CDKing

looking at the award calendar it's the F price. I believe only the 737s would price as business for domestic but i'm not completely sure. For some reason i thought the had a special VIP plane f & J but cannot find anything on it so not sure if it exists anymore

OneWorldTraveller

THX!!

As you mentioned, it seems 737 has two bookable classes, Economy (15K) and Business (22.5K). 737 has recliner seat, so it makes sense considered as Business.

However, 787 or 330 still has two classes in fleet. Same seat, and considered as Business for international flight and First for domestic flight. In Alaska's calendar, it still shows Economy (15K), Business (22.5K) and First (27.5K) for within China domestic flight. So, I'm confused.. Should I try Business, and see what seat I can get?

ralphs

Has anyone been able to book using AS miles on a flight marketed by a Hainan subsidiary (e.g. Hong Kong Express HX)

Kieron

Different airline entirely, and not an AS partner, so there is no way to use miles.

HK Express isn't really a subsidiary of Hainan itself, and I think even Hainan's parent company still only has a minority stake -- but even in the cases where a second airline is a direct subsidiary of an AS partner (e.g. Cathay Dragon f/k/a Dragonair), AS miles can't be used without an agreement specifically with that airline.

Jesperss

I've booked an award ticket weeks ago on Hainan and cant look up my ticket on https://www.hainanairlines.com/US/US/Bookings using my ticket number or booking reference (the Hainan one).

Any tips before I call?

We are unable to find this confirmation number. Please validate your entry and try again or contact us for further information. (8104 - 1931)

eethan

Has anyone successfully booked a SEA-PVG (stopover)- Asia award?

Shanghai is not technically a hub or focus city, but HU has plenty of routes from there. Wonder if AS agents will be picky about this.

Kurt

In my experience (we flew HU in March) you will NOT be able to use the Hainan website to access your reservation. It's because it's an Alaska award ticket. Just HU's policy. Seats will be assigned at the airport. Lucky for us our flights (in business class) were not full and we got just the seats we wanted. Frustrating anyway.

Jma12

Yes, however the destination must be a 1 segment connected to PVG, according to Wikipedia, your choices are : Beijing–Capital, Changsha, Chongqing, Dalian, Haikou, Hohhot, Lanzhou, Taiyuan, Tianjin, Ürümqi, Weifang, Xi'an

Rich Boykin

I was successfully able to get information from HU when I called - I flew with the wife last month SEA-PVG on a J award ticket, and I called in advance to request a vegetarian meal for my wife and to ensure we had 2 seats together. the seat issue ended up being a non-issue as the cabin was 1/2 empty. I also WAS able to use the web interface to check in for my flight using the e-ticket # information. Somewhat tedious however.

I called yesterday about an upcoming trip I have SEA-PEK-BKK because there was an oddity with my reservation in the AS system - it showed

May 17 - SEA-PEK
May 18 - PEK-BKK
May 18 - SEA-PEK (this was the anomaly)

I called AS and they seem to have fixed it on their end (ie, no longer showing the extra flight, but wanted to confirm with HU that all was good and I would have no surprises when I showed up at the airport. The agent was able to find my reservation with the HU confirmation code that I got from AS, but the anomalous flight was still there, but not showing as 'confirmed'. She did assure me that the first to flights (correct ones) were showing as confirmed.

Long story short - they CAN find your reservation if you call, but the web interface is worthless.

BeantownFlyer

Having gone through the booking process to ticket HU business class using my AS miles I have a few comments:

1) There is a ton of phantom award availability shown on the AS site. Silly me that I did not think that could be a possibility, but I transferred miles into my AS account and went to ticket, and only when I clicked purchase did I get an error message saying there was no availability. Lesson learned - use ExpertFlyer to confirm the real availability.

2) I cannot view my HU itinerary for the award travel on the HU site, but I also cannot view itineraries for paid travel booked by my travel agent with HU record locators. So this quirk is not related to award travel, and my guess is that you can only view itineraries booked via their website.

3) Not sure whey you are waiting for check-in at the airport to get seat assignments. I called HU and they were happy to assign seats on the award tickets via the phone. (I confirmed that the seats assigned disappeared from the seat maps on ExpertFlyer after my call as well).

beckoa

This is a great trick and tip for multiple carriers ^

eethan

Why is it that after stopping over in PVG, you are limited to 1 segment for your next leg?

Jma12

No idea, but that is how AS design their system.

UA vs NW

Same issue here about the phantom award availability on AS's website. HU's award availability is not that great for their BOS-PEK/PVG flights in general while AS's award availability is overwhelmingly misleading.

I called HU's service desk last Friday and I was being told that HU made a change of booking class for business award ticket - it is now J class instead of the old A class. Not sure AS's website has incorporated into their system yet.

Finally, another bummer for HU's award tickets is that HU appears not to release award tickets in first class on domestic China flights far in advance, but only within about 2 months prior to departure, which makes it difficult to plan the trips including domestic China travel in advance (once within 2 months of departure, there is good chance that the international segments are no longer available)

CDKing

Which is why you book J/Y now and up the short leg later.