ARCHIVE: 2009-2015 MileSAAver / SAAver Award Availability Help etc.
 

I'm trying to get two "Business/First Mile Saaver" tickets to HNL in mid-June. I am checking AA.com every day for available dates.

Are there any rules of thumb about getting the dates I want? For example, does AA hold the "good" dates until it gets closer to the time of departure, or are they actually released way beforehand? Do they release different available dates daily, or every week on a certain day, or does no one know for sure?

Like I said, I've been checking every day for the last 6 weeks and was wondering if there is a more efficient method.

Thanks!

Trying to get 2 F/C tickets to HNL this late will probably be a significant challenge.

You don't say where you are flying from. You should probably check availability segment by segment and possibly look at 2 stop options not just non-stop or 1 stop. I just looked at flights in June from LAX - HNL and there appears to be fair availability for the flight over. For the return, you might look at HNL - SFO as it appears to have better availability. Key is being creative with the routings.

Depending on what you find, and where you are flying from, you might want to purchase tickets from your home airport to LAX, SFO etc., and then have the award from LAX to HNL.

Bottom line is that you are somewhat late in looking for flights and will have a hard time finding something. You will need to be creative in routings etc to find the flights and class that you want.

We are flying from SC, either CAE or CHS. The flights that AA is offering in June as Mile Saaver are 2 stops, in Dallas and then in LAX or SFO. That's okay with us. But I don't have the FF miles to get separate tickets to another airport before continuing to HNL.

I will look into perhaps buying tickets into another city.

I have no idea how this worked, so I didn't know if more tickets would become available later, if paying seats aren't sold.

The problem was/is that I want to arrive in HNL sometime around June 12, but don't want to depart later than the 22nd. For a while, seats to HNL on the 9th or 10th and from HNL on the 24th were available, but that made the trip's duration too long.

Quartney,

Welcome to Flyertalk. I'm going to move your thread to the dedicated American Airlines forum automatically, to allow for additional "eyeballs".

Hi, Quartney. Welcome to Flyertalk.

What often happens on these is that AA will only check what they consider reasonable connections. Further, to get to HNL in one day, you have to start out pretty early in the day from CAE or CHS, and if there is no availability on that flight, then it shows no availability for that day.

Perhaps an example will demonstrate. If I plug in CAE to DFW for June 12 (One-way, award), it offers me two flights, arriving at 12:50 P.M. and 7:30 P.M. There is an early morning flight, arriving at 7:45 A.M., but no award availability on that. If I plug in DFW to LAX for June 12, I get departures with MilesAAver availability from DFW of 7:35 AM and 10:05 AM, and you can't leave South Carolina in time to get either of those.

What to do? Well, you can leave CAE June 11 at 5:50 P.M., arriving in DFW at 7:30 P.M., and on June 12 leave DFW at 11:15A.M. arriving Honolulu 2:20 P.M. (nonstop). AA.com will never show you this, because it is a 15 hour 45 minute connection, but you can see T availability on AA.com by breaking the flights down into segments and checking as one-way awards. You would have to book this on the phone, but it could be done as one award, you would not need two. When you call in, have the flight numbers, dates, times, departure and arrival locations written down and just ask for those flights. Coming back can be done the same way. Leave HNL 5:45 P.M. June 21 nonstop to DFW, arrive 6:10 A.M. June 22 (flight 8), leave DFW 7:30 A.M., arrive CAE 10:55 A.M. (AA 3411). The problem on June 12th is what keeps the return from showing, if you check for a one-way on June 21 you will be offered those flights. Also on June 22.

So you can do the whole thing on the dates you want, but you have to leave the evening before and overnight in DFW instead of getting up at the crack of dawn to leave South Carolina. In DFW you would have two choices - Priceline a hotel at DFW (probably about $50) or sleep overnight in the terminal.

Welcome, quartney. gemac's post is what Flyertalk is all about. ^

Thanks for the welcome, everyone :)

Gemac, your post was very helpful. I didn't know that I could combine options and then call for the award.

One thing, though, is that I'm trying to do the long part of the trip (to HNL) first class, and the 1st class availability "from the mainland" is what I'm not seeing. Am I missing something?

That flight doesn't seem to be available for frequent flyer point redemption. Right?

If you do find the segments available separately, you can hold them in separate itineraries an then call to ask for the itineraries to be combined before booking.

