Mar 30, 2014, 12:53 pm
Last edit by: JDiver
WIKI POST: Using US Dividend Miles for oneworld Award Flights
As further details become available, please fill in this wikipost.
As further details become available, please fill in this wikipost.
N.B. Booking opportunities for new Dividend Miles awards of all kinds ended 11:59 PM Wednesday, 25 March 2015. Please continue using this thread for trips booked or in progress through 24 March 2016.
Changes on USDM oneworld award tickets
This is the only official statement about changing issued USDM award tickets:
If I need to make changes to a Dividend Miles award reservation, which program’s rules will apply?
Minor changes such as date/time can be made provided seats are available without requiring a new award to be claimed. More substantive changes such as changes to stopovers or origin/destination may result in the need to reinstate the previously claimed Dividend Miles award, then claiming a new AAdvantage award under the existing AAdvantage program rules.
The old membership rules do 'generally' still appy to USDM tickets.
For awards ticketed / reticketed on 001- ticket stock, go to the AA Refunds site with your ticket number at hand (unsure if it works with 037- stock at this time)to:
- Print a receipt with ticket number (instead of Request a refund)
- See total fees, taxes, etc. attached to your ticket
- See applicable detailed fare rules
- Request a refund (may not be useful for awards)
- Some were able to change their ticket without beeing charged the USD 150.- changing fee.
- No chance to change a ticket after the first flight segment has been flown.
- ...
Old stuff
oneworld member airlines - airberlin, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, Qatar Airways, Royal Jordanian, S7 Airlines (Sibir), SriLankan Airlines, TAM Airlines, US Airways and their affiliates.
Award Chart for oneworld awards using US Dividend Miles:
http://shopping.usairways.com/en-US/...wardtravel.pdf
You can use the American Airlines, British Airways, JAL, or Qantas sites to search for oneworld award inventory. AA and QF also allows you to search for award inventory using a handy 30 day calendar view. However, availability on the calendar is dependent on site coverage (e.g. QF does not include JL or MH, AA does not include CX and others). Also, the calendar view may not be completely accurate on all partners, so use it as a guide but do not rely on it fully.
One of the easiest ways to search for oneworld availability is through the use of an outside tool such as Award Nexus, ExpertFlyer, KVS Tool, or The Wandering Aramean oneworld Search.
Award Nexus has a free community membership for flyertalk members, and award email alert with premium membership. ExpertFlyer has email alerts and direct GDS access to select oneworld award inventories, such as AA, QF, and US. ExpertFlyer can also search J class certificate upgrade inventory. With KVS Tool, you can search QF, BA, JL and CX's search engines, in addition to other alliances, on your PC (Mac / Linux with CrossOver). You can also set up an alert via The Wandering Aramean oneworld Search. This tool will automatically search on QF for your alert once per day with a free account and four times per day with a paid account.
N.B. With all of the above tools, it is best to search one segment at a time. Most oneworld search engines have difficulty marrying segments.
For route searching with itinerary information, use the interactive oneworld map and timetable.
For searching Intra-North America availability, the best tool is AA.com. Unlike the other oneworld engines, AA is pretty good at marrying segments, so you can search origin to destination.
Regarding availability, the strategy that has been most effective for people looking to book award travel on oneworld is to start searching right at 330 days prior to departure. This is generally when availability is at its best. After that, availability tends to be sporadic until starting 8 weeks prior to departure where some airlines open up availability, and will vary all the way up until the day of departure.
If you're having trouble finding availability, it may be best to look at alternate airports (JL, for example, serves SAN, YVR, and BOS, in addition to the larger markets of SFO, LAX, YYZ, ORD, and JFK).
(N.B. Although US was not adding fuel surcharges to awards, there are reports that they have started doing this for awards containing BA flights.) With the exception of BA & IB, no oneworld carriers require you to pay a fuel surcharge for awards. With BA, be aware that you may have to pay both a fuel surcharge as well as the UK Air Passenger Duty departure tax for intercontinental J and F flights out of UK. These fees vary with class of service and length of flight and are determined by BA; the Air Passenger Duty (see specific thread) is due for all UK departures not under 24 hour connecting flights. APD applies to coach tickets, too, but at a reduced rate. The fuel /YQ surcharge with IB is generally considered minimal.
