goodjls

I am new to US Air DM. I have enough miles for my first award reservation. I want to go from SAN-NBO and return open jaw Cairo-SAN. We are a family of 4 and want to travel next year. Does anyone have experience booking 4 rewards seats for the same booking? Does Lufthansa or Swiss ever open up 4 seats? Do you have any suggestions?

sefrischling

Have you looked at SA?

GadgetFreak

Good suggestion. Good airline too from what I have read. Im not sure about open jaws. When we went into Lukasa and out from Capetown last year the person arranging our in Africa travel said that she thought BA was the only major to allow open jaws on purchased tickets without jacking up the price. Not sure if she was right or how that would effect an award ticket.

Jumpgate

It should be possible according to *A rules.

Call the 800 number until you hear a southern accent. Trust me on this one.

Also, investigate all the possible routings (SA, LX, LH etc.) yourself before calling.

belynch

First to answer the question, yes, it is possible to book a trip to Africa using Dividend Miles. I've done it (with a bit of flexibitlity and patience), kind of.

Now for the story, which pains me to recount.

I had a trip booked that went:

JFK - ZRH (Swiss)
ZRH - NBO (Nairobi) (Swiss, operated by another carrier - Condor perhaps?)
NBO - SEZ (this was out of pocket, as no *carrier goes to the Seychelles, but I was willing to pay) (Air Seychelles)
SEZ - NBO (again, out of pocket) (Air Seychelles)
NBO - JNB (SAA)
JNB - GRU (SAA)
GRU - JFK (VG)

The whole trip was for three weeks last August (I date a teacher, so I'm married to school vacations, ) and we were planning on spending at least a couple days at each layover point, with the bulk of time in Nairobi (4 days) SEZ (5 days) and JNB (6 days). It cost me 240,000 miles (2 business class tickets - which I thought was a great value considering this was a mini around the world with the crazy routing I had).

So what happened you ask? Well, the GRU - JFK leg was on VG, that wonderful airline that ceases to exist every other day and was booted from the * Alliance. Because it was an award ticket no one would honor it and the cost to fly from GRU - JFK would put me over budget for the trip (I'm trying to buy a place in NY, so I'm trying to stick to a budget). There was no other routing home using miles from JNB back to NY, so we had to void the whole thing.

I'll give credit to US where credit is due. Ticketing this thing took the help of about 4 people and probably 3 or 4 hours on a Sunday (I intentionally called at an off-peak time). US also proactively notified me of the demise of VG (although I knew it was coming) and worked with me to try and find an alt. I think I mailed off about 3 or 4 A+B certs through the course of the whole ordeal.

I couldn't imagine what would happen if I tried to do this today, with SHARES.

I also want to add that I've been extremeley lucky in being able to use my miles. I've done a lot of great trips, including Thailand and Australia (and coming this summer, Athens and the Greek Isles) on miles with really no problems. It's the simplicity of redeeming these miles that actually keeps me somewhat loyal to US (although I'm really rethinking that these days).

puchalskir

I booked four business class tickets using DM last April for a trip to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania from Philadelphia this January.

It took a bit of time to get a routing, but eventually we got it done.
We took PHL-CDG on US Airways with a 10 hour layover. CDG-JNB-DAR on South African. The return we did DAR-NBO-ZRH on Swiss. Did a three day layover in ZRH, then flew ZRH-CDG on Swiss and CDG to PHL on USAir again.

They told me we could either do an open jaw or a layover, but not both. I think the rules were different in the past.

When we were trying to book tickets originally, Lufthansa had 0 award seats available for any of our legs on any dates.

Rich

wr_schwab

I don't know if it would fly today but last fall I flew the following as an F *A award using DM.

PHL->CLT (US F)
CLT->LAX (US F)
LAX->NRT->SIN (SQ F)
SIN->JNB (SQ C - 2 class plane no F)

<Begin Own Own Flights>
JNB->VFA (BA Comair Y)
VFA->JNB (BA Comair Y)
JNB->SZK (Skukuza Airport Federal Air Y)
SZK->JNB (Skukuza Airport Federal Air Y)
<End of on Own Flights>

JNB->SIN (SQ C - 2 class plane no F)
SIN->BKK (TG C - 2 class plane no F)
BKK->NRT (TG C - 2 class plane no F)
<Stopover>
NRT->LAX (NH F)
LAX->PHL (US F)

It was the fastest two week of my life. I was able to book it with the help of the ANA *A Award tool and the CP desk. I had to build it segment by segment but at the time they did let me get pretty creative with the routing.

I booked this 9 months out. At the time the first availability on LH was right at the 330 day mark.

civicmon

Booking 4 in Y shouldn't be impossible but it'll probably be tricky.

In F/C... that's anyone's guess.

When are you thinking about going?

I have to admit, flying to JNB via SIN is my idea of flying

goodjls

Thank you all for the suggestions. We will be flying next summer (08). Great idea flying JNB via SIN! Do you know if the award availablility shown for Star Awards on ANA site is the same availability available to me using DM miles? I know sometimes one airlines award availability is different than anothers even in an alliance like Star. My biggest question is still: has anyone been able to book 4 award seats on the same flights using DM miles?
Thanks again.

wr_schwab

In the past, the ANA tool has been close. It's never an exact match but on my itinerary it worked for 90% of my desired flights.

For example:
The ANA tool showed availability in F & C for a nonstop SIN->NRT segment on SQ. US didn't see it but saw the routing on TG through BKK.

It appears to be spot on with the availability of saver awards on US.