Help me book paid J YYZ-SIN for New Years
 

I've been playing around with this for a couple weeks, and I really want to get it booked. I'm running into no end of issues.

Itinerary for 2 people:
December 27 YYZ-SIN
January 4 or 5: SIN-YVR (or SFO, SIN-YVR seems way cheaper)

At most one stop in each direction.
Paid J. Every segment must be in J.

I'm seeing lots of issues with the non-AC connections within Asia having no low J space (the P fares seem to book OZ/SQ in D I believe), and on codeshares, putting me in Y.

Absolute upper limit on cost is $4500 USD per person.

There are qualification reasons to book this on an AC ticket. BR has a reasonable fare (about 4200 per person), but it won't earn any AQD, and the cost savings is not enough for me to abandon my hope of booking on AC (yet).

Ironically, if I can't find a reasonable P fare, there's some reward availability that would be decent (though not perfect, otherwise I would have booked it already), meaning AC would lose out on a lot of money.

Thanks :)

Delete - it was an EVA option so no AQD

I don't know if I can help you find a ticket or routing (I will try) ... but can I say, right off the bat, that the idea of SIN for New Years is already making me jealous.

:)

Finnair has rates in the USD 2600 range - it is even one of the top threads today in the Premium Fares forum.
Not sure if the savings are enough for you to forgo the miles and AQD's - I would think they are.

If @canadiancow is asking for help finding and securing flights/fares, there is really no hope for the rest of us :D

"There are no flights available for the selected dates. Please try again."

They don't show up on Google Flights either.

:(

Note: canadiancow has probably already thought of or written the book on all of the below. But since this is FT perhaps it will help others or engage more conversation.....

I really think this is one of those puzzles where the adage 'good, cheap, fast -- you can only pick two' applies

With the 1 connection, starting in YYZ parameter I keep thinking the way to book would be to find an asia to singapore R/T nonstop in J then work backwards to find an AC round trip nonstop on the outside.

PVG-SIN J n/s shows $1400 on chinese carriers or $1700 on SQ. Of course YYZ-PVG J is over budget those dates (in hindsight yesterdays 15% off promo would have helped a bit).

If price of two separate tickets worked out within desired target, AC (or possibly best bet a travel agent) should be able to build a nested ticket manually with the AC over the ocean and SQ fare on one 014 ticket. Per my re-read of T&C, you would earn AQD for all *A carriers on a 014 ticket, regardless of whether they have or are ticketed with ACxxx codeshare flight #s .

Risk takers like me would consider waiting till T-7 to evaluate Eups, booking cheaper dates and hoping for YYZ weather waivers, or booking a fare with a cheaper return date way in the future that allows a change for a set change fee after outbound is flown without a full reprice of itinerary.

15% promo didn't apply to fights before mid January.

Most of the fares I've seen don't have significant advance purchase requirements, so booking "way in the future" and then changing wouldn't help either.

eUps are not really in play here because I want J on all segments, and AC doesn't fly to SIN. OYB to xxx and then paid J xxx-SIN could work, but I'm not convinced that would be cheaper than J.

EWR-SIN doesn't have low J until the 28th, which gets in too late.

Also, the SQ fares are significantly higher, even when low J is available.

To keep this thread more concise, if your suggestion is going to be something that would come up in Google Flights, I've tried it already.

I'm at the point where I'm looking at fares to places other than SIN that allow a stopover in SIN. But I don't know if I can open-jaw something like that, or if I'd need to return to YYZ (doable, but it increases the overall cost).

Dec 27
YYZ-HKG-SIN
AC 15, CX 715

Jan 4
SIN-NRT-YVR
NH 802, AC 4

CAD$ 5535

Flights

Surely, cow already saw this and excluded it based on something not to his liking. :p
(Yes, I'm calling you "Surely") :D

Change the number of pax to 2, and the price jumps to 13.5k CAD, which is over 10k USD.

You had me excited for a minute :p

Ouch- sorry...

Too good to be true!