G-CIVC

To add a domestic flight in the US it must be an AS flight with award availability.

To get in F, you would have to look for another routing I guess as F is not offered for both SYD-HKG and HKG-EWR.

CDKing

Australia routes have no F and you need JFK for the possibility of F in NYC area. If you want to connect anywhere you will need to look for west coast F since you cant even add AS operated EWR-SEA due to backtracking. So since you need to purchase a separate ticket anyways you can also look at BOS which also has F service.

jamienbaker

1) Purchase awardnexus to check daily for seats between about week 46 and week 2 before departure. Unlikely anything opens, but it does happen. You'll be notified via email.

2) T-14 days, start checking several times a day. Purchase expertflyer so you know selling inventory on desired flight(s). Obviously, the higher the selling level, the greater the likelihood an award is released.

3) T-4 days if still F3 or higher, start checking hourly. I've seen seats released at 0715 EST, 1315, 1830, etc. No rhyme or reason that I can discern.

4) Hope AS agents can see it!

Jamie

diningdecadence

oh yep sorry i did mean a mixed award.

how come only JFK? I can see CX890 HKG-EWR. is it because there's no AS out of EWR?

maybe ORD would be a better option if AS fly out of there?

awesome I have expertflyer and familiar with that system. shame there's no rhyme or reason on timing of release. is there any standard 'rule' like if BA show 2 available, only 1 will be available on AS etc?



thanks for the speedy responses everyone!

eponymous_coward

EWR is three cabin only (J/Y+/Y). Can't fly F in a plane with no F...

AS does not have nonstop ORD-DFW service. As mentioned in the wiki and previously, AS awards only allow one partner per redemption. If you book CX, you will only be able to add AS flights to the award. No AA and no VX (they are considered a partner for the moment), which would be your other options to get to DFW.

It is theoretically possible to do SYD-HKG-JFK//LGA-DAL and v.v. as an AS award later this year, because AS regional jets will take over VX's LGA-DAL service. You will have to get yourself from JFK to LGA (AS will allow this as a connection but you will need to add the time necessary to go between airports). This is possibly preferable to a SYD-HKG-ORD/SFO/LAX-SEA/PDX-DFW routing, but those options are the only ways to get to Texas on a single Cathay award. You also might consider buying a separate positioning flight out of your Cathay USA gateway. If you really wanted to, you could spend the additional 25K for a second AS award, VX F out of LAX/SFO to DFW, and use that to get to DFW in style. Up to you.

CDKing

EWR is the three class 777-300ER. Its Economy, Premium Economy and Business, no first class. JFK, BOS & ORD have the 4 class 777-300ER with a First Class Cabin. Also Alaska does not allow connecting via the east coast to/from the west coast on AS/CX combo.

CDKing

This could get interesting. Dragon Air has been given the approval to operate to/from the USA. Well, interesting will depend if this creates a new route in additional to what CX offers or replaces one thus making flights ineligible for booking. They will also be allowed continuing service from one US city to another. The internal flight will have to be in conjunction with intl so they could do something like HKG-LAX-XXX which would decrease award seats or serve smaller markets like a HKG-SEA-XXX.

paperwastage

dragon air is considered separate from CX, not an alaskan partner. can't book using alaska miles

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/28028133-post360.html

CDKing

Sorry if it came out wrong. The point I was trying to make is hopefully it will change to allow CX coded KA operated. Otherwise, it could spell a major reduction in premium seat availability if they replace existing routes vs putting KA on new routes where it would have less effect (well as long as it doesn't decrease frequency on CX operated routes to/from the US)

TOMFORD

I'm seeing many JFK-HKG awards on BA website but AS agent say they do not see it on their website. Is this something that happens often? Do CX awards for J go that quickly? Does CX open up more seats some time before the date of travel?

eponymous_coward

Extensively discussed recently if you read the thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...-later-50.html

Also discussed here, on the first page of the forum:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...-partners.html

callmedtop

I have spent a decent amount of time tracking what BA/QR/JL are reporting as available and what AS claims is up for grabs.

Over the past week or so across 4 different occasions I have populated my own table of award availability between HKG and JFK/BOS/ORD in F/J from the standard Oneworld search sites using KVS. I then have called Alaska and asked them for award space on each of those flights.

For the first three tries, it looked something like this:



Notice how they were able to pick up quite a few FC seats on the HKG-BOS and CX846, but basically nothing else. I didn't even list CX830 because it they could not see any seats on this flight whatsoever (except for W/Y). The one anomely is the 5/27 HKG-JFK flight where they saw the full 1F/5J. Still don't understand that one.

On the fourth agent, it looks remarkably different:



Here award space matched up much closer, with exception of CX840. As a whole, things looked pretty decent with call #4 . No, definitely not the full OW availability, but much closer to what I was seeing from those partners, and a much greater availability of flights to choose from.

That said, my original data set had a lot more J=0 days, which may be skewing things quite a bit. But, it doesn't explain AS seeing F=0 on a ton of flights. It also leaves out CX830, which had F1J5 on a number of the days in which AS saw zero seats entirely.

On a side note, it does appear that CX840 is a very tough flight to get with AS miles, no matter what.

I asked AS agent #4 what he was doing differently so I could get the same level of success next time I called. He told me to make sure the agent sets the search time for 1am. I remember reading about this quite some time ago so this isn't new news, but I hope this serves as a reminder for those struggling to find seats. I'm not 100% sure this is actually making an impact in this case, but the results were certainly stronger.

beckoa

Thanks for the data set.

IME, some agents have a difficult time pulling up the space, but persistence is key. Not necessarily even HUCA, but having them search in a different manner, such as flight by flight, different times, and even asking for help from other agents.

Happy

Ask the agent if transferring you to the partner desk would be more helpful (despite there is no more partner desk in reality). That might get a more experienced agent who is more well-versed on the obscured little things in finding partner availability.

I recall very vaguely, a few years ago when AS starting putting partner awards bookable online, there are some discussion about how now the agents will see the same thing as we see online for those bookable online. But for the non-bookable online partners such as CX, the agents had to go into a different system / screen, to check for availability. I could not remember what was the magic words to ask the agent to get to a different system / screen - but that was the solution at the time when CX availability was in similar poor shape as now.

atojbk

does Alaska allow you to hold anymore? Don't want to transfer points if this phantom issue persists and I'm stuck.