mvoight

I have noticed that I don't see AB listed when I try to book award travel to Europe. A couple of years ago, I had not problem seeing award seats on AB. Are they even bookable on AA.com anymore? Does anyone have recent experience with this?

guv1976

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry: BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

"And will be flying from Europe to US (TXL-ORD)."

Then Coach will cost 30K miles peak, and 22.5K miles off-peak, one way. But with today's devaluation, AA's off-peak periods have been substantially reduced.

sdsearch

How can you possibly know? You can only know that if there are less than 8 seats in the entire section (as then it would go from J7 to J6 if 1 seat were booked).

I'm guessing you're probably making the mistake of looking at seating charts and assuming they correlate to bookings. Not so. There are many situations, especially overseas, where people may book flights without choosing specific seats. In fact, some foreign airlines don't allow most passengers to pick seats far in advance; are you sure AirBerlin is not one of these?

In any rate, airlines don't release award seats based on current bookings, they release awards seats based on booking forecasts. If they've operated that route (or a similar route) for a few years, they may have statistics on how many people pay for business class seats for July flights much later than March.

So the question is not how many seats are booked now (even if determined correctly), it's how many paid seats were booked on this (or similar) routes by departure time last July.

OnAMileHigh

I booked an AB award on Saturday (3/19). I am flying ORD-TXL tomorrow (3/23) in J.

villagorilla2

I checked AA award availability and no Air Berlin flights with intra German connections are available after 05/01/2016.

A few days ago I was able to still find flights with AB to Germany, but only to AB hub in DUS or TXL. No connections from there.

No it seems no AB award flights at all.

Any idea? Rumors were that AB is going bankrupt or leaving Oneworld due to Ethiads interest.

sosfo

Lots of AB discussion going on here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ssing-etc.html

villagorilla2

I can see AB awards available until 04/30. Nothing after that. I have an award trip coming in May with AB, booked months ago.

However it seems AB does not have any award flights open, not even with BA.

nk15

Also, the Niki availability showing on AA.com is phantom, not bookable. What a mess. The process of booking various partner awards (EY, QF, AB) with AA miles is a mess for months and nobody cares to fix it, certainly not AA.

kmandrew

I have 2 J seats booked 6 months ago with Saver for June 3 JFK-DUS-FLR, I've been checking it every few days expecting something bad to happen; so far so good.

flyingeph12

I am not sure this is universally true. For example, VIE-KEF on 8/4 is bookable on AA.com.

lrdpenn

I also recently ticketed an early June flight on Niki. I think Niki is spared for now: the problem is largely AB-specific.

GUWonder

Call some BA contact center numbers and see what BA pulls up over the phone when you ask for a specific AB flight. I've had a good deal of luck that way, when BA's website doesn't show me award space on AB. And if BA can find it, then call AA and see what they can do.

I like to use my AA and BA stash on AB flights because it helps me to avoids the AA/BA surcharge trap on award tickets.

NJTraveler

I did some searching and didn't find much on this. I am looking to use AA miles for two Business Awards JFK-TXL in mid-2017. Does anyone have experience as to when such awards open up, and what is the likelihood of snagging two?

Any guidance will be appreciated, thanks.

jerry a. laska

AB availability seems to come and go.

seawolf

Noticed twice during the past couple of months that AA.com does not always show all AB awards. For example, OCT 16 DUS JFK. AA.com shows only the 5PM flight available. On BA.com, it shows both the morning and afternoon flights with awards.