S7 / SIBIR / SIBERIAN joins oneworld - awards (exclude Siberia / E Russia routes)
 

WHY have them in ONE WORLD.Without Irkutsk, Vladivostok,Khabarovsk or NovoSibirsk, what is S7 worth ?
It is like Russian math:
A decline from 100 to 80 is 25 % i.e the difference 20 is taken a a percentage of the lowest number.


AA.com
Quote:
Mileage redemption on S7 Airlines is valid using both oneworld multi-carrier awards as well as AAdvantage All Airline Awards. Miles may be redeemed to any destination S7 Airlines serves using the oneworld multi-carrier award; however, destinations in Eastern Russia* are not valid for redemption using AAdvantage All Airline Awards

* Destinations in Eastern Russia (east of the Ural Mountains) include Barnaul, Bratsk, Chita, Irkutsk, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Kurgan, Nizhnevartovsk, Novokuznetsk, Novy Urengoy, Nadym, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Surgut, Tomsk, Ulan-ude, Blagoveshchensk, Magadan, Khabarovsk, Norilsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsk, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Vladivostok, Yakutsk

===========MODERATOR NOTE============

povertyjetset may have found a useful way to book award travel to allowed destinations using a trick documented in this post (#56).

...??? Why don't they just make Siberia a different area and charge more miles? I was planning on award travel to OVB (Novosibirsk)

Can you still use AA miles for OW awards to those locations?
Also, it is also bad that AA doesn't fly to DME, I'd fly SFO-LHR-DME-OVB, but there's those damn BA fuel charges

Are you sure about the Russian math thing? I asked a nearby Russian and she confirmed the answer matched American math
A reduction from 100 to 80 is a discount of 20 percent
An increase from 80 to 100 is an increase of 25 percent

But, dropping OVB makes S7 worth about 0 for partner redemption

You have completely misrepresented the facts. You can earn EQM. EQP, EQS, and RDM on all flights as they are a full member of oneworld.

AA has not worked out a redemption scheme for eastern Russia, therefore has imposed a restriction on All Partner Awards to Eastern Russia. You still have the option of booking a oneworld award, which is mileage based - and travel to the S7 destinations in the Russian far east.

The sky is not falling.

This does not seem to be an S7 or OneWorld issue - in fact OneWorld awards are expressly permitted. Looks like AA has not figured out how many miles to charge for those tickets. Common sense would suggest they should be on par East Asia.

Is this AA's decision? Don't they have to come to agreement with S7 on payment terms between AA and S7, so AA knows how much in miles to charge? S7's joining OW is not new something AA just recently found out about, so why hasn't this been done already?

Although it doesn't seem to be easy it seems like it is still possible.

I know I would love to see some of those towns.

this might be an interesting situation where an award within one country may become a 2-zone award. possible, but still weird.

As the country crosses continents I would think this would be acceptable in this situation.

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

AA currently considers ISP (Easter Island) to be in AA's South Pacific zone, even though ISP is in Chile. (BA treats ISP as being in BA's South America zone.)

IPC = Easter Island

ISP = Islip, Long Island!! :)

And, yes, Easter Island is to Chile as Hawaii is to the US. And requires additional mileage as such.

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

Oops! Yes, I meant IPC. :). (Guess I need to wake up a little more before posting on FT.)

This is a pretty logical outcome, really. Vladivostok is about as much 'in Europe" as Lisbon is in Brazil. I understand that one of FlyerTalk's greater contributions is rule/zone/price error exploitation, but few airlines exist as charitable organizations.

Knowingly anyway.

AA is very smart to do this. Other FF schemes have always had issues with Russian redemptions, especially if you can make one-way awards. BD for example, considers Russia lumped into one big zone along with other parts of Europe. People in the past were redeeming one ways on OZ via ICN to the far East of Russia, but not taking the last segment to Russia and stopping in ICN, thus getting a much more costly award for far fewer miles.

This could be a case example where AA needs an interactive map on their awards page instead of just listing countries and cities. With new OW partners there are now too many zones, too many countries, too many cities, and too many co-terminals that can be chosen/mixed-and-matched for awards that it's impossible for a person to remember them all.

Anyone willing to create a map for all-AA/partner awards?