saunders111

Hi all,
I am trying to book tickets from Toronto to Vancouver for January, and the various search engines give strange results. AA.com finds no flights, even if I choose "all carriers". oneworld.com finds only very strange connections, such as yyz-ord-dfw-sea-(AS)-yvr, which a minimum total travel time of about 12 hours. I couldn't get any of them to find the YYZ-(LA)-JFK-(CX)-YVR connection, which is only about 10.5 hours travel time, except if I constructed a multi-city itinerary on oneworld.com. I also could not get any engine to find the one stop connection through DFW, although it is shorter travel time than some of the multi-hop connections the oneworld search engine did find.

Is there something about traveling from Canada to Canada on oneworld that makes the search engines fail? Are these connections not bookable for some reason?

Of course, what I really want to do is book an F award on LAN and CX. What is the best way to search for availability for these awards? Qantas shows nothing. Are BA or IB search engines the only choices? Can Expertflyer do this?

Thanks for your help,
saunders111

Exiled in Express

The issue is called cabotage. It is illegal for a foreign flagged carrier to transport a passenger between two domestic points. In your case AA is the foreign flagged carrier. Similarly Air Canada cannot transport you from SEA-YYZ-JFK.

The circuitous routing is to avoid this restriction, AA transports you Canada to USA and Alaska transports you USA-Canada thus one carrier is not doing both.

ckpeter

According to the AA award rules on flyerguide:

So, you may encounter difficulty if you try to redeem for YYZ-YVR using AA miles (if I remember correctly, this may be a legal requirement as well, so no other program can workaround this).

As for availability, I was looking at JFK-YVR on CX a few days ago, and it seems to be very available. You can sign up for a Asia Mile account to check CX availability. I don't know much about how often the LAN JFK-YYZ flight is available, but I believe either BA or QF sites will cover that flight, if available.

wpj

I do the LAN533/532 YYZ-JFK-YYZ every month and J (no F offered) it is always empty, just myself as the only passenger in the cabin most of the times.

so I don't think it will be a problem finding an award seat if LAN releases U availability for that route.

sts603

You could theoretically get around this by also booking seperate tickets right?

That's obviously a more expensive way to do that but could be worth it to say book a cheap paid Y ticket to JFK to take advantage of the CX F/J experience to YVR....

ccengct

Did CP really have to fail? I wonder. Westjet proved there was room for a second large airline in Canada, although they have never filled the hole in Oneworld left by CP.

ktakahashi

Is driving to BUF an option? That is if you don't want to pay for 2 separate awards.

You can also look into purchasing the YYZ<>JFK options.

3544quebec

I believe you can also get around it by putting a stopover in the itinerary because then you are flying CAN-USA-CAN rather than CAN-CAN

Its the same on a revenue ticket. I can't buy YUL-(DFW)-YYC on AA but can buy YUL-DFW-YYC

Billy910

Anybody have recent experiences of getting an award YYZ-YVR with AAdvantage?

I just called and the agent is quoting me 2 separate awards as discussed above. YYZ-JFK (AA) and then JFK-YVR (YVR). i don't mind the 25K business award but 50K for business award within North America is pretty steep.

Short hair Francis

Nope, thats used to be my regular commute
I would probably redeem CX YVR-JFK and buy a YYZ/BUF-JFK as necessary
Start your return ex-BUF on B6/DL and go megabus between YYZ-BUF to save cost

Holla at Canadian Based EXP!

AA_EXP09

I have done YYZ JFK YVR on Air Miles.
It was pricing as 2 tickets on the GDS but Air Miles issued it.
The other way isn't allowed though (probably because YVR-JFK needs more miles than YVR-YYZ)

HNL

Who is Air Miles?

AA_EXP09

www.airmiles.ca

hillrider

It looks like that flight is discontinued (i.e. it terminates at JFK instead of going on to YYZ)

Short hair Francis

That JFK-YYZ sector got cut on Mar 31, 2011, I wanted to fly that last year but I missed it by a day, couldn't fly on 3/31