yyzprincess

Chances of getting a Business Seat between 15DEC 2011-10th JAN 2012 are zero for classic awards on any star alliance. It is the high season for all destinations worlwide.


Some *A airlines open up J seats for their top tier flyers for example:

AC for their SE as Piority Award. For this Promo AC Piority awards do not work.
Full Business Classic award for J Piority Awards.

United will clear Waitlist J & F Waitlist on the International on saver awards for their GS & 1Ks.

greek2me

Thanks for insight!
Here is what I am thinking. Greatly appreciate help pointing out errors or suggest improvements?

Want to go to India from East Coast US in 2013. Looked at all various Star Alliance connections between East Coast US and BOM or DEL destination (FRA, VIE, CAI, ZRH, MUN, ZAG, WAW). Looks like I am stuck paying YQ to get there. Shooting for a stopover in Warsaw or Zagreb as never been to either country. I will use WAW for example below, but would do ZAG as well. 2nd stopover will be the first leg that must be done by 12/8/12 (1 yr from date of issue)

Date of issue 12/8/11 for Oct 2012 travel: actual desired travel is sometime spring or fall of 2013.
BDL-NYC (stop) - I would fly this short hop leg in Oct'12 so that my "real" ticket begins <1 yr from DOI
NYC-WAW (stop)
WAW-BOM (dest)
BOM-NYC-BDL

Before Oct 12 travel begins, and once I have decided on my actual 2013 travel dates, I change travel dates of 2nd leg on. Cost out of pocket is $30 booking fee now plus $90 chg fee then. If Aeroplan wants to charge me more miles I cancel outright.

is it worth paying the $120 out of pocket mininum for chance to take advantage of this promo? (ie is there a better award flight option to go to India that I should just wait to book in 2012 when I actually know my desired 2013 travel dates?

Pseudo Nim

lol what the - I didn't even know that airport existed. I guess it's not just the $90+$30 fee - consider the cost of getting to BDL and/or to JFK (depending on which airport you are actually close to). It's got to be at least 20-30 bucks, + your time. I'd say it's really a coin toss at this point - we do not know whether points will be charged, although mostly we prefer to think the worst and we think they might - the agents say so, and there IS a provision in the Aeroplan rules that says "changes MAY require additional mileage", so they kind of cover themselves.

I think if I were you, I'd almost consider flipping a coin a few times (but not enough that it averages out to 50/50) and go with that. Depends how much you trust your luck.

Another factor to consider (that I just thought of) is that Aeroplan likes to worsen the program occasionally. Who knows, they might raise redemption levels at some point - at least you'd be protected from that (although they USUALLY don't do it the day before, unlike the YQ increases, so you'd have time to organise yourself).

WhiteYUL

They way I see it, IMHO, availability on your eventual 2013 desired travel dates is independent of whether you take advantage of this promo or not. Note that redeption levels are unknown (maybe the same, maybe higher, who knows?) should you wish to only book your trip in late-ish 2012.

The question to ask is "Is saving all those miles on a ticket that will be used in 2013, with unknown availability, worth the risk of both cancelling the trip and paying $120, and maybe more miles or not?"

greek2me

Easy- I have family at BDL! I usually drive BDL-NYC but would be easy to fly one time to meet the requirement to start ticket Oct '12.

Yeah I am really torn about jumping through the hoops to do this as not clear will save anything if sure can;t actually fly the trip I book now. Will think about it some more. Thanks for all your great help.

jerryhung

Personally I wouldn't do it for any 2013 trip..too much trouble and unknown

Who knows what will happen in future..
So far we have the yearly "Bonus 20-25%" from Transfer Points
Maybe we'll get yearly "glithc/promo" too of redeeming J at Y level 75K miles

My guess is ANY CHANGE in 2012, after this promo ends, WILL trigger more miles needed at that time + fees/YQ calculation.. so why bother

AA_EXP09

Some of the bookings that we have made are purely speculative in nature, as I could not find availability from YVR, for example. And, the AIF in SEA is cheaper. I also don't fully know my work schedule for next year.

global happy traveller

i planned out all my holidays......

Pseudo Nim

i've USED UP all my holidays and then some

allbrosca

I had YYZ-NRT-SIN-PER but I switched it to YYZ-IAD-JNB-PER to get rid of AC and saved a bunch of SQ.

rankourabu

This is STILL going???

I feel like a fool rushing bookings Saturday morning! Even though I did manage scamcharge free flights in the summer

global happy traveller

SIN seems to be more acceptable, probably because its a published SQ routing. I know SQ does a lot of those extra long routing to entice passengers.

But AKL-NRT-LAX..... is not listed with Air NZ, Air Canada or EwwwwwA, probably because they want us to fly using their Pacific/more direct equipment.

bcnfish

The earlier the better, who knows if you'd still find availability on that route now. On Sunday there were flights I was looking at. A domestic portion had 8 seats available in economy, a business portion had 3 seats available. Today both have 0

Although the 8 Y seats gone is probably not be related to this...

Pseudo Nim

No kidding. Just before this started, I saw WIDE OPEN availability on LX87 ZRH-YUL, in J _and_ F (obviously except for the day I needed it on) in early April. Now? *NOTHING*. Maybe cattle, but I think not even. And they have F2/J6 available for Aeroplan (as the agent told me), so in a single week, that's what - 14 F seats and 48 J seats sold on points!

So be happy you booked. Else you'd have to fly on equipment you don't want and transit between different airports on an airline-sponsored donkey. :P

rankourabu

In the SQ forum - there are complaints of availability disappearing almost overnight from their systems

My question is - somewhere here there was money to be made selling these - or it wouldnt have gone on for this long - who is making the money? Aeroplan by getting millions of points off the books? Air Canada for collecting millions in scamcharges?