Bangkok Airways Selling Unlimited Domestic Flights And Elite Status For A Year For $3211

by Gary Leff

Thailand’s Bangkok Airways is selling an ‘all you can fly’ card valid for a year for 100,000 Thai Baht or ~ $3210. It comes with elite status for a year, and the unlimited domestic flights earn miles and status so if you use it enough you may more than pay for it in future rewards.

They’re following a strategy that’s become common with Chinese airlines to boost demand, and of course we’ve seen in the past with airlines around the world including JetBlue (‘all you can jet’) and of course the notorious lifetime AAirpass from American Airlines that some members had taken back from them for fraud. (It’s reportedly the first big purchase Mark Cuban made after selling Broadcast.com.)

The Bangkok Airways year-long card is on sale in November, bookings can be made starting December 16th and can be made throughout all of 2021 for travel in 2021.

  • Tickets are fully changeable, but if you’re going to skip a flight you have to cancel – they allow only 5 no shows before cancelling the card. And the deal doesn’t include taxes and airport fees.

  • Premier status comes with extra baggage, preferred seating, business class check-in, lounge access for the member. The flight card also comes with 5 lounge passes for guests (“value at 4,750 THB”) and a 10% discount on inflight brand name shopping.

  • These flights earn miles and elite qualifying miles. So the deal comes with status for 2021, and flying can earn status for 2022.

  • The terms also do not appear to exclude crediting the flights to a partner frequent flyer program like Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Etihad, Qatar, or Emirates. (Crediting to a partner program would mean giving up status miles with Bangkok Airways, of course.)

I’ve had nothing but great experiences on Bangkok Airways. If I were living in Thailand I’d absolutely consider jumping on this, even though flights are likely to be inexpensive for some time and the cost of the card would cover a lot of individual ticket purchases.

A deal like this can benefit a customer, but also fills incremental seats. When airlines are flying planes less than full it doesn’t cost them much at all to fulfill these unlimited passes. And it generates up front cash for the airline. I hope we see real marketing creativity in the U.S. too…

(HT: Paul M.)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. If any airlines made pushes to fill seats now, it would have a pretty negative PR blowback anyways. Covid is raging through our nation, and non-necessary travel does not help… The fact that there seems to be some news about mask-fighting on aircraft every few days is certainly not going to motivate people to travel either. TSA and cramped legroom already made flying bad. Dealing with anti-maskers is just the filler to that s-sandwich. Couple all of that with the MAX fiasco and the US airline industry is really going to need to find a way to convince non-frequent flyers that flying for isn’t terrible.

    Good luck.

    Once our government takes human health (the “life” in the life/liberty/happiness trio) seriously again, airlines will begin fighting for passengers. After AAirpass, US airlines of course won’t go back down that path. But they’re definitely going to need to do better than “no change fees”…

  2. Flights are often $30-50 r/t domestic in Thailand with some notice. One would have to take 80-ish round trip flights to make it work. Though if one flies exclusively to/from Koh Samui at $170 r/t, one only needs 18-ish round trips to break even.

    If one lives in Koh Samui and needs to travel every 2- 3 weeks or so, this starts to become an excellent deal.

  3. Jon: Just stop living in a bubble formed by US media. Thailand (with population of 66 millions) has total 3775 Covid-19 cases and 59 death as of today. So domestic flying in Thailand is fine and so is the idea of crediting miles to other FF programs. The only problem is severe restrictions for foreigners to enter the country.

  4. If I recall correctly, lounge access is included for all passengers on Bangkok Airways — how does that comport with the benefit of four lounge passes?

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