Leostar

Hi,
I've had trouble using the Aeroplan site to book a reward trip. I'm in Ottawa, Canada. I want to go Business class to Sydney via Singapore or Bangkok with a stopover. I have 100,000 points with Aeroplan and 200,000 BA points (Oneworld). I can transfer some hotel points and get a credit card to get up to 140,000 points needed for Australia on business class, I believe.

Can anyone suggest how best to do this? Ideally I'd like to bring my husband but don't know if this will be possible at double the points needed. He'd have to fly with BA but we'd want to land in the same stopover city.

So far the site shows no options to fly for months using reward points even though I'm flexible on dates, but preferring November onwards. I need some advice. I've posted this under the Exec Club forum too but I don't know how best to even leave Ottawa for the fewest points or by which airport to leave. Thank you.

getaround

I don't know about an option to transfer One world to * Alliance, Maybe points.com.

In regards to looking for availability forget the website it most likely won't work.

Look up the ANA tool search in this forum for instructions on ANA tool. Or on the AP website search each leg out first Ie. YOW/XXX

Also search my posts I've done a few trips to Australia in J & C and the route your looking I have done myself plus about 5 other options.

Ive got two more booked for Australia in a month that I booked only a couple of weeks ago and I got availability for 2 only 6 or 7 weeks out from departure. It took a long time on ANA website but I did find what I needed.

Dorian

VERY complex. You'll either have to put in tons of research here in to ASIA1 reward on AC.... or I would suggest finding an expert here on that reward and paying them or a charity a nominal amount to attempt to source an open J routing for you.

If you chose to go at it on your own, KVS Tool is invaluable.

djjaguar64

Or just call AE and dish out the fee and let them do the leg work for you.

Dorian

My upcoming ASIA1 took me over 5 hours of searching, routing, rerouting to find. Even after that I've paid the change fee twice as I've found F open up or better routing. No way an AE agent would take the time or possibly even find the route I booked.

Global guy

I have found agents very helpful in booking complex reward travel. Sometimes we spend almost one hour searching for open seats in F or J. Usually I do my research first and find possible routings to try.
In my experience leaving from YOW is never the issue, the trick is to find a US hub that has open seats to Austrailia or Asia. Then work backwards to get the YOW flight in.

Leostar

Thanks very much for the replies. I'll look into this ANA tool, which I"m not familiar with. There certainly was nothing from the US big cities on AP's web site that I could find.

phedre

Yep, AE's site is useless for planning.

Another good option is to spend the $10 for one month of premium Expert Flyer access, and check the flights there for routes that have two open seats in J. I did this for my last big trip and it helped immeasurably in my planning. In fact I ended up keeping the membership.

KathrynInCanada

Note: You can't use the ANA tool until you have points with them. My last revenue trip to NS, I gave up the AC points in order to activate my ANA account.

HR_Traveler

The easies option is to book an award from NYC as LH post an MPM just short 17,000 miles which gives you quite a lot of flexibility in your routing. To start in Canada you need to use a published route which can make it a lot more limiting.

In December I'll be flying SYD-BKK-MUC-FRA-JFK which was only About 14,200 miles leaving a fair amount left over.

The other thing to remember is that while the LH MPM is posted as JFK- SYD since EWR and LGA are both co terminal to JFK it works for them too.

Dorian

This is not true. There is a known way around this.

getaround

Nan this was an issue for about a day.

Go to ANA search screen, search a flight PEK/NRT then when the availability come up scroll to the bottom of the screen and then use the star partners option.