If the length of the trip is longer than you want but still acceptable, you can book and hope that availablility comes up later. Then you can change the date of travel (as long as the routing remains the same) at no charge. However, the chances that availability will increase is low IMO.

Sorry - I missed the fact that you wanted to go First. Best bet is to fly to SFO on the 12th, then SFO-HNL on the 13th. For example, you could fly CAE-DFW on AA 3826 departing at 5:50 P.M., then DFW-SFO on AA 1035 arriving SFO at 10:09 P.M. The next day, the 13th, you can fly SFO-HNL on AA 39, departing 9:00 A.M. arriving 11:20 A.M.

The return is a problem - there are no MilesAAver F seats on any AA flight out of the state of Hawaii on June 22. You have to book a later date - the 23rd or 24th - and hope that the 22nd comes open as it gets closer. It probably will. F seats are harder to get returning from Hawaii, as most of the flights are redeyes and people want to sleep coming back. There is one daylight flight from HNL to LAX, one from HNL to SFO, and one from OGG to LAX. If your main concern is trip duration, as you get closer you can always try to move the outbound back a couple of days.

If I do a search for only 1 passenger, there are flights available out of HNL ... and if I look at the seating availability, 90%+ are available. But if I do a search for 2 tickets, there's nothing.

You are observing this behavior because while 90%+ of the seats might be available in First class, i.e., F bucket, only one seat is available for the MilesAAver (Z) bucket. Any of those seats could be booked for a AAnytime award since that uses the F bucket, but that will cost you twice as many miles of course.

ah, that makes sense. thanks for the explanation.

He's exactly right, quartney. I spent the last two months looking for two I class tix DFW-DUB. (MilesAAver business) Never once did I find two seats on the same dates, always one seat. This even tho not a single seat had been booked on any of the flights. AA is simply holding back MilesAAver award inventory because they'd rather sell those seats than give them as reduced award tix.

Keep looking as long as you have time, award inventory changes on a daily basis, IME. FWIW, I finally ended up booking one ticket as MilesAAver business, and the second as Y with a miles/copay upgrade.

many thanks
 

Thanks to everyone who responded, especially gemac and beerup!!! You told me about options that I didn't know about.

I checked daily, and used your advice to book a flight with the ideal return date and a too-early departure date. Then, I found a departure with an overnight in DFW and changed the tickets. First class to Hawaii, yay!!!
:cool::p:cool::p:D

A terrific FT success story! Congrats and have a great trip, quartney!

You're welcome. Enjoy the flight and your time in Hawaii.

flight recap:

Because of weather, no flights were going into DFW on our departure date. American switched us to Delta/NWA flights the following day *and* got us a hotel room that night. Which surprised us, since I didn't think Airlines gave out hotel vouchers due to weather.

Our newly-scheduled flights got us in to Hawaii only 1 hour later. We traveled 1st-class to ATL and then from ATL to HNL. We were on NWA's 747-400 and WOW was it nice in 1st class. The seats were awesome, we loved the individual tv sets with new movies, and the flight attendants were first-rate, as well.

Coming home, we found out a few hours before departure that AA had accidentally cancelled our return flights when they re-routed us with Delta/NWA on the outbound flight. Thirty minutes on the phone with AA and we got our flights rescheduled.

First class on AA's 757 was a disappointment after flying in the 747-400. While I appreciate AA's customer service, I'm considering switching FF credit cards to Delta.

:eek::eek::eek::eek:

From the sounds of it you don't fly F that often, if ever (neither do I FWIW), so picking a FF program based on a rarely used incentive seems like disaster from my point of view.

I've been an AAdvantage member for 11 years and have used my rewards for 1 coach ticket in the US and 2 F tickets to Hawaii. You're right that I don't fly F often and I rarely use *any* incentives ... so why not get a great incentive on those rare occasions?

edited to add: Delta/NWA flies out of my home airport and American does not. Makes more sense to switch for that reason, too.

I don't understand your post: OP seems pretty rational to me. He/she learned that there's a drastic difference on how much the same amount of miles buys you, and he/she's going to the program that gives him/her the best value for his/her next free trip to Hawaii.

I agree. It sounds like a reasonable and well-thought-out plan to me as well, without a whole lot of need for discussion. Imagine if everyone who want to choose one program over another felt the need to tell everyone about it and discuss it at length :)

Different plans work for different people, for a variety of reasons and those who have a favorite are not well-served by trying to "defend" those plans to others, just as those opting for different plans have little need to explain themselves to others.

