Originally Posted by
VegasGambler
Oh, now I understand.
This is kind of a tough situation. Personally I hate flying economy but honestly I'd probably just shell out the cash to get bulkhead premium seats in this case. Grab window and aisle and hope that middle stays empty. If not, the solo middle seat pax is likely to be willing to switch with one of you if you prefer to sit beside each other.
Honestly -- you're in a 737 -- the difference between F and premium is minimal, especially when traveling with a SO (since the width of the seat is less of an issue) I'm not trying to hijack this into a "quality of AS F" rant -- I would make the same decision on any domestic carrier -- but it has to be a factor in your decision. Drink service is less frequent but this can be overcome by ordering 2 at a time.
On the other hand, if you really, really want F, you are lucky -- this is one of those problems that is easily solved with money
There's no point in having it if you're not going to spend it...
Edit: the reason that I was confused is that, as far as I know, there is no guarantee that saver space prices at 25k, is there? Has AS not silently moved to flexible award pricing, even within buckets? There are other threads about this .. So, use EF to check for award space; don't just assume that if it's not 25k miles it's not saver.
So I ended up buying two F seats at $399 each, because the Y seats were $299 with a $69 upcharge to PE so why not just add another $31 and be in F. It is just a 737 but after 29 hours of travel a wider seat is still nice. I went for the flight that felt best to me for timing, AS175.
I figure I'll keep watching for the 25k seats and if they show up (on a flight that doesn't stick us in Seattle overnight), we can book those and eat the $250 to cancel the revenue tickets. Unfortunately, it seems that booking CX J class means it has to match with a 25k seat in F (or maybe a 12.5k seat in coach) which are, as far as I can tell, few and far between. I watched for 3 months and didn't find any. Multiple partner desk reservation agents, when asked which flights to watch for, said 12.5/25k because I grabbed the CX without having the AS positioning legs available. They would not book me into 30k seats which did show as available. Something I'll definitely keep in mind for future trips.
Thanks for your thoughts all! It did help with my decision making and I'm happy I grabbed those seats when I did as now all the reasonable near-time flights are showing $750 per seat.
