oklAAhoma

AFAIK there is no real evidence that this is correct; it's just been repeated so often that it has been given more credence than it deserves.

JGR01

1. Many of us do not live in a city where there is a consulate. And it is somewhat difficult at times to be without a passport for a couple of weeks due to business travel. So I end up shipping my passport somewhere.. hoping it gets back in time.

2. Don't tell RickYYZ about another resiprocity fee charged to Americans since he appears to be inflamed about the Chile Entry Fee (that I called a visa) .. even though Canadian citizens do not appear to be charged the fee for Chile ..

3. Also some visas require that you use them within 90 days of being issued .. so it does not work to 'get' several visas for future planned trips and then use them many months later.... Timing is important!

djcrooks

I am ticketed to pass through PVG on my way to KUL and found the following on the Chinese Embassy website http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/hzqz/zgqz/t84242.htm

"Visas are not required of Citizens of the following countries, who transit through Pudong Airport or Hongqiao Airport of Shanghai, provided they hold valid passports, visas for the onward countries, final destination tickets and have booked seats, and stay in Shanghai for less than 48 hours:
Japan, Republic of Korea, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria, Greece."

Based on this I plan to make a 1 day stopover to see the city. I suppose it should work for 48 hour or less mileage runs also.

magic111

That's even better than what I had recalled.

Having been a receipient in the past your version makes more sense for me.

Efrem

If you call with this question - and I've had EXP desk agents willing to spend a good deal of time with me on equally weird stuff, sometimes with great results - I'd urge you not to call when there's a weather problem at ORD, DFW, JFK, etc. That's when they're up to their eyeballs just dealing with crises.

AAJetMan

FWIW, last week I purchased DFW-AUS-RDU-LGW-DFW for 24/25 Feb and my eVIP's cleared at time of purchase.
Well, except for AUS-RDU which is a Regional.

haruspex

To follow up, I spoke to a very helpful and expert EXP agent on Saturday night (I thought all the good ones worked normal business hours). She was more than happy to do what she called a "scan" of C availability to FRA for a one week period in February, albeit with no luck. I ended up waitlisting on flights which she said had a very good chance of clearing, but it's good to know that at least this one agent was willing to take the time, and had the tools, to check for me.

JGR01

Just remember as Feb gets closer and closer .. C inventory will get less and less!

Peoples eVIPs expire Feb 28th .. so everyone who has spares is trying to use them by that date.

Now one would think March 1 things would open up a bit more.. but I have still had trouble with EF on some routes on some days....

number_6

It has to be a perfect 1.5 (even 1.45 is not high enough), so very few people would qualify (you have to have 0 discount economy flights credited to AA in the past year). What it gets you is waiver of the rules in exceptional situations, but not in normal cases. So you don't get extra inventory for C or U or conversion of inventory when planning a trip, but you do get re-routes approved that are not within the rules and other help with irregular ops that can be quite useful (above and beyond the normal EXP help with irregular ops). Other airlines do this too, so AA is not unique. Some, such as CX and LH, even do the inventory conversion (so you can buy sold-out fares, or get awards on sold-out flights in some cases); doubt AA would ever do that, though.

As for asking agents to suggest routes, some are quite good at this and have a good sense of where the traffic is. Unfortunately AA has really reduced C availability in advance, but it opens up a few days before flight time (or at the gate). The fly in the ointment is sometimes those "to be used for upgrade" seats can disappear quickly if there are some delayed pax who need a re-route (they can wind up getting the J/F seats instead). Plus every flight that I was on to LHR in Nov/Dec was full (which hasn't been the case in past years); though there was a fair bit of non-rev traffic.

oklAAhoma

Having never come even remotely close to 1.5, I have no first hand experience with what you say, but it certainly makes a lot of sense.

However, I was replying to the comment that one must have a high EQP/EQM ratio for expanded C inventory to become available; as it's been my experience (and that of several others here) that even EXPs with a low ratio benefit from this.