I'm often surprised by the number of people who come here to try and justify why this plan doesn't work for them (some are much more harsh that that) and that they are going to plan XYZ instead. I'm sure the same happens on other forums as well. People should make their choices based on what works for them, without caring what others think. Likely, most here don't care much about such decisions of others, nor should they,IMO.

To each his/her own.

Cheers.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es61i)

Also probably important to note a few things to aid in your decision:
The NW seats you had on the 747 are probably inferior to AA's 777 F seat (the flagship suite) and IMHO are also inferior to AA's NGBC seat on the 767 and in J on the 777.
NW/DL is about to have a bunch of 757's moving about. I'd look for a bunch more 757 seats to HNL.
You were rerouted in to apaid seat....I have a metric ton of NW/DL miles in both programs and have found AA to be about 18 orders of magnitude easier to redeem.

Of course YMMV, but be careful. I spent almost 8 years flying the wrong airlines after a situation almost identical to yours. I leanred that one flight a pattern does not make....and pick carefully.

American award availability is reputed to be much better than Delta/NWA. If you make this switch, it would be a good idea to plan future award trips much further in advance. While 3 months in advance for a June trip to Hawaii was difficult on AA, it would probably be impossible on DL/NW.

Just FYI: The Northwest F seats on the 744 you flew are inferior compared to the F seats on the 763 you were supposed to fly on.

It does not make sense to compare an international 747-400 to a domestic 757-200.

Greetings:

This talk of seats on NW-DL v. AA in FC, if comparing apples to apples (i.e. internationally equipped bird to internationally equipped bird), is a really big YMMV situation. Being both a NW PE and AA EXP and having flown both down to HNL in the last year, think I can speak on this one and here is the tale of the tape as with respect to hard product only:

NW:
NW-DL on the 747 out of ATL and NW out of MSP on the A333. It is the same Business Elite/World Business Class (in old NW speak) seat FWIW.

NW-DL birds have 60 inches of pitch with a 176 degree recline lie flat seat. Working AVOD at the seat with about about a 10 inch screen. Seats vary in width from 20 inches to 20.25 inches.

AA:

AA is the 763 out of DFW and/or LAX.

AA birds have 58-60 inches of pitch and are "lie flat" (you can get them pretty horizontal if you manipulate the settings but takes some work). There is no AVOD to HNL on the 763 (there is of course AVOD to "international destinations" on the 763). Seat width is only 18.5 inches.

For just hard product, IHMO, I prefer NW-DL with AVOD and greater pitch.

Now as to food, printed menus and the like, DL-NW, as documented on the NW board has scaled back service levels (no more menus, meaningful meal choices etc.). AA has printed menus.

All in all it is pretty close.

Finally, as to award availability, need to be careful on this one, as NW-DL tends to start releasing a good deal of inventory close in. Taking a look at July, there is inventory at saver levels for FC every week departure and return. Also note, I did not log in as an NW PE where we get expanded inventory as EXP might on AA.

Hope folks find this useful.

EDIT TO ADD: Not going to address ability to use stickers, complimentary nature of upgrades on AA to mileage/SWU upgrade only on higher fares only on NW-DL, and/or AA FAs v. NW-DL FAs and the like. All of that probably swings AA's way IHMO.

Safe Travels

It requires no manipulation. There is one button that automatically puts the seat to a 180 lie-flat position.

And it does have AVOD, with Bose-noise canceling headsets to boot. Do you really think AA would offer a new biz product absent AVOD? That's crazy. It's stupid enough they keep installing new coach products absent AVOD.

Kind of confused how an EXP'er would miss these two obvious elements of AA's 763 J service unless you flew the old J product back in 2007.

I think you misread me. My original post said "if going to the islands" as I was responding to flying to Hawaii and HNL in particular. (I have now edited to say HNL because that is what this discussion was about).

There is no true "J" service on this route, but more of an "enhanced F service." :D The portable AVOD player and the BOSE headphones are not supplied. You are of course correct that they are when flying "internationally" (i.e. LHR, FRA, etc). I never said that it was not. I was just on the 763 to DFW from HNL and in reverse.

