Do I need to call Cathay and JL to reserve my seats directly? AA wasn't able to secure any seats and I can't pick them online.

Yes you can do it online once you get the PNRs of the partner airlines and your departure dates as well as your class of service meet the requirements.

Get the CX and JL PNRs from AA, then go to each airline's own website to select your seats.

CX only allows seat selection up to 180 days for J or F classes. Economy class does not have the advance seat selection benefit I believe... It is spelled out on CX website.

JL also has a limit on advance seat selection. Domestic segments cannot select seats until 1 month before travel? (forgot the details and again there is details on JL website.)

The AAgent I booked my tickets with was able to pick the seats I wanted at the time of booking on CX and JL. Maybe try calling again?

YMMV, but I would much rather call the operating airline to get my seats instead of relying on AA to request them.

Better yet, get the operating airline's PNRs and get your own seat assignments online.

CX. JL and QF's trip management tools are very user friendly. BA is less so simply because BA would not allow you select seat unless you have OW status.

I also check the PNRs each time there is a ticket re-issuance to make sure the status remains "Confirmed".

Need some help with OW Award
 

Hi everybody,

Need some help here, I'm new to OW awards and would like to get some feedback from the forum. I currently have 50k AA miles and 20k Asia Miles. I know is not much but do you have any suggestions for a crazy award starting from SJO or MIA?

If you can get another 60k AA miles you can do a decent J award to asia (55k/way). Or another 5k aa and enough asia miles to do a OW to the us.

This thread is about oneworld awards, not all-partner awards. (Refer to post #1 in this thread.) You are talking about the latter.

How much miles does you need to travel from SFO to Hong Kong on CX?

Availability of redeeming for a oneworld ticket three months in advance?
 

Hi all,

Thanks so much for your time and expertise. I've been working my way through the 250 pages on this thread to help me plan my trip. I'm hoping to use my AA miles to redeem for a zone 7 ticket (I have enough for business class, which if there is availability for I'd love to take).

However, I want to travel in April-Aug of this year and haven't gotten my ticket yet. Is it wishful thinking on my part to think that I can get seat availability? My proposed route, with flexible dates and locations, is to go to South East Asia and Europe:

JFK-SEA-BKK-KUL-TSA-ICN-HAM-SXF-PRG-ZRH-GVA-JFK

What do you think??

Thanks for your help!!
Christie

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Your first task is to propose a segment-by-segment itinerary of flights operated by oneworld carriers. Remember: you are limited to a maximum of 16 segments.

Welcome to FT.

I think that your first issue is that some/most of your sectors are not served non-stop by a OW airline. This means that your trip might go over the 25,000 miles and/or 16 sectors. You might want to consider using the award for the LH sectors and do the others some other way. You could use the award for something like JFK-YVR-HKG-ICN-NRT-FRA-BUD-ZRH-JFK with appropriate side trips. This route is 21,688 miles and only 8 sectors so you can add another 8 sectors and 3,312 miles at the same mile cost (that would be my choice) or try to cut out 1,688 to save 20K miles in J.

You should study post #1 in this thread and forget about the rest.

Thanks for your advice, all! I am now working on building a routing of available flights... Two quick questions/clarifications:

1) Just to confirm, if I route through HKG but then fly directly to BKK (under 6 hours, so a connection, and not a stopover), this still counts as a segment against my 16, correct?

2) I found a listing of the first class flights available on oneworld carriers on FT, but not one for business class. Is it safe to assume that business class exists on all the flights that I'm looking at and that I just need to cross my fingers for actual availability? Or, are there flights that don't have business class that I should try to avoid to get the best flying experience/value of my ticket?

Thank you!!
Christie

1) Yes. A flight is a segment and will count toward 16 segments. However, if the flight has a connection city but has a same flight number, it only counts as one segment. An open jaw is also a segment.

2) Based on my experiences, most flights have business class cabin. Some of the business have nothing to brag about (e.g., those intra-Europe flights with same seats as coach but different services).

Good luck!