Originally Posted by
PedroNY
Dear Flyertalkers,
Everyone has always been amazing and helpful, so I am hoping to tap you again for a trip that I am planning.
I am planning to fly from New York (NYC) to Moscow (MOS) next spring. I would like to spend some time in MOS and then go to St. Petersburg (LED) for another 3-4 days. I can figure out the transportation in-county. I wanted to fly back out of LED to NYC. I believe that I have enough miles to book this trip. Here are some questions.
AA only flies to Moscow from Chicago, so I do not want to fly JFK-ORD-MOS and add 6 hours to my trip. I there a way to fly to Moscow and use a partner or start on AA and make a switch?
What AA Partner airline should I work with?
I know that Iberia flies to Moscow, so does FinAir. Either one is easier to get tickets for award miles?
Can I fly there on Iberia, and fly back on FinAir?
Can I fly American to London and switch to BritishAirways for Moscow? Fly from St. Petersburg back to London and switch to American to finish my trip back to NYC?
I would like to do this on "off-peak" rates so for 40,000 miles. I am not sure if that is even feasable after the change for OneWay awards.
Any suggestions and comments would be greatly appreciated. Thank you again for any response, Flyertalk is always the best!
PedroNY
To answer your questions in order:
Which partner should you work with? Whoever has inventory on the dates you want to go. From NYC, BA and Malev are also possibilities in addition to Iberia and Finnair that you mentioned.
Can you fly there on one partner airline and back on another? Yes, most definitely.
Can you fly American to London and switch to BritishAirways for Moscow? Fly from St. Petersburg back to London and switch to American to finish your trip back to NYC? Yes.
Can you do it off-peak for 40,000 miles. Yes.
There are two ways to pursue this. The first is to call AA and see what they come up with. They will look for transatlantic AA flights first, if you tell them not to route you through ORD they won't check that. Basically, if there is something you won't accept, tell them up front and they won't check it. Usually, the AAgent will give you one set of flights for each direction, and ask if that is OK, if you say no they will check another set. If you aren't as fussy and obsessive-compulsive as most of us are, that will be the easiest and fastest way to do it.
The other way is for you to check out award availability on all partner airlines, pick the flights with availability that work best for you, then call AA and tell the AAgent exactly what dates and flight numbers you want. They will confirm availability and book them. You can check availability on BA.com (you have to sign up for their frequent flyer program, but that is free).