Originally Posted by
HeStoleMyLogin
Sorry I ran into a 5 posts per day limit....
I am flying BRO to COR Sept 25. There is MileSAAver availability on all flights with AA but BA says only Business availability for my itinerary. I would love some options or ideas. I will be transferring miles from Chase to BA with a (%30) bonus. AA has the first class flight at 57,500. BA wants 102000 avios based on my call to their ticket center. The economy is 30,000 AA but BA will not let me book that (i am guessing) . I am assuming BRO to DFW on BA would be 7500 avios in economy. DFW to COR 85000 avios in first based on mileage. This would save me 12000 miles when all the discounts are taken into effect.
I am not sold on any transfer partner. If you all can see a better way (like Iberia )Please...
Sorry this is my first real mileage attempt with transfer partners and i will probably have many questions.
Thanks
First, one of the major differences of the Iberia program is that Iberia looks at the total distance of the entire trip, whereas BA (generally) looks at the distance of each individual segment. In other words, if your trip is composed of 3 segments (1,000 miles + 4,000 miles + 250 miles), Iberia will charge you based on a total distance of 5,250, whereas BA will charge you for each individual segment. Iberia, however, generally does not allow one-way awards with AA (although I think there may be reports that one-way awards are possible, so I would double check that).
Second, you should consider routes that include one or more segments on LATAM (LATAM, luckily, doesn't have any fuel surcharges on BA awards). From BRO, you only have one option if you're using AA all the way: BRO-DFW-MIA-COR. By my calculations, this would cost 7,500 + 7,500 + 25,000 = 40,000 avios in economy.
With LATAM, you open up other options that (based on the distance of each segment) may be more favorable under BA's system of adding up by individual segments. For example, BRO-DFW-SCL-COR with the last leg on LATAM would be 7,500 + 25,000 + 4,500 = 37,000 avios. Similarly, BRO-DFW-EZE//AEP-COR would be 37,000 avios. Note that you would need to book the LATAM flight
separately, otherwise the multi-partner chart applies and that chart is not favorable.
Finally, I am surprised that BA can see business but not economy. In my experience, MileSAAver Economy is generally much easier to find than MileSAAver Business (and indeed, I see plenty of economy availability for both DFW-SCL and DFW-EZE at the end of September). But even if BA can only see business for the longhaul, you can do economy on the shorthaul (in fact, LATAM doesn't have business on most intra-SA routes)—and that should be 7,500 + 75,000 + 4,500 = 87,000 avios.