AS Award Travel
 

I am searching for award travel to Europe in June and July from PDX - I know its high season BUT and I pretty much only see Iceland Air, with the occasional BA sprinkled in with their outrageous taxes.. I never see Condor and never AA - am I missing something in my searching?

I tried looking for the same thing recently. When I was looking at mid-July PDX-LON availability, I could occasionally find midweek Alaska/AA flights in coach, however, all J/F award space was mixed cabin with the transatlantic segment always in coach.

AS doesn't control partner inventory. AS can't show you partner award inventory that doesn't exist. Here's a link to a multi-year discussion on the AA forum about this problem.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...iscussion.html

Condor comes up pretty frequently at least in premium economy depending on the destination. AA is stingy as it is in low season

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...d3c17f60cf.jpg

I was looking for ANY european gateway but even Iceland often had mixed class but it was the leg from iceland to USA in economy

It is unfortunate that Condor "premium economy" is similar to Delta Comfort+, not true premium economy.

Have you tried looking for availability from the gateway cities only? You might be on your own to get to the gateway, but if you look at availability from SFO / LAX / SEA and so on, you might find a lot more without the domestic tags.

^^^^
For DE in particular you'll get better results (I suspect) if you work with SEA and YVR.

Its been rough for me in my search. Looking for tickets back from CDG to PDX in July. Presently 45k OW on Iceland and with a $200 charge. So I am opting to wait for cash fares to change after the new year.

I see Condor in searches all the time - in PE. Are you looking for J? PDX is pretty barren on Condor J. SEA is better.

I see J a bit via SEA. Here's a couple of dates I pulled out of the hat:

PDX-SEA-KEF-FRA 6/12 Iceland Air

PDX-SEA-FRA 6/30, 7/5 Condor

hah funny. I'm @ CDG in late May and I've been investigating the same. Being stubborn/ambitious though and considering lots of different routing/gateways. My fallback will be getting over to FRA and taking DE to YVR.

ok will play with SEA and see if better availability and also YVR, We have a PDX/FRA direct flight....

PDX does have a non-stop Condor flight to FRA but only one. SEA has the Condor flight plus a non-stop LH 747, so a lot more capacity from SEA (AS cannot book LH but others can).

i am surprised at how expensive the Aer Lingus SEA flights are for the summer....$ flights

TATL peaks in summer. SEA/PDX peak in summer.

Replacing DL/AF/KL with Finnair, Condor, and Icelandair wasn't exactly an even trade for AS redemptions.

I think you are a bit late to the gate here.... award seats are loading already into Nov of 2019....a lot of us that were trying to find Europe award seats summer of 2019 found them 4 months ago. I am not surprised just the dregs are left at this time.

I have to say that this is the first time that I've had so much trouble finding seats on AA in J to LHR (it's been my "go to" because I can usually book the morning flight from either ORD or JFK and then use Avios the next morning to wherever). And I'm looking for September or October! I'll widen the net and start searching from other gateways but it's slightly unsettling to be on the other side of the "I can't find seats" discussion. Also, the false showings in the First Class column when it's really Economy for the TATL sector is really annoying me.

That is all. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I see kids on my lawn...

look for DE gateways including LAS, PHX, FAI. Once you get your TATL flight, add an AS segment.

I changed tactic today and decided to look for the unicorns of Finnair J and I found them from LAX. A couple days stopover and then onwards to my other city for 70K + $34.

I ended up using UR points on Virgin Atlantic to get me home...

Oh no. Can I ask how much was the surcharge on VS?

MAN/ATL in Premium Economy on Virgin Atlantic was 318 pounds or about $400 I decided the nonstop and daytime flight was worth it - but not good at getting no miles benefit and then I will overnight in ATL and take a flight to PDX on AS next day - some miles at least!

I just booked award travel for three people in SAN-LHR on 8/10/22. For main cabin, the majority of the options involved BA and their pricey fees (32.5k miles + $243). However, there was one SAN-SEA-LHR AS/AA option for 30k + $19. I booked this.

AS currently has 10 SAN-SEA n/s scheduled on on 8/10/22. However, the only flight available for main cabin award booking with the AA SEA-LHR flight was a morning flight that arrives in SEA at 11:55a, more than 7 hours before the 7:20p SEA-LHR flight. Personally, I could probably spend 7 hours eating and drinking at the N lounge, but that is less enjoyable with two kids. So, I would like a later SAN-SEA flight.

Per Expertflyer, the 8/10 SAN-SEA flight I booked (AS 1137) appears to be the ONLY SAN-SEA flight within three days of 8/10 that has T fare availability. This seems odd, and I assume it was loaded by mistake. The AS phone lady claimed otherwise, but she didn't provide a credible explanation how this flight had 7 seats in T and NONE of the other 60+ flights within three days had any.

Regardless, I am assuming T availability on other 8/10 flights will open up at some point in the future, and I have an ExpertFlyer alert set for that. Is there anything else I can/should do? Am I missing something?

That the AS schedule isn’t exactly written in stone for 11 months out, so there will inevitably be multiple schedule changes you can use to be put into different flights to shrink your SEA layover.

I'm in a very similar situation with an award I booked for four people next May to Europe (SJC-SEA-DUB.) There is a single SJC-SEA flight that day with a bunch of T availability and several other flights with none. The flight with T availability results in a ~9 hour layover which works but isn't really ideal. I also set up some alerts assuming the other flights would probably open up at some point, but not really sure. Interested if others have any insight

There will be schedule changes. I always grab the seat, and hope for schedule changes. So long as you are ticketed SJC/DUB, you should be taken care of one way or the other. I've already had an 8 hour December connection become a 6 hour connection.