losgatosmama

Hello,
I want to book award travel for my family of 4. I've called and we can do so if we use anytime awards (50,000 each).

Our desired route is
SFO-JFK
IAD-SJC

The agent told me I can book this multi-city trip at 50,000 miles/each but that I would have to pay a $7.50 ticketing (?) fee plus a $20 live agent fee (or something like that, not sure if I got those fee descriptors correct)... but he told me that I could avoid the $20 fee (for a total of $80) if I booked online.

Booking award travel for multi-city doesn't exist, but he said I should book SFO-JFK rt and call back for a route change.

Because I have never done this before... how does this exactly work? Do I go ahead and confirm the usage of my 200,000 miles? And will I not suffer any add'l fees for the route change - even if it's multi-city? Is this because there's no change fees for Anytime Awards? I am taking any risks here and may this not work out?

I just don't want to screw this up.

Thanks in advance for your time!

lovetotravel

This is an open jaw award, you have to call to book and pay a $20 per ticket fee, no way around that

skywalkerLAX

AA fees are a disgusting scam and it get's worse and worse

But on the other hand, getting a few hundred K of cheap AA miles and redeeming them for OW premium tickets let meswallow the few bucks

steve32

You might be able to avoid the agent fees if you have the agent just put the tickets on hold for you to decide and confirm/"buy" later. The reasoning I've given in he past is that I needed to confirm the lodging arrangements to conform with the travel arrangements first (which has also been true).

I have not tried it with an open jaw, but I have done it with long stopovers. To help out the Ticket Agent (and help justify skipping their fee), what I've done is to book the award online as close as I could, and then put the reservation on hold. Then I called AA Reservations and gave them the record locater and asked them how I wanted them to modify the reservation, and to put that result back on hold while I continued working on the lodging arrangements. Later, after confirming that the reservation details were correct, and that my other arrangements were also set to the same schedule, I would "purchase" the tickets online from my account reservation screen.

Steve

jAAck

I've done this many times as well. Just book the round-trip online and place on hold rather than purchase. Call AA, request the routing change, and politely decline when they ask if you're ready to ticket. Your revised routing is now available online and can be booked without the fee.

biggestbopper

IMHO, there is another angle to consider here. Namely, why use 50K miles for each ticket. You could get two tickets in biz to Thailand or Bali (or both0 for 180K.

Why not buy the tickets for a few hundred bucks each and use the miles to go to Europe or Aisa?

bdemaria

Just picking random dates in late August, the itinerary in question prices out to 515/pp. multiplied by four = 2000+ which is more than "few hundred bucks"

biggestbopper

Actually, I think $500 qualifies as a "few" hundred bucks.

But, again, my point is, as many have pointed out on FT (I am no original thinker on this) anytime tickets (and just about any domestic ticket, even at 25K) is not the best use of hard earned miles. International F or J is usually much better value.

Rhetorical Question: would you pay $2060 for 200K miles?

And, if you buy the tickets, you will get more miles rather than using up miles.

brp

I would definitely not pay $2060 for 200K miles. I have 750K miles and rising in the kitty- and this is after using 250K for friends recently and 250K more over XMas. Nope- miles have little value to me. When I travel internationally, I want to buy the tickets and earn the miles. I can buy cheap coach and always end up in J. Sounds like a good deal.

Now, the JFK-YHZ I needed recently? Over $500 each for 2 hour Eagle flights. Instead, I got two 25K awards, noted that YHZ was covered by the Citibank 3rd Quarter discount, so it was 17.5K each for a total of $35K. Is that better than about $1100? You betcha!! For $1100 I can fly twice Bay Area->Europe, earn 24K EQM and 48K miles. Seems a no-brainer.

Cheers.

bdemaria

Remember to multiple that amount by 4 for the OP.

Would I use my miles this way- no but I don't know the OPs budget situation.
What if the flight is next week, the price could be much higher, easily 1K/p pax.

To the OP: have you tried to see if any milesaver awards are available for this flight. 4 such awards may no longer be available, but perhaps 1 or even 2 could still be available, thereby saving you considerable miles (if not booking fees).

ijgordon

Or, stated alternatively, would you pay $2060 for two round-trip business class tickets to Europe, which didn't earn any miles?

biggestbopper

If it was on my dime, of course, I would pay $2060. This is just a little more than the cheapest fare in coach for high season travel from the central or west US. In fact, checking for fares SFO CDG in late July, the cheapest I see right now is $1394 and up for one coach seat on Delta. Yuck.

On the other hand, if someone else (corporate) was paying, no way in ... I want my miles (if it doesn't cost me cash)!

benjoe

The key confusion in your question above is the key distinction between HOLDING the reservations versus PAYING (or ticketing) the reservations. Once you pay and are TICKETED, you WILL have to pay cancel the award reservations and rebook to change the destinations ($150 per ticket) [a correction]. If you put the reservations on HOLD, you are free to make all kinds of changes without change fees. Put everything on HOLD and when everything is to your liking--then (and ONLY THEN) pay for and ticket the reservation. After you ticket the reservation, you can make date and time changes to the award ticket without fees, but you cannot make origin and destination changes to the ticket.

You can do things in this fashion: You can book 4 one ways in each direction and place a hold on the reservations. Call the agent, and tell the agent to connect the one way reservations, making open jaw round trips. Put these reservations on Hold and "pay" for them online, when everything is to your satisfaction. This works. A good agent will tell you to do it this way, and she will not even bring up the question of paying for the reservations. What the agent told you will work, as well--make round trip reservations, place a HOLD on them, and call a agent to change the itinerary (again, HOLD not TICKET the reservations). But making the one-way reservations in both directions, gives you the ability to think about and choose all the flights before calling the agent (who don't always see the same availability as we do online; if they don't see the flight that you want and you can see it online, they will tell you to book the two ends of the open jaw trip, and they will connect them).

AsiaTraveler

This may or may not work in this situation, but it worked for me in a situation where I was using a paper voucher (also normally a have to call situation).

Go through the booking (as close as you can manage it) and when you get towards the end, there is usually a little box that pops up saying, "having trouble? click here to have us call you." Someone from aa.com web services calls you (or you can call aa.com direct) and the times I've had to use it, there have been no fees, but they can do things for you that the website is unable to. YMMV.

martin33

That's not so for an AAnytime award: