Vietnam Airlines has joined Skyteam, and Wandering Aramean (sbm12 on Flyertalk) notes that they publish their award inventory publicly in global distribution systems like Worldspan and Apollo. And most importantly that partners are booking business class awards into what’s traditionally thought of as a discounte dbusiness class inventory.

If indeed Skyteam partners like Delta are booking business class awards on Vietnam Airlines from the J bucket as it appears, and they allow members to book whatever seats that “VN” releases into J inventory, Vietnam Airliens’ addition to Skyteam is huge.

Vietnam Airlines flies to Frankfurt and Paris, providing a great redemption opportunity from Europe to South Asia and beyond. They have decent North-South routes as well. If you can find a seat to Asia, most of the time you get then get where you’re going within Asia.

Now, I’m not actually sure I want to fly Vietnam Airlines long-haul, they’re perfectly fine for popping around South Asia but their business class isn’t exactly true lie-flat. Still, when you’re working with miles from a Skyteam carrier you can’t be too picky!

sbm12 points to a .pdf file on the Vietnam Airlines website which shows the award booking classes for all Skyteam airlines. And he’s developed on his website some tools to search for award space on several of these carriers, including Vietnam Airlines, Czech, China Southern, and Kenya.

Anything that makes Skypesos more valuable I’m in favor of..