How to Book Air Flight to Myanmar (Burma)

To make thing clear, no one should be confused about the country’s name Myanmar and Burma. Whether you may call it Myanmar or Burma, you got it right. Technically, Burma is its former name but Myanmar is new named given by the Military Junta. Through the change of the name, the Socialist Republic of Burma has become Union of Myanmar.

Still, many western countries have not accepted its change of name so much so that Myanmar is still being called as Burma particularly by EU nations and UNO. Similarly, the people in Myanmar as a whole are called Burmese. Some has mistaken to call them as Myanmarese which seems to be correct grammatically. And the biggest and majority ethnic group is known as “Ba ma”. You should not mistake the difference between the Burmese and Ba-Ma people. However Bamas are also included when used Burmese. And the language of Ba-ma is the now national language of the Union of Myanmar.

If you are supposed to visit Myanmar the first thing that you will look into is about the Air flight. By then, you might probably be shocked or surprised when you find out that how difficult it is to get a flight bound for Myanmar. Although Myanmar has Air companies that fly international destinations. But they are still very few and limited destinations. There are two international Airports in the country such as Yangon International Airport located in Yangon city and Tada Oo International Airport situated in Mandalay city. The Myanmar Airways destinations are Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Singapore, India, Cambodia, Bangkok, Chengmai and a few more. So it is accurate to say here that if you are planning to fly from the west, or from Central Asia, you cannot get a direct flight that take you to Myanmar. That is what I wanted to say earlier that you would be surprised or even shocked.

But let you be assured that Myanmar is beautiful and such a nice place to visit and also with interesting people. Even just by the start of this year, the number of tourists entered the country increases a lot. If you are among those interested in culturally beautiful country, you have got to pursue it. You don’t need to be turned off by not being direct flight to Myanmar provided. Hope that the new government will also work on the smoothness of flight to Myanmar so that more tourists may land on the country.

So now regarding your air flight the first thing you need to do is to book for Air lines that render service to those mentioned above Asian destinations. If you can get an airline that takes you to Malaysia, Singapore and Bangkok (Thailand) that is what you have to do. But the best thing I can suggest to you is to get TG which is Thai Airline. The reason is this, though it is quite expensive compared to other Asian Airlines, by taking TG you don’t need to apply for Transit Visa. Although you will have to spend time in waiting the transit flight bound for Yangon, you may just stay at the Bangkok International Airport. But if you would like to go out of the airport at Bangkok, you will need to get Thai visa. However with the rest of Asian transit destinations such as Malaysia and Singapore etc, you need to get each visa except if your citizenship is free to travel anywhere around Asia.

Therefore, if your transit is in Malaysia, you can book with Air Asia for Myanmar. If your transit is in Singapore Tiger airline will do. Or you can consider both of them. You may ask your ticket agents which airlines fly to Myanmar. But if you are traveling with Travel Agent, you don’t need to worry about your flight; they will arrange it for you. All you have got to do is pay the costs. But if you are individual traveler, I recommend that you chose cheap airline with a right direction.

To give an example from where I am right now, I live in the Philippines, so I want to book for air line. First I consider is to get a cheap flight. So I search promotion and sale on different air lines. If I could get that chance, I will buy any airline that has service to Malaysia, Singapore or Cambodia with Philippines Air line or with Cebu Pacific. After that I will book for another air line via online from the transit airport to Yangon. Finally I will apply for visa. By doing so, I can save my budget wisely. It just takes few hours to be able to do that. And it really is worth doing.