Originally Posted by
jibi
I attempted to search, but I could not find any relevant threads based on my search terms. We are wanting to book a trip to Greece for June 2015. As I want to be sure I can book Business Low award travel, I'm not comfortable with waiting until the return leg opens up for booking in order to book the departure leg. With AA, we can book one-way awards and I can split the departure and return legs into separate bookings, but it doesn't appear that US has this luxury (for now).
What do I need to do to book these awards on US at the 335-day mark for each leg? I could book with AA miles (and in fact, we will be doing that since my father and stepmother will be coming with us and I'm planning to use miles across both programs), but they open up at 331 days vs. 335 days on US.
For practical purposes you probably can't take full advantage of awards opening at 335 days with USAirways, as you say, you'd have to book the outbound w/o the return opening up yet and that's not possible since you need to book roundtrips.
What they can do sometimes is just hold one or two critical segments for you, for the 72-hours. You don't need to hold complete itineraries, in other words. And when the hold expires, you can rehold.
Since this is Europe and there are a number of ways to get there, you have options. As noted by the last post, AA doesn't release many seats to Europe (although I've seen then before), but BA, IB, AB and AY are options, as is QR, connecting thru Doha. BA of course has the highest fuel surcharges so probably want to avoid them.
I've been able to find seats to Europe this summer on the above carriers on relatively short notice, so I don't think you're screwed if you can't jump on seats right at the 335-day mark, unless you absolutely are set on a certain carrier or departure date.
If you have status or can pay some change fees, then it's different. Hold the departure you want the day the seats are available, T-335. Then wait 3 days, just before hold expires, find a dummy return flight in order to have a return flight. Call to book that as an itinerary. Then change it a week or two later when your actual return becomes available.