AA_EXP09

Try connecting at PVG/PEK/BOM or ANY US airport international-international and make a comparison.

Austinrunner

I have, thank you. DOH is awful under any objective measure.

sbm12

The new airport is finally open. It is massively better for economy class passengers. The lack of lounges currently makes it not so great for premium cabin passengers, though the gate are quite a bit nicer than the old hard stands.

Also, it is possible to price USA->Africa on a single award via DOH if QR publishes a fare on the route. I was quoted 37,500 one-way for PHL-DOH-JNB in Y this afternoon by an AA rep. And QR publishes fares to a whole bunch of cities in the USA.

Nice way to save on YQ flying on AAdvantage points.

n.b. The link above is to my blog or to one which I am a regular contributor. FT rules require that I disclose that in the post.

SEAskyrider

Very good to know! Thanks sbm12.

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Being quoted 37,500 AAdvantage miles by a front-line agent for PHL-DOH-JNB on QR means nothing. You don't have an award until it is actually ticketed.

I suspect that lots of AA partners have published routings that violate AAdvantage's third-zone transit rules. But an AAdvantage routing must not only comply with the published through-fare requirement, it must also comply with AAdvantage's third-zone routing rules.

That said, I do recall seeing some isolated posts indicating that a U.S. to Africa via the Middle East routing did get ticketed as a single award. But I think these were awards that somehow fell through the cracks; unless there is evidence that the AAdvantage program has created a new exception to the third-zone transit rules for North America-Africa awards, I would not count on being able to regularly achieve this through AAdvantage.

sk3x

For future readers of this thread, it seems like this is now a confirmed exception to the "no third region" rule. See http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ds-2014-a.html for more details.

SEAskyrider

This is excellent news. The original post for those who want to read more: http://hackmytrip.com/2014/06/even-b...ard-to-africa/

AZbba

Wonder if this will also work for EY to SEZ. Been dying to go but the whole third region makes that trip very expensive.

Paulchili

I doubt it. QR is a OW member while EY is not.
But it would be nice

JonNYC

It will not, the new exceptions are for QR only:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/54131097@N07/14363216185/

ClipperJCM

With thanks to Jon for his exceptionally helpful guidance, I can confirm that it's entirely possible to book North America-South Africa on QR without burning two awards. (I feel like that counts as something of a victory lap for taming the beast that would otherwise be BA redemption fees!)

My guidance to others: (a) use the BA tool to check availability for each sector individually on QR, and (b) check ALL North American gateways. Early in 2015, the PHL, MIA and DFW flights were offering many more seats than JFK and ORD. And most of the agents won't bring that to your attention.

JonNYC

Always extremely grateful for the shout-out and always happy when a member can use great new info-- congrats! Of course I do feel obligated to point out that I learned of it from the original thread/post (from another thread) which was based on the discussion here:
http://blog.wandr.me/2014/06/better-...-award-africa/

But, again, congrats and thanks for the report!

SEAskyrider

Great advice. So we feed the AAgent each sector, but since AA doesn't allow one-way stopovers, I'm guessing you'll get the first available departure from Doha. Do you know what the longest possible layover can be? Or can you indeed get a stopover?

millionmiler

At international connection points the stop must be less than 24 hours.

SEAskyrider

Thanks, thought so. Will try to get the longest layover I can. Doha may not need more than 24 hours anyway.