Help with Asia Flights

[tiggerman101]

Alright, we are travelling to Singapore for a SE Asia cruise next February. I have been watching the air fare for awhile now and it has held steady since it opened. We prefer to fly Delta a we have a lot of miles with them. My concern is with the connection times, etc. We live in Atlanta and travel frequently, but are lucky in the fact that we never have to go through this. We can almost always find direct flights. Anyway, here is the cheapest option I have found:

 

Atl--->LAX (1h 35m connection time), LAX--->NRT (1h 50m connection time)

NRT---->SIN

 

This option is $400 (total) cheaper for the two of us. All other options have remained about $200 pp higher. Is the above a safe bet? I know nothing of LAX or NRT airports and have no idea if the connection time there is do able (They are all Delta flights). There are a lot of options with only one connection in MSP but that would mean a nearly 22 hour flight and I am not too sure I want to do that.

 

The other flight I looked connects in Seattle with a 2h 20m connection time, but is significantly higher in price.

 

I just thought I would ask for some opinions on here. Thanks in advance.

[Zach1213]

If everything is on time, you'll be tight but ok. Your Tokyo connection time is fine, LAX probably is too.

[paul929207]

You should be ok

[FlyerTalker]

Sorry to tell you but that MSP-SIN flight is "direct" but not "non-stop". You will fly into NRT (just like the routing through LAX) and connect to a different aircraft with the same flight number. This is the so-called "change of gauge".

 

DL took over the old NW hub at NRT. They have that operation down to a science - your connections are all in two rotundas and you should have little problem. Almost all of the DL destinations in Asia are routed through NRT (with exceptions for HKG, PVG and PEK).

 

The LAX connection may be a bit more problematic. One thought....since this is an international connection, you can break up your flight with connections up to 24 hours in length. You might want to fly into LAX the night before, then catch the morning flight to NRT. You may have to use the "multi-city" option to force this on DL's website, or you may need to call. But this would let you break up your trip into two bites, since you will have to get up very early to make the flight from ATL to LAX otherwise.

 

Play around with options with an airport overnight at LAX. There are many hotels available through the Name-Your-Price side of Priceline for a very reasonable rate.

[tiggerman101]

Thank you for the advice. I will continue with a little more research. I do not feel like it HAS to be booked at this moment and planned on waiting a bit anyway. The overnight option sounds nice, but we are taking a ton of time off work for this as it is (a couple nights in Singapore pre cruise and a few in Hong Kong post cruise). My main concern was the LAX connection time.

 

I did not know this about the flight being split up out of MSP. It is actually good news to hear this and opens a lot more options up. We mainly look to split it up in segments just to have a little time off the planes to stretch, etc.