Originally Posted by
Counsellor
And Alaska is also much cheaper than Flying Blue for KLM flights to Africa.
Unfortunately, my miles are all on AA, Flying Blue, LH and UA.
Yes, but it is even better for the CX 120K in J and 140K in F to South Africa, except HKG-JNB does not have F service any more.
US before it merges to AA program, also has a 110K J to South Africa with a stop over too. This is what we have now for a trip in Feb/Mar using QR and IB via DOH and have our stopover at IST (with separate cheapo domestic tickets on TK).
The same trip using AA miles would be 150K WITHOUT a stopover, and 200K in F!
Originally Posted by
tng11
From what I've seen - ZRH has amazing availability if you plan in advance. I see 2 seats to HKG on dates in November. CDG and FRA, I've only seen 1 seat open far in advance. LHR, despite having 5 flights/day and 3 of those with F, doesn't have that much space in advance like JFK, but it exists. You also see the same trend of seeing the odd award seat looking through out the schedule.
It seems like EU is a popular redemption for CX's own members - and they have access to these seats almost 3 weeks earlier than AA/AS, hence why advance availability even at the 331 day mark isn't as good as the US routes.
No 330 days ahead crazy booking for me. Never book anything this far out. The longest lead time I had booked was 9 months out, and always due to devaluation of one kind or another. Else we much prefer booking within 3 months window and could do so in the distant past...
On this tentative trip I am talking about 6 to 8 weeks advance booking, and want to gauge whether Europe-HKG has similar inventory release pattern as US-HKG.
I did some random checking using 6 to 8 weeks prior departure window, and found FRA and especially LHR seem to have the most availability. MXP and DME seem to be the worst. I forgot about ZRH. Thanks for bringing it up.
In short, the earliest I could know the potential date(s) of travel in Mid May would be Mid March. Do not want to make a speculate booking as it hinges on whether we would do a TATL cruise in Mid April - that we would not know until Mid March.