Originally Posted by
rbw5t
Wow, I'm impressed and jealous! Mine will be 9 and 5 for a flight next winter that I'm already stalking, and there's no way we'd be able to get away with being in a different cabin. It will probably be a different story in a few more years when they won't want to sit with us.
I'm contemplating trying to find one if F for my wife with me in J with the kids for the outbound overnight JFK-HKG. 3 in J and 1 F seems potentially doable booking 331 days out with AA miles. If I can't swing it, we can do 4 in J or even 2 on 889 and 2 on 845.
A lot depends on the kids, obviously. Why do you say "no way"? In the case of my kids, they actually enjoyed the independence and being able to order whatever they want to eat. Keep in mind, if you're booking row 2 and row 11, you're only about 3-4 feet apart from one another.
Start with 1F/3J if you can find it, then just keep working higher. In our case, we booked 4J at day 330 (snagged 11DG/12DG thanks to my status). We got the first F seat about 9 months out, the second about 11 days out, the third and fourth (same time) 3 days out and a fifth (which I subsequently returned day of departure) about 30 hours out.
On the return, we were 4J, snagged the first F about 5 days out, and the second (and final) the morning of the departure (flight was F2 at the time). Keep in mind if you have Emerald status, you should NOT book yourself in F until/unless you've gotten everyone else up there. F pax get better lounge access, as do Emeralds. If you book an Emerald in F, you basically shoot yourself in the foot, and you also lose access to row 11 (if you don't already have it).
So on our return, I actually booked my son up in F and then took his seat, so as to hold on to row 11 for him and his brother.
Jamie