FlyMeToTheLooneyBin

Like Austinrunner said...

On an all-partner award, you can have a free stopover at the North American gateway, on both the outbound or return (since they're two separate one-way awards).

Austinrunner

Most AA partner award booking classes (not including oneworld members):

Air Berlin (AB) / Niki (HG): U (business), X (economy)

Air Pacific (FJ): U (business), X (economy)

Air Tahiti Nui (TN): A (first), I (business), W (economy)

Alaska Airlines (AS) / Horizon Air (QX): A (first), W (economy)

Cape Air (9K): unknown

EL AL (LY): P (first), X (business), E (economy)

Etihad (EY): O (first), I (business), N (economy)

GOL (G3): I (business), X (economy)

Gulf Air (GF): P (business), T (economy)

Hawaiian Airlines (HA): T (economy)

Jet Airways (9W): R (first), D (business), X (economy)

Kingfisher (IT): Z (business), R (economy)

The award booking classes for oneworld members can be found here, in SECTION 8:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/4070373-post1.html

Award availability on the following AA partners should be searchable for free on the http://www.flightstats.com website (after an easy registration process):
Air Tahiti Nui
Alaska Airlines / Horizon Air
EL AL
GOL
Gulf Air
Hawaiian Airlines
Jet Airways
Kingfisher

flyer_rpm

Hi experts,

I have the following award space available for booking: CX684 (BOM-HKG) and CX880 (HKG-LAX) in First Class.

First time I called and confirmed award space the AAgent said it would be 90K miles (with a 14 hr stopover in HKG). So I held the booking.

But when I called to ticket, the new AAgent flatly said it would be 112500 miles instead of 90K.

Which one would it be? If it is truly the former, it will save me enough miles to book another CX F ticket in case an award seat opens up that day.

Kindly advise,
Raj

Microwave

Sorry mate, travel between the Indian sub-continent and North America must be via the Atlantic (ORD-DEL is considered to be consistent with this requirement). As such, your travel consists of two awards, Indian Sub-Contiennt to Asia 2 (45,000 miles), and Asia 2 to North America (67,500 miles).

I'd suggest you check out this thread (found by searching for "all airline" without quotes), which is where your request probably belongs. This is all covered in the first post of that thread, which IMO is a must read for anyone looking to do an award involving a partner. I have AAM to possibly merge.

phazedowt

It's the first agent that's wrong. To get to India for 90K miles you have to travel via Europe or the Middle East. Try for AA, 9W, BA or EY.

JDiver

But be aware BA will charge some serious fuel surcharges for award tickets.

Query merged with the active thread dealing with this topic.

NoDamage

I'm having some serious trouble finding Qantas F availability through AA right now. I originally booked a PEK-HKG-SIN-SYD F one way scheduled for July 2012 back in August and availability was wide open.

Now I'm trying to make a schedule/routing change (to a more direct PEK-HKG-SYD) and it looks like there is zero Qantas F availability on the HKG-SYD route searching through AA or BA. The F seats show up on the Qantas site but only Y shows up on the BA site or when calling AA.

At this point I can't tell if this is a glitch or if Qantas is not displaying any F seats to partners at this time. Anyone else run into this?

Happy

I would be inclined to think QF does not release it to partners. BA usually is very good in matching what AA sees.

Try JL site also. If JL does not show it either, it is confirmed beyond doubt that QF only makes it available to QF flyer.

lbbzman

Hello.

I currently have a ticketed DFW-AA-TUS-AS-SEA-AS-ANC award which is the final portion of a previously-used Europe-NA award (DFW was my stopover). The stops in TUS and SEA are connections. This journey only lasts one day.

If a more attractive routing opens up, what are my fee-free options? I've read from the thread and the wiki that fees may be incurred to change the carrier. I guess my question is, how is "changing the carrier" defined? In this case, I have multiple carriers to get me from DFW-ANC.

