Originally Posted by Traveloguy
Going HKG - BKK - SYD would mean that you would probably have to take CX 713 which is the morning flight as I am not sure a 45 min connection time is legal (although I could be wrong) and then take the flight from BKK to SYD. It effectively doubles the total journey time compared to going from HKG direct to SYD. I don't think I would ever do that to my mother!
Even if you got her on the later flight, it still adds an extra 4 hours to a 9 hour journey!
If this was a mileage run I would understand, but if it is a family member on an award ticket who has an opportunity to fly two very decent (both definitely in the world top half dozen anyhow) carriers on a direct service, I know what I would do.
If the availability were there, I would take it. I tried every routing through another Australian city, Singapore, Aukland, three or four places in Indonesia, Malasia, Manila, Thailand, etc. (I checked Taiwan and Viet Nam but they either didn't lead anyplace else or only connected to farther north.) Believe me, I had the
oneworld pdf file for flights in front of me and I was scrolling back and forth looking for potential routings while the AA rep was typing in my latest routing suggestion checking for availability.
That routing through Bangkok even lost us two days in Hong Kong. My next day's efforts got us five days in Hong Kong, but an even worse routing via (so far) KIX (Osaka, Japan) and Cairns, Aus (and hopefully able to get through from there, but have to wait another day for the schedule to load up).
My Dad sparked up with Bangkok, and even floated the idea of trading Melbourne for Bangkok as a stopover (can't do both as that would drag us to 59 miles past the 25,000 mile Distance Zone 7 award we are going for).
If you guys have a good idea as to how I can try to get AA to get CX or QF revenue management to free up three business class seats on routes/days they have zero even at the full 330 max lead time for reserving the seats through
oneworld, I'm all ears.
Thanks,
Steve