ruby55

I'm trying to UuA flights for a very popular LH route but not having any luck at the moment. As it's still a year away, I'm hoping availability may come up at some later point.

Our original plan was to upgrade from WT+ to CW but as this is a special trip would be prepared to buy CW and upgrade to First if those came up instead.

I know we can buy WT+ now and upgrade to CW later if a redemption came up but could we buy WT+ and at a later stage pay extra cash to make a leg CW and then UuA to First? Firstly, would this work and secondly, is there some horrible downside to this plan that I haven't seen?

headingwest

I asked this question a week ago but as yet nobody has responded. Does anybody have any knowledge about this? Do AA release reward flights close to departure time, or are the flights available now likely to be the last made available?

I would be grateful if anybody knows, as I'll book the less suitable flight if I need to. Thanks.

Wozza2404

Your question may be better suited to the AA forum, but from my limited experience I've seen availability released randomly up to a few days before the flight on AA.

headingwest

I did try and find out there Wozza2404, but to be honest their information is all over the place!, not carefully put together like the BA forum!

I have a feeling that they do indeed release flights as time goes on. I think I'm going to chance it and wait until closer the time.

Thanks for replying anyway. ^

jerry a. laska

Fwiw, no one knows the answer to your question. There may be late availability, there may not. You just need to keep checking. There was a problem with AA availability several weeks ago.

In addition, what I do (and tell other people to do) is to start checking for late availability now or everyday for the next two or three weeks to see if you can spot a pattern for when availability might reliably open up. Do seats appear at 48, 72, 96 hours, or at one week or does a pattern appear for weekend availability but not midweek availability.
See these threads in the AA Forum:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...solidated.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...award+released

headingwest

Thanks jerry a. laska, I appreciate it.

stifle

Award cancellations need to be done through Manage My Booking. You can also phone the normal Executive Club number for your region and level, which you will find printed on the back of your Executive Club card. There is no "specific online contact".

want2goeverywhere

For what it's worth to anyone - a story of booking avios flights and what time BA released seats.

We got our outbound flights (LHR - KUL Dec 2015) relatively easily at approx. T-350 days. For the inbound, I regularly checked availability at various times in the day and saw that availability was heavily reduced. LHR/KUL has very good availability since BA re-introduced the flight, so I deduced that the seats were being released but being taken very quickly.

So I stayed up till Midnight (GMT) and saw 4 first seats being released at 0001 on T-355 days. I made the call and bagged our two seats - BA were extremely helpful on the phone.

I was extremely happy the next morning when I checked availability again and saw that there was now no business or first availability for the day we wanted to fly.

By the way - this is currently an avios friendly route, I'm sure for other routes the release times and dates are more sporadic.

strichener

Quick question regarding UK connections using rewards.

I was under the impression that the UK connecting flight for rewards (i.e. EDI/LCY or LHR/ABZ) were included when booking a reward flight.

However, I am looking at my options for a New England Fall holiday for 2 and trying various combinations.

I can get JFK/LCY 80000 avios + £565

If I then tag on EDI or ABZ the price increases

JFK/LCY/EDI 80000 avios + £638
JFK/LCY-LHR/ABZ 80000 avios + £651

Any comments on why this would be the case?

KARFA

No more avios required to add the domestic connections, but the taxes and charges for the dometic flights will still need to be paid. This has been the case for at least the last few years since I have been a BAEC member.

strichener

Thanks for the quick response.

So really the question is do I spend the extra avios (9000) to book a reward saver flight as the difference in cost to ABZ is £86 but the reward flight would be £35 (for the two of us).

Decisions, decisions

edi_flyer2014

Thanks for the useful info. I'm flying from Heathrow to San Francisco and my ticket has been booked by a travel agent through my work. I would like to upgrade my ticket from Premium Economy to Business using Avios (which i have plenty of). I've been advised by BA i can't do this as i need to do it via the travel agent. This seems to be in conflict with the advice posted above.

It costs £125 to change bookings via the travel agent (expensive I know). Anyone had any experience with this?

THanks

KARFA

Bear in mind if you book the domestic legs spearately you don't have any protection for misconnect at LHR. Now, may probably help you out anyway in that scenario, but you may wish to pay the higher price so that it is all on one ticket and you don't have to worry about it.

KARFA

A UuA would be done by BA themselves. The TA can't do it. You can only UuA a TA booking if it only contains BA flights, the ticket is on BA stock (i.e. 125- ), and the TA has issued the ticket in the country of your BAEC membership as well. I would suggest you ring BA back. You will have to also pay the higher carrier surcharge for CW over WT+ although this is likely to be around £60-70 one way for LHR-SFO. There is no additional change fee to pay.

EXPLAT

Re: 04 Ticket changes and cancellations
We have 4 coach tickets from NRT-HNL using Avios on Japan Airlines. If two days prior to our travel, 1st class seats are available with Avios, what is the process to upgrade?

1) Cancel existing Avios tickets at BA.com and book new Avios tickets?
2) Upgrade online and the additional miles will be deducted?
3) Must call BA and speak to a human? What would be the # to call, cost per ticket for changes?
4) Just wait until the two days before travel and book what ever is available?

Thanks!