If, say, seasonal DFW-ANC (AA) has availability, may I switch to that nonstop flight with no fee? What about switching to DFW-AA-SEA-AS-ANC? What about DFW-AS-SEA-AS-ANC?

Thanks as always for your help.

Cheers,
LBBZman

Happy

Free change on routing involving changing carriers only apply to OW members. AS is not member.

However your itinerary now has only the domestic portion, and sometimes the rules are a bit lenient on the domestic award (although it wasn't one to begin with but all the Int'l portions have been flown). I would call AAdvantage to inquire about it. You will not know for sure until you call.

Paddy55

Well, hoping to go to several destinations in US/Canada using AA miles late next year, from SYD. In fact planning to depart 12 Dec and return 9 Jan... with a little flexibility here and there. Sending Mrs Paddy and Paddy Jnr, hopefully in F or J, and I'll travel on an appropriate DONE 4

I've read a fair amount here and on AFF... so much so my brain has just about fried

Most desired routing is:

1. SYD-LAX (stopover) - MIA - AA All Partner Award
2. MIA-YYZ - AA One Way Award
3. YYZ-JFK (stopover) - SYD - All Partner Award

I'd just like to ask for a little sanity check on my conclusions, and some advice please:

1. I realise I'm more likely to get to/from US via MEL or BNE, and possibly enter/exit the US via DFW... and am quite prepared for that.
2. I'd really like to know whether others have succeeded in getting award seats this close to Xmas and in Jan given AA don't get to access them for about a month after QF FF'ers do. Am aware there's a risk in getting to the US in Dec and not being able to get an award to return
3. Am a subscriber to EF, however have read of the virtues of KVS and Award Nexus - what do they offer that EF doesn't?
4. Quite open to an AA OneWorld, say SYD-HKG-JFK-YYZ-MIA-LAX-SYD (or return via Asia) as I understand CX availability may be better, but am concerned that expecting booking such an award at (9 Jan 2013-330 days) might be wishful thinking.

Paddy

Austinrunner

Both KVS and Award Nexus scrape publicly available websites for their data. You can access that data yourself, for free. Expert Flyer gets its information from GDS, not from public websites.

nabeelj

KVS and Award Nexus have more coverage than EF, since they scrape different websites to get their data.

The advantage of KVS is just having everything in one place, in a consistent interface, for a fixed cost. The advantage of Award Nexus is similar (albeit at an incremental cost based on how many searches you do) - but the other advantage is the ability to do a search on a range of dates/cabins and come back after a short while for all the results.

But, besides those advantages, all the information they provide is available easily for free on the web.

blase

Yesterday I used Avios to book SEA/ORD, on an AA flight, because it was fewer miles than just going through AA. Tried to add my reservation under AA but it wasn't finding it so I thought I'd wait til today. Just called and got my AA record locator, but when pulling it up I am unable to actually "add" it to my reservations. I thought this was possible?

Furthermore, I'm not able to change seats to exit row seats (which I should be able to do, as a Gold). This will be a bummer if I'm not able to switch seats until 24 hours out, and also does this mean I won't get checked bags for free?

I guess I thought that even though I was using my BA miles, since it is an AA flight, I'd be able to book preferred seats and get all of the other benefits.

pete4212

KVS and AwardNexus screen scrape from free airline websites to do their alliance award searching. The big difference is that AwardNexus supports automatic multi-day/city searching and has a free version for FT members, KVS has neither.

On the other hand, EF offers award/upgrade availability alerting and seat availability alerting, a full mobile version, etc.

That's the advantage of EF and AwardNexus, but not KVS. KVS requires you to use their mobile version for certain searches now that the GTC website has been shutting KVS out for months now. As a result, the main KVS availability search (FlightStats) won't show AA fare class inventory nor flights beyond 299 days out for any airline, unless you are willing to do a search 1 class code at a time for a non-USA point of sale.

That's exactly right.