Known Problems / Workaround:
- Dep 00:00AM : Some agents have difficulty finding flights leaving between midnight and 2 AM. This is because the US systems show it leaving the day before. If the agent cannot find it, please ask to look at the day before. > source <
- LA : Flights put on hold will be cancelled after 24h. Workaround: Issue the ticket immediately. > source <
- JL : US Rep cannot find available seats. Workaround: "Always have to remind Rep to open JL reservations on a new screen". > source <
- MH : US Rep cannot find awards in First Class. Workaround: First class needs to be booked in P-cl instead of Z-cl (as on most other OW carriers). > source < booking classes: > KVS <
- All : If you are booking outbound flights at the US Air 335 day window US Air will often allow you to put your reservation on a longer than 3 day hold to capture the return seats once they open up at T+335. There is a report of this for 30 days here, and FT user beofotch was successful in getting a 13 day hold here. Workaround: Huaca until you get an agent who is competent enough to do this. It may help to act naive and ask for your return flight on your preferred date even if it is after T+335 days. Once they get an error from the computer may be a good time to bring it up.
- ...
Fixed Problems:
- CX : US Rep cannot find seats on flight CX 645 HKG-DOH. Workaround: none so far, search for different routing/carrier (CMB/DXB/...?)... > source < > fixed <
> fixed < - CX : US Rep cannot find seats on flight CX 640 DOH-HKG. They admit, the flight exists, but are unable to book <source>. Workaround: none so far, search for different routing/carrier
> fixed < - BA/Comair : US rep could not see / or unable to book intra-South Africa flights in BA flight number operated by Comair despite AA treats Comair a full fledged oneworld member under BA, in the same context as KA under CX. Only one reported success booking - poster reported agent had trouble at first but on consulting a supervisor was told "where to look"; the agent did not give any further information. Most everyone else reported unable to book Comair flights.
> fixed < - IB : Flights will be cancelled after ticket issued. Workaround: None yet... > source <
> fixed <
LUS: USDM oneworld Award Bookings - (Closed to new bookings) [Master FAQ and Help]
Dec 25, 2014, 2:31 am
#2866
Moderator: British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Airlines, Airport Lounges and Environmentally Friendly Travel
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: London, UK
Posts: 22,213
As the taxes/fees/surcharges etc levied on reward flights do vary from one frequent flyer programme to the next, this thread was moved over to the US Airways | Dividend Miles forum.
Prospero
Moderator: BA forum
Prospero
Moderator: BA forum
Dec 25, 2014, 2:47 am
#2867
Join Date: Feb 2001
Programs: IHG Diamond, HH Diamond, BW Diamond Select, Accor Silver, Marriott Gold
Posts: 4,228
If you fail to show for one sector, normal practice would be for US to cancel the remainder of your reservation. You never want to risk missing a sector, unless it's the final one.
Dec 25, 2014, 5:03 am
#2868
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Sep 2003
Programs: BA Silver, EY Gold, HH Diamond, IHG Plat
Posts: 12,210
Dec 25, 2014, 5:44 am
#2869
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: WAS, LAX
Programs: AS 100K
Posts: 1,330
It depends very much on the routing. If you'd like, you can try to price it out on britishairways.co.uk or aa.com. Generally, I've observed intercontinental fuel surcharges on BA in J/F to run anywhere from $1K to $3k USD per ticket.
Dec 25, 2014, 6:17 am
#2870
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 787
Which award chart applies on multi-carrier? (US DM oneworld booking)
Hi,
I'm new to US Dividend miles, and am looking at going YYZ - MIA - SCL - IPC - PPT. It looks like I can do this with a combination of One World flights. Specifically AA from YYZ to SCL and LAN from SCL to PPT.
My question is, can all of this be done as a One World reward flight using Dividend miles? The chart shows this as 110k/pp in J - is that correct? Or am I missing something (for example, does the AA portion not fall under the One World chart because of the merger)?
Thanks in advance,
Tyler
I'm new to US Dividend miles, and am looking at going YYZ - MIA - SCL - IPC - PPT. It looks like I can do this with a combination of One World flights. Specifically AA from YYZ to SCL and LAN from SCL to PPT.
My question is, can all of this be done as a One World reward flight using Dividend miles? The chart shows this as 110k/pp in J - is that correct? Or am I missing something (for example, does the AA portion not fall under the One World chart because of the merger)?