It is also documented on FT (in this case correctly) that the 763 to HNL does not feature the portable IFE: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...w-hnl-ogg.html

As to the "sleep" position, you are correct that there is a "sleep" button, used it myself once or twice :D. "manipulation" was a strong word. The sleep button has two settings, so one needs to keep it pushed in. I tend to tinker with it to get the best "lie flat" position possible.

Again, no disrespect to AA or the route, I think it is great, and it is a very nice experience to the islands!! Apologize for the confusion if any, and thanks for the great debate! Made me go back do some searches and think about things to verify! I have also clarified my original post to restrict the discussion to flights on the 763 to HNL.

Safe Travels.

Wow, really? How stupid of AA. They take the portable IFE units out on Miami trans-cons with the 763, but not HNL.

My portable 10" DVD player (or 17" if I take my portable computer) has much better selection of movies and shows, because I bring what I like. Also makes the front of MD-80s quite good domestically.

The 10" DVD player also fits on half the tray table, so I can watch while I eat too. :)

Steve

MileSAAver Holiday Award Availability
 

Hello,
I spent many hours searching FT for an answer but not really finding what I need.
I'm trying to avoid Christmas at GF's parents so I said I would take her anywhere AA or oneworld flies-South/Cental America, South Pacific, Asia (any warm place). Leaving out of SAN/LAX-Biz or 1st Class
My travel time is flexible but departure and return is about 12/18 to 1/3. AA said all oneworld partners are booked and AA has only AAnytime available on most routes.

My questions is, will either oneworld or Milesaaver seats become available as I get close to these dates? Do the airlines release inventory within X days of travel? Or should I just bite the bullet and take the AAnytime travel now.

If the answer is yes to inventory becoming open, will the third party service like Expert Flyer be a better source to finding a destination on oneworld than calling AA everyday?
Thank you

DelmarDave, Welcome to FT,

Yes it is possible that milesaaver awards could open up, but there is no guarantee. EF would be the best way to monitor the flights.

MileSAAver availability on ORD-PVG
 

I tried to book an one-way MileSAAver Business/first class ticket on ORD-PVG flight. It turned out both MileSAAver awards were not available from Dec 16th - Dec 25th, MileSAnytime awards were available though. My question is: according to history or your experience, is there any chance that the MileSAAver awards may open up on these dates later? Or should I just go ahead book the MileSAnytime award to secure a ticket? Thank you fellow posters.:)

Anything is possible, but SAAver awards tend to be slim at Thanksgiving, Christmas and other popular holidays to fly. If they do not sell the seats they predict, they might open up SAAver seats - but it's a gamble, IMO.

It will not happen. There was some SAVER availability before 12/20 2-3 months ago, but at this point it's too late, even for an economic downturn. As far as First/Business SAVER availability around 12/24-25, I have never ever seen it become available. Even Economy SAVER seats around 12/24-25 haven't been available for the last 6 months.

Thanks for your input.

New to boards - SAAver question
 

Hi I was wondering if anyone has been able to use Milesaaver awards on new years eve or new years day out of JFK to Europe. I am interested in a cruise Jan 2, 2011 out of BCN. I was able to book a hotel in bcn for dec 31-jan2 using Hilton points. Just wondering if anyone had any input.:)

get on aa.com feb 1 & every day there after.....you might not be able to see anything for a few days [theres something about 330 ish days before]....

also search this forum for your topic.....good luck...

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

While your new thread will likely be merged into an existing one relating to the question, I will say the availability of low fares / MileSAAver awards is predicated by AA's Revenue Management software and people - predicted high sales / heavy loads, less likelihood of lower fares or SAAver awards.

The system allocates dynamically, based on sales / seats taken up - so whilst a certain number of seats might be allocated 330 days out, they might not for high season travel days; seats may be added (or not) as sales firm up (or fail to.)

In my opinion, SAAver seats are possible in your scenario, but not so likely. You might be able to increase your success by using a service like ExpertFlyer to notify you when the appropriate inventory opens up.

Be sure to take some time to familiarize yourself with the excellent FAQ and Wiki for this Forum, and to learn how to get the most out of the Advanced Search (or how to use alternate Search engines linked to for Forum searches). That will undoubtedly add to your knowledge about flying AA, the FFP, awards, etc.

Thanks. I'll be on then when they come out I was just wondering if anyone was able to get to use their miles around New years:)