Singapore Travel Answers

You are going half way around the world and it will be expensive (having done this several times myself out of Ottawa). There certainly are no bargain airlines heading out of Canada to those destinations. The last two trips I took to that part of the world routed me to Bangkok on Thai Airways via London, England and the other was to Singapore via San Francisco on Singapore Airlines. I used Air Canada and United to get to those trasfer points. The discount airlines like Air Asia do not fly from either Europe or North America.

Check out the Air Asia web page, I thought I read several months ago they have a new international alliance. Make Kuala Lumpur your arrival point. It is the hub for Airasia and you can use them for cheap flights around South East Asia. Malaysian Airways often offer reasonable international air fares. Good Luck

The only North American city Malaysian flies into is LA; which is about a 6 hr flight from Montreal. The issue tends to be getting places from Canada. There are lots of options out of London, UK, but the UK has some of the worst airport taxes around. Royal Brunei flies out of London too, and tends to be a bit less than some of the other carriers; BUT it is "dry" airline, if that matters.

Cheaper flights to Asia probably leave from Vancouver. You may want to google which airlines fly from your departure city, ie. Montreal & where they go from there. You can do this for every stop in your itinerary. Turkish Airlines is a great example of an airline people often forget to check, they fly to Asia often. EVA goes almost everywhere & transits through Taipei. Try Emirates & Etihad too. If you look up on the airline sites directly they often are cheaper than on expedia etc. For example we found tkts to Vancouver from Ho Chi Minh City via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific in business class for1K less/person than any other airline & the layover is only 2 hours whereas others had 7+ hours. It takes time unfortunately, but it's well worth the hassle of looking on each airline website because search engines just don't always have the answers. Once you get to Asia, country hopping at a cheaper price is easy with Air Asia, they are based in Malaysia but travel throughout the SE Asian nations including Singapore, Malaysia & Thailand. Tiger Airways are pretty good too. They are budget airlines so if you miss a flight you'll loose your money & will have to book a new ticket. Jet Star are a subsidiary of Qantas & fly between several SE Asian destinations too, but they are more often than not plagued by delays (which we think the local governments pass on to them to stop people using them instead of their airlines). If you come to Viet Nam, & Vietnamese Airlines are expensive, Air Mekong is a good alternative...most of their pilots are expats from Europe or the States. From Singapore, as well as Air Asia, Silk Air is also good. Good luck!

I believe SQ still flies to/from New York (JFK)? Make that your long haul flight and from SIN fly Air Asia to KUL, from KUL to BKK and you can even do BKK to Cambodia (it is also an AirAsia hub). BTW you will only lose one day if flying over the Pacific to SIN (when crossing the International Date Line) but will gain one day on the flight back (but not from JFK - SIN, which might be non-stop now or with a stop in e.g. Frankfurt). FYI I use expedia mostly to check out flight routes and airlines that ply them -you might be able to get a better deal dealing with Singapore Airlines directly (online). @GD is correct - MH only flies from LAX (they stopped their JFK flight a while ago).

The other thing to consider (if this matters) is the baggage allowance - 2 pieces flying to/from N America over the Pacific. It is will be only 20kg via LHR or any other EU destination. I would do round trip for the long haul and multi-destination to the Asian destinations from SIN (you will be able to book single trips on Air Asia for each leg).

Flying from the USA to Asia is going to be more expensive because of taxes etc. Find a route leaving from Vancouver, it will be cheaper for sure!

My personal preference has always been to fly over the Pacific, even for the East Coast, breaking my journey there at YVR for CA or LAX/SFO for the US East Coast. I recall when exploring the via US option to NRT from Edmonton for last Sept that it was cheaper but took longer coz of the connections. @OP if you can afford Air Canada, you can fly it to NRT via YVR and from Tokyo (HND) take AirAsiaX to KUL. I'm not sure if this will work out cheaper or more expensive than flying SQ from JFK coz as far as I'm aware, NRT is an expensive airport to transit at. FYI for my flight to Edmonton last year, the cheapest route my travel agent could find via YVR was MH to NRT and Air Canada to YVR/Edmonton. But it involved overnighting at my own expense at NRT for both legs of the flight.. Try Flight Centre - they got me the best deal to/from NRT, at least!

(the longer haul portion of AirAsia) flew to London, Paris and Vienna but have scrapped all three. @OP - MAS is now part of One World Alliance, so do check what new options this might offer, if any? Btw Air Canada and MAS have some kind of ticketing arrangement between them..

Oops! My last response got decapitated! Tx to Nokia! I was talking about AirAsiaX.

Indopat - taxes are much higher when flying from / in Canada. Because so many Canadians live close to the US border, more and more are heading to the border airports in the US for their flights. Savings are considerable, but you have to take the additional travel time into account.

Exactly what I found, @GD! :-) Thus my opting to using Flight Centre to get me a flight from/to NRT!

For long haul connections, I found matrix.itasoftware.com quite useful and at times amazing..

Quite amazing @Mozumbus! I did a test search for a two week trip from YUL - SIN in Oct and got as low as CA$1381 on Delta (with two stop overs in Newwark and HKG??). @OP - don't be put of by the >/~ 24 hour trips from the CA East coast. This plus long layovers and overnight flights are common when you do long haul flights to Asia (plus the +/- 1 day when you cross the IDL)!

Oops, typo! I meant Newark (which I actually flew to from Ottawa to go to NYC many years back) which is close enuf to Montreal for the US connection!

Thank you everyone for your lengthy responses. I now have some more questions. 1. the airlines such as Air Asia, Silk, Tiger, do they have a smaller limit on checked in luggage since they charge less for their tickets? Is that something I should be aware of? 2. Off topic question - Now I just learned that I have exactly 14 days (reduced yes from before), I want to check if I can fly into Siem Reap instead of bus/tuk tuk from Bangkok to Siem Reap which I would lose 1 day each way. The only thing I found is Silk Air (Singapore to Siem Reap). Not cheap either. There are 3 of us. Does anyone know if there's one from Bangkok to Siem Reap? Thank you again.

Bangkok Airways does the Bangkok - Siem Reap flight. This is the airline we took and was the only option to get there at the time about 3 years ago when we were there (also for about 2 weeks) Not cheap, at least compared to the internal Thailand flights of similar duration, but not bad when compared to similar length flights in Canada.

I will be flying Bangkok airlines later this year, Chiang Mai to Bangkok, I believe they are a good carrier.

@OP AirAsia charges separately for checked baggage. You can find all relevant details on airasia.com, maybe make a mock booking to see how it works? FYI it also flies to Siem Reap and Pnom Penh from KUL, in case you want to consider changing your routing?

From Bangkok going to Siem Reap - there's an airline called CEBU PACIFIC (www.cebupacificair.com) but the route is BKK - (via Philippines)- Siem Reap - but the price is cheaper now that they have a 90%off up to this day only or until seats last. You may try it then. c",)

Thank you everyone, now I have something to work with. ttyl. ;-)