Originally Posted by
john c wisconsin
Quick answer. You are correct on this. You can never book a trip 355 days out from first leg because even if you plan to change all the dates, when you first book the last leg has to be at least 10 days after first departure.
So lets assume all airlines release their flights 365 days out. If you want to start the trip on 3/12/21 you can not really book that first flight until 3/22/20 because you have to book it for 10 days and last flight will not open up until then. All that being said. If you packed it all into an initial 10 day itinerary you can theoretically risk it and change dates as you go. Of course you risk having to cancel the entire thing and start over if one of the "change to dates" does not open up like you expect. You can not take an existing itinerary and do anything but change dates. To add something in or change a city you have to cancel and start over and the seats you cancel do not necessarily show back up while re-booking as you say.
Looking at your chart release date of ANA and Turkish works in your favor but Ethiaopian and Thai are an issue on April 14th and no way to move that up 9 days.
Not that it exactly applies but I booked an ANA flight HND-ORD on June 7th, 2018 for a flight March 13th, 2019. 277 days apart. This was THREE seats in business class.
John
Yeah, good thought. Flights to ORDD seem much more available than to JFK though. JFK availability is basically non-existent 1-2 days after they become available, since everyone wants to fly the new business class.
Do you know if I can take a different flight # with the same carrier? For instance, Turkish airlines runs 2 daily flights from JFK to IST: TK4 and TK12. If I make the initial booking on TK4 on a Sunday, can I switch to TK 12 on a Friday?
Assuming that works, it seems like my options are basically:
1) Wait to book until all flights are available. I run the ~95%+ risk that NRT/HND to JFK will not have availability, in which case I have to make alternate arrangements (ie. NRT to LAX/ORD/HNL, or fly out of ICN or TPE)
2) Book now, with the first legs being dummy bookings, then change them later. I run the ~75% risk (my made-up estimate) that JKF-IST will not be available on a day I choose, in which case I need to a) be flexible on dates and total trip length, or b) pay a 3000 mile cancellation penalty and rebook an alternate arrangement. Seems like JFK-IST is only sometimes released by Turkish (~3 days a week, typically weekdays), but then noone books it and there are 4 seats open.
3) Do the same as #2 , except book the first leg from BOS-IST. Right now, seems like basically 100% of days between 300-330 days out have 4 seats available, and so do the next 4 legs. If I felt gutsy I could even include JFK-BOS in the RTW itinerary (adds ~0 miles, but is dependent upon united continuing to release saver space from JFK to BOS).
4) Make a separate RT booking from NRT to JFK (and back) to lock up those dates, and hope that when I cancel on the phone with ANA that it goes back into inventory right away.
5) Find some other Star-Alliance routing to get from NBO or ADD to DEL that doesn't use Ethiopian Airlines. Since Air India isn't available on ANA, seems like I'd have to route back through IST, would put me at almost 25k miles.
Think I'm going to go with #3 or #1 . #3 is a gamble, but seems like a low-risk one and the potential downside is only 3k miles (about ~$50 worth). Thanks for all the help on this. Can't wait to book it.