Originally Posted by jrobin
Except that I buy all my tickets ex-LHR, as LHR-YYZ-MEL return or LHR-MEL-YYZ-LHR RTW for a 1-year changeable ticket costs less than YYZ-MEL return on a 3-month ticket. The restriction on the tickets is that all sectors must be QF/BA, so AA cannot be used.
The ATW ticket you are buying does sound like it is a World Discovery Plus ticket; looking at the current listed fares the cheaper of the 2 is the KxDIS2 fare. This ticket will give 100% mileage/point earning when flying on QF , so if you stick to using the QF flights or the QF codeshares for the trip ( other than the YYZ-LHR flight ) then you will earn 100% qualifying mileage so each trip will give about 50% of the annual renewal requirements.
Originally Posted by jrobin
My question is whether AA has award availability on these flights at the beginning of July. QF has none, so the only route for Mrs Jrobin to OZ is via NRT (not so bad if going to CNS, but a nuisance if going to MEL and forced to go through SYD also). Does AA have better award availability trans-Pacific direct or do they use the same bucket of seats as QF?
Ahh. They do use the same inventory, however if you end up with a long routing, you can make changes without penalty as they become available. ( e.g. sister travelling CNS-SYD was booked as CNS-TSV-BNE-SYD however as it became available was able to change to CNS-SYD. Also, with the lower award cost, u would have had access to consider J and F inventories . Also, if booking a business award with QF, on a 2 class US flight operated as First and Economy, a QF award would leave her in economy whilst the AA business award gives 1st class when travelling within USA.
Originally Posted by jrobin
And she would have loved both.
If AA has more trans-Pacific seat availability than QF so I could get the flight to Oz for 75,000 points, and I can work out a way to be reasonably assured of being able to renew Platinum, I would seriously consider changing over; reduced lounge access in NA would be a bit of a blow though
.
How many AA points would the trip (stops in
BOLD) YYZ-DFW-NRT-SYD-
MEL-SYD-
NAN-LAX-YYZ cost if forced by award seat (in)availability to transit NRT?
If my understanding of the ticket you buy is correct, then you would have little difficulty renewing platinum
If you had to do it as 2 awards it woud have come to 110k-125k in economy depending on time of year. AA does also allow travel on TN which , I believe, tends to be fairly reasonable for availability and would provide an option to keep the trip in the 75k price.
Just looking for availability at start of next July, I found Z (first class) availability on SFO-SYD service on 08 july which would give a decent option for a 145k first award
Dave