery Airpass.
• There are a ton of possible routes as you can tell from the image below.
• Whoa is that Maldives, Japan and China in there too?

Fare Prices

• The full Discovery Airpass fare table.
• The table is pretty self explanatory but just keep your eye out for the exceptions which will cost more than their standard fare.

The Catch

• The catch is that you need to buy a minimum of 3 one way tickets up to a maximum of 6
• Of course they only allocate a certain amount of seats for the Discovery Airpass so I would recommend buying this earlier rather than later
• Taxes/fees are extra of course
• There is of course all the detailed terms and conditions to check out.

How to Get It

• Now this was probably the trickiest part of Operation:  Find Cheap Tickets for Thailand
• While I was working in the US I first figured out how to get someone in NYC to help me out.  Her name was Maggie Liu ([email protected]) and I have to say that she was EXTREMELY helpful in setting everything up.  I did everything mainly via e-mail and she was okay with that.  Of course I needed to do all my research beforehand to let her know exactly what flights I wanted.  She got me a quote pretty quickly and we moved from there.  Some flights weren’t available so you just have to adjust your strategy accordingly.
• Being Canadian, what I really should’ve done was contact their Canadian office ([email protected]).  This way perhaps we would’ve been charged the CAD version of the price instead of USD and going through my Canadian credit card.
• Anyways if all else fails, Maggie Liu is the person to reach.  I know there are a bunch of other offices in North America that can handle this but I had such a great experience with her.  The phone never seemed to work properly so just e-mail away.
• Once your itinerary information has been set, you’ll need to fax over a signed credit card authorization

What You Need to Do

• By no means is this the cheapest way to go.
• On my trip I had to do some comparisons of ALL the flights to see whether it would be cheaper to buy a ticket via the Discovery Airpass or to buy it from some other low cost carrier like Nok Air, Air Asia etc.
• DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Additional Documents

PDF doc I found on the web that summarizes everything pretty well.

Discovery Airpass Summary Sheet from Airline Marketing NZ

Closing

Hopefully that’s a good tip for you guys looking to travel all around Thailand/Cambodia/Laos and wanting to save some money.  Again the key is to do your research as I am definitely not advocating that this is the cheapest way but even if parts of your trip can be covered under the Discovery Airpass.

Bonus

Just for kicks, the lovely Bangkok Airways safety video that my travel buddy and I found hilarious and awkward for the flight attendants.  Love the pilot dubbing.  It’s hard NOT to pay attention to a safety video like this.