Thanks in advance,
Tyler
Dec 25, 2014, 6:29 am
#2871
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Philadelphia
Posts: 2,509
Yes, you'll note that the partner award chart, oneworld award chart, and the US Airways charts all use the same mileage for redemption. The only exception that I know of is the off-peak saver (35,000 r/t US-Europe in coach in Jan/Feb) which only applies to US Airways flights.
Dec 25, 2014, 6:53 am
#2872
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 787
Thanks for the reply. Is there any MPM or other routing rules that might make this route illegal? Can I stop in SCL inbound and outbound for a night or two?
Dec 25, 2014, 6:58 am
#2873
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Not here; there!
Programs: AA Lifetime Gold
Posts: 29,601
Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)
Have you actually found J award space on the IPC-PPT leg? Reportedly, this is very tough to come by.
An interruption of journey of more than 24 hours counts as a stopover on an international itinerary. How many stopovers does USDM permit on an international award?
Originally Posted by tylerc
Thanks for the reply. Is there any MPM or other routing rules that might make this route illegal? Can I stop in SCL inbound and outbound for a night or two?
An interruption of journey of more than 24 hours counts as a stopover on an international itinerary. How many stopovers does USDM permit on an international award?
Dec 25, 2014, 7:31 am
#2874
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 787
Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)
Have you actually found J award space on the IPC-PPT leg? Reportedly, this is very tough to come by.
An interruption of journey of more than 24 hours counts as a stopover on an international itinerary. How many stopovers does USDM permit on an international award?
Have you actually found J award space on the IPC-PPT leg? Reportedly, this is very tough to come by.
An interruption of journey of more than 24 hours counts as a stopover on an international itinerary. How many stopovers does USDM permit on an international award?
Thanks for the reply, I'll have to double check, but my guess is one stopover. I think I have it timed so that I can spend about 7 hrs at IPC, maybe go checkout some heads!
CAn anyone see any reason why this routing wont work? MPM? Mixed carriers? Anything? I'm about to transfer miles to US...hate to do that and find I can't pull this off for some reason!
Last edited by tylerc; Dec 25, 2014 at 7:43 am
Dec 25, 2014, 9:20 am
#2875
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: ZRH/SFO
Programs: A3*G - AZ CFP- HH DIA
Posts: 3,666
Would be worth for you to read through the USDM membership guide as stated in the wiki post on the top...
Dec 25, 2014, 9:37 am
#2876
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: SEA, but up and down the coast a lot
Programs: Oceanic Airlines Gold Elite
Posts: 20,397
Also... that itinerary as a r/t is 20,000+ miles. Might run into MPM issues.
Dec 25, 2014, 10:13 am
#2877
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 787
I read through the guide, and called but still not confident in mpm.
Dec 25, 2014, 12:55 pm
#2878
Join Date: Feb 2013
Posts: 302
We're looking for a simple ex EU-DOH-DPS from mid December till New Years for 4 Persons in C, flexible +/- 3 days.
As i don't have experience in booking flights for during the holiday / christmas season i'd like to know if we have a chance of getting those flights ?
As i don't have experience in booking flights for during the holiday / christmas season i'd like to know if we have a chance of getting those flights ?
Dec 25, 2014, 2:48 pm
#2879
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: ZRH/SFO
Programs: A3*G - AZ CFP- HH DIA
Posts: 3,666
Any way to figure out the mpm? I called US but their agent didn't seem well versed in one world redemptions. I won't move the points until I find j for sure, but since I'm peicing it together using multiple search engines I can't validate if it is actually legal.
I read through the guide, and called but still not confident in mpm.
I read through the guide, and called but still not confident in mpm.
http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...routing-rules/
Your routing exceeds the MPM. 9402 miles (25M) permitted, routing is 10334 miles.
Code:
CTY DC TPM CUM MPM DC SUR HGL LWL 25M XTRA YTO 1 MIA 1 WH 1223 1223 SCL 1 WH 4138 5361 6411 WH 0M 1050 0 8013 0 IPC 1 WH 2332 7693 9210 WH 0M 1517 0 11512 0 PPT 3 PA 2641 10334 7522 PA EXC 0 932 9402 0
Dec 25, 2014, 2:51 pm
#2880
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: ZRH/SFO
Programs: A3*G - AZ CFP- HH DIA
Posts: 3,666
Usually a busy time to and from Asia... Will be a hard time to find seats... Split up into two grouops of 2 and consider to fly other routes via HKG, KUL, NRT...