I need to book 6 one way tickets from LAX to BOS. No milesaver awards in economy which is fine. I have lots of miles and willing to pay anytime awards. However, I was hoping for business class milesaver. online seating shows only 2 seats occupied.
Is it better to book the anytime coach awards now or just wait to see if 1st class opens up. I am thinking if I can book anytime coach award tickets anytime, i can wait and see if seats open. The flight shows there are about 20 seats on coach. I do not have elite status with AA fyi.
I need to book 6 one way tickets from LAX to BOS. No milesaver awards in economy which is fine. I have lots of miles and willing to pay anytime awards. However, I was hoping for business class milesaver. online seating shows only 2 seats occupied.
Is it better to book the anytime coach awards now or just wait to see if 1st class opens up. I am thinking if I can book anytime coach award tickets anytime, i can wait and see if seats open. The flight shows there are about 20 seats on coach. I do not have elite status with AA fyi.
Thanks
First of all, what are your travel dates?
Secondly, as Ambraciot just pointed out in another thread, there is a lot of paid F on this route so I wouldn't necessarily count on more award seats opening up.
Lastly, one-way coach pricing on this route is very cheap/reasonable. It would be a shame to waste 25K miles when you can have the airfare for $150-$200 depending on your travel date.
One other thing, if you really want F, try connecting flights. You might have better luck with that approach. Though you will not find six seats on a single flight, so you will have to be flexible.
sukn has already pointed out some good insights about award availability and strategy.
I just want to confirm with what you are thinking, that since you are willing to use anytime awards, there is really no hurry to book them, as they are available as long as any seat is for sale.
On the other hand, AA currently has an unofficial policy that will waive the change fee if you are upgrading cabin. This means that an upgrade from coach anytime to business saver award would be fee-free. So, if you don't mind committing your AA miles, you can just book anytime coach now and upgrade later, fee-free.
If you want to hold on to your AA miles and keep your options open, you may want to give Expert Flyer a try. Their standard award alert can monitor AA flights. In addition, they have an interesting flight alert system that can warn you when available goes below a certain level. What you may want to do is to set an alert if the Y inventory goes below 7. This is your hint that the flight is selling out and you need to book your 6 anytime awards.
Depending on your travel date, you probably only need to start monitoring about a month out, as flights rarely sell out more than a few weeks in advance.
Thanks for insight. Flight would be Monday April 23. Would prefer nonstop 7am or 1050am flight. I want to pay, however flight is for wife's grandparents and family and they are cheap and don't want to pay! I found Virgin america 159 the next day non stop but still they prefer to spend their miles for the free flight.
It is their miles I am playing with, so be it. (which I worked hard to get them by cc offers by the way!). I just checked seat availability again on economy, more seats than I thought. about 10 full rows of economy seats.
ckpeter is right in my thinking. IF I can book anytime awards anytime, I am thinking of waiting to see if milesaver coach or first opens up so I have more options. AA rep told me no charge to upgrade from anytime coach to milesaver first, but to downgrade to coach milesaver is fee. Thanks for input
You should ask an AAgent whether changing to a milesaver first seat is free provided availability opens up. If so, make sure they notate that to your PNR. AA is good at honoring what is notated there.
Thanks for the advice about notating account. When I called, they told me going to Business milesaver would be no charge if I had a anytime economy award.
Programs: AA since 1988 GLD (sadly exPLT); gave up on other pgms
Posts: 289
Quote:
Originally Posted by ckpeter
If you want to hold on to your AA miles and keep your options open, you may want to give Expert Flyer a try. Their standard award alert can monitor AA flights. In addition, they have an interesting flight alert system that can warn you when available goes below a certain level. What you may want to do is to set an alert if the Y inventory goes below 7. This is your hint that the flight is selling out and you need to book your 6 anytime awards.
Depending on your travel date, you probably only need to start monitoring about a month out, as flights rarely sell out more than a few weeks in advance.
Have not used Expert Flyer, but it looks like the alerts for award seats are part of the subscription (not the free) service? Have I got that right?
However, I was hoping for business class milesaver. online seating shows only 2 seats occupied.
Is it better to book the anytime coach awards now or just wait to see if 1st class opens up.
A couple notes, at least of these is in addition to what has said before:
1. While you can book anytime awards as long as seats are not sold out, booking them earlier may give you more flexibility on choosing seats together, if that is of interest.
Also, Anytime allows you access to more seats, I think, than saver booking. So if you book as anytime, you may be able to get better seats than if you book with saver!
(In case you're not aware, very recently AA has started taking many aisle and window seats and making them not bookable in advance for people with no status paying discount fares. Saver awards act like discount fares, but anytime awards act more like full fares.)
2. The ironic thing is: There are not likley to ever be 6 BusinessFirst saver award sesats availabile at the same time. However, if they are willing to consider being split up between cabins, it's possible that if you put two into business now, then one or two at a time may open up in business saver later. Business saver will most likley tend to "dribble out", so if you wait for all 6 to be avilable at the same time, you'll likely never see it, but if you wait for an aditional 1 or 2 to be avialable at a time, you may get more than you think (just possibly all of them!).
(But I'm not sure if you'll be able to move them back into coach later cost-free, if they all later want to be together. So you first need to figure out who needs to be together and who doesn't, before you emark on any attempts to put some of them in BusinessFirst.)
IIRC, AA considers the conversion from Anytime Coach to MilesSavers Business as downgrade, not upgrade.
It's not considered a downgrade, but it is considered a change in award type, for which there is a charge. Going from AAnytime Y to AAnytime F is free, as is sAAver Y to sAAver F, but anyone who isn't EXP will pay a fee when switching between the two award types.
