Originally Posted by
Happy
Or, may be you rather pay 110K for F just so you can fly AA coach to a gateway city, versus AS redeemers only pay 70K for F
and just buy a ticket to the gateway, plus enjoy a stopover in either HKG or TYO. Does not take much of gray matter to see which way is better. YMMV though.
The more people stay with AA the happier for those who use AS miles - pay less fly further, and enjoy a stopover.
Originally Posted by
sdsearch
But what if neither CX nor AS flies from anywhere near you? AS has an unusual restriction that any one award redemption can only include on partner. So to fly CX you have to fly either only CX or AS+CX on that award.
And to be safe with a separately booked connection on AA, you may need to add a "self-forced" stopover at your AA-CX connection city! But what if you didn't want a stopover?
I once was on an AA flight DFW-LAX, where I was just returning home, and an engine failed in-flight, it diverted to Lubbock (where AA only had Eagle operations at that time), and it took 7 hours for a replacement plane to arrive, take on the stranded passengers, and depart for LAX. You wouldn't believe how many people were complaining about "unprotected" connections they would miss (most of them to cruise ships, but some to other flights).
Already gave you the answer before you even asked - See the bolded part in my post you answered. READ carefully on what is being said.
You know about the concept of "position flight", dont you?
So I repeat the rhetoric questions again, would you rather have an AA coach (and that itself is NOT a guarantee gives the current state of AA award seat!), pay 110K for CX F without stopover? Or pay for a coach domestic ticket to the gateway, then use only 70K to fly CX F or JL F, and have a stopover at HKG or TYO instead?
Even if you do not want a stopover, hardly see anyone would not want one - the stopover at HKG or TYO, does NOT mean you stay in these cities - you can use that to branch out to wherever suits your heart and your budget - we often have multiple tickets on one trip - a main TPAC or TATL ticket, and several regional tickets, incl awards and LCCs. The highest total on one trip we have 7 tickets fwiw.
As for AA domestic coach award, well, let me put it this way - there are 7 daily flights MIA-LAX yet the only Saaver coach I can find, are connected at CLT or somewhere used to be US hubs. Occasionally I can find a very early or very late departure., out of SEVEN daily flights. As for business? You can forget about it. AA rather flies an half empty J cabin than release last min J award seat.
Therefore the mixed carrier part is only good in theory. In the current practice, it is fairly useless.
On our last AS award which is US-HKG-JNB and back, we used LAX as CX gateway and used an BA MIA-LAX on AA coach when it was suddenly available on one day - I booked it as a place holder, thinking all I would lose is just $5.60 pp should I find better option and had to cancel this BA booking. Turned out this was THE BEST option ever available! Never see any direct flight available again. On the return, we used a PAY ticket to fly UA LAX-IAH-FLL. Yes, we paid additional for the domestic r/t. But it still beats AA's price to Africa, which can only be thru Europe or DOH on QR to QR. AS F is cheaper than AA J award. On top of that we had a mini stopover at LAX because of the separate tickets so to be able to get together with friends. On the return we had a few days to spend in SoCal. I say the separate domestic tickets are well worth it.
We actually could use AS for the domestic portion as AS flies FLL-SEA, and then we can fly SEA-LAX to catch our CX flight. However, the FLL-SEA at least one direction (forgot which one) is a red eye which we hate any domestic redeye. The connection is not convenient and it also forces us to have an overnight at SEA. Much prefer to overnight at LAX than at SEA. So we did not even bother with that and went straight with separate domestic portion instead.
As I said, it does not take much of gray matter to decide which way is better value, but again YMMV.