Originally Posted by EightBall

I am thinking of booking my family of 3 on AB with the routing JFK-DUS-ZRH. There are 3 award tickets available for JFK-DUS, but only 2 for my desired DUS-ZRH connection. What I would like to do is book wife and child on an American Airlines award ticket from JFK-DUS-ZRH. Then book myself on an AA award ticket for the same JFK-DUS flight and separately purchase (<$100) myself a ticket for the DUS-ZRH flight they will be on. This should keep all 3 of us on the same flights, barring irregularities.

Are there any obvious problems with this plan? I realize that we will be on separate PNRs and that if the JFK-DUS flight is cancelled for some reason, my first ticket only calls for me to end up in DUS. This seems to me like a minor risk as I could always buy a new DUS-ZRH ticket if I was forced to. Would I be able to check-in at JFK all the way to ZRH? Would that help to avoid a missed connection in the case of a delay? Anything else I'm missing? Thank you for any advice.