BdaDiver

I have resumed starting to plan for a trip to Australia (AUS) during July/Aug of 2020. Right now, the plan (hope?) is for three seats in J (my wife, our daughter, and me). General routing is:

Step 1 - Any US city to HKG (stopover) and on to to AUS. (Hopefully both legs are on Cathay Pacific)
Step 2 - Stopovers in no particular order in MEL, AYQ, BNE & SYD. (All domestic AUS flights are to be on Qantas)
Step 3 - Finish with flights from either BNE or SYD back to any city in US via LAX/DFW/SFO on Qantas (preferred) or AA (if necessary).
Step 4 - If needed, an onward flight to any US city from DFW or LAX or SFO on AA to satisfy second carrier in addition to CX rule.

I am indifferent as to direction. We could go USA-HKG-AUS-USA, or we could go USA-AUS-HKG-USA.

One possible route is:
SEA-HKG(o)-MEL(o)-AYQ(o)-BNE(o)-SYD(o)-DFW(X)-LAX
Another possible route is
SEA-HKG(o)-MEL(o)-AYQ(o)-SYD(o)-BNE(o)-LAX(X)-DFW

My questions are as follows:

1 - How difficult will it be to get three J seats on one CX flight to HKG from any of SEA/LAX/SFO?
2 - How difficult will it be to get three J seats on one CX or QF flight Ex HKG into Australia? Would it be easier to get three seats on a QF flight?
3 - How difficult will it be to get three J seats on one QF flight ex-BNE or ex-SYD to LAX/SFO/DFW? Is this pie in the sky dreaming or is it likely?

Practically speaking, do I need to call the Asia Miles line 330 days out from the last flight? In a perfect world, our trip would be 28-30 days, so then I am calling about 300 days out from my first flight.

Final side question....would it be significantly easier to do this ex-Japan instead of ex-USA? ie. NRT-HKG-AUS-NRT

Thanks in advance to those who read my post and to those who reply.

BdaDiver

percysmith

Try getting your trip to work for November 2019 first. November less in demand than July/August, and the 330/353 day windows have just opened.

If you can't get it to work for November then you can forget about July/August.

BdaDiver

Thank you! I had never even thought of that.

BdaDiver

percysmith,

I have a minor problem. I am trying to check availability online with AsiaMiles for the CS flights, but as of right now, I don't have sufficient points to check availability that far in the future. Do I need to have the points in my account to go through these steps and check availability on CX flights? Never mind the QF and AA flights at this time? I have more than enough credit card points to transfer into Asia Miles, but I am hesitant to transfer the points first without any sort of guarantee that this will work in the end.

BdaDiver

percysmith

BdaDiver

Hang on, I am not asking you to do my dirty work. A pointer in the right direction would be appreciated.

Do you mean searching on Flyertalk in this forum for tips or searching w/in AsiaMiles when logged into AsiaMiles? Each time I check while logged into AsiaMiles, I get a response that I don't have enough points to book the ticket.

percysmith

BdaDiver: I did suspect you did not search. I apologise if that is not the case and you realise you cannot search by posting (I had a lot of this when Flightplan came out).

However I'm pretty sure you don't need any miles to search redemption seats on asiamiles.com.

I have a couple of burner (i.e. 0 mile balance) accounts just to run searches with Flightplan.

kkl

Is this a legal routing?

PER-xHKG-oKIX//NRT-oBKK//PER-oSYD-xKIX-oHKG-PER

trying to cram 2 japan trips into 1 ticket.

CX-JL-QF

roughly in the 23k mile bracket including the BKK//PER open jaw so 185K miles in J?

calf613

Not sure if you ended up booking this, but seems right to me based on my knowledge of how the rules work. BTW, the KIX stopover should actually just be an open-jaw (ie., you don't need to count it towards a stopover). Same for your BKK stopover.

Wen Zheng

Understand that I can book a AM booking first and add segments later to convert it to a OW booking and pay a reissue fee of US$100.

Q1) Can I add additional segments that fly before the original first fight?
Q2) Understand that the validity of the ticket is 1 year. Is it based on the date of issue or date of first flight? Say if i book AM flight for Jan 2020 now, does it mean that I cannot add segments for flights for Apr 2020 since it will be be after the ticket validity? Or does the reissuance result in a new validity based on the reissue date?

percysmith

1) No
2) Yes if you cancel and reissue the ticket instead of just reissuing it

Wen Zheng

Thanks for the fast response. By cancelling it and reissue, they will still able to hold the flights right (other than Qatar which had to be ticketed within 24hours or run the risk of being taken back)? Is the fee US$100 or US$120 for this?

percysmith

Yes
US$120

calf613

Feeling pretty happy after managing to snag the below:

HKG-oBOS-oHKG-xSFO-LAX//SFO-oHKG-BOS//EWR-oHKG-oPEN-xKUL-HKG

Think I maxed out both distance as well as segments with this one. Flying AA and MH as the partner airlines on the US and MY domestic segments. Managed to secure all segments in Biz, cost 240k miles. A couple of things I learned:

* As mentioned in another thread, these types of awards are becoming much harder to redeem because of lower quantities of Standard inventory available for Biz and First. I also was not able to use the QF tool to check award inventory/plan because the married segments I was getting were blocked for Standard awards for AM
* Others in this forum probably could have confirmed this already, but trying to secure PEY for segments that do not have Biz availability is a no-go. It is only First, Biz, or Economy for these flights. The first agent I spoke with actually held PEY seats for me when I was going through the itinerary with him, but when they went to calculate the taxes, I was told that the taxes could not be calculated because the ticket was not valid (due to the PEY sectors). Luckily, they were able to release some U inventory for me (thank you, Cara!)
* When planning in the past, I used the CX Earning Club Points calculator to check how many miles each segment was (using Y class) to plan my total itinerary mileage. Since the change to AM accrual, that does not work, since the mileage length for each segment is still linked to the old system. So, you can either call in and ask about the distance, or use a different airline in the calculator (use the highest economy fare), which should give you the actual miles for each segment
* After calling in a couple of times, I actually found that the online redemption tool now corresponds fairly accurately to CX/KA availability that was given to me over the phone. I guess that is good in the sense that it is finally (more?) accurate and can be used to plan, but bad in the sense that it means there really is reduced Standard availability compared to before (ie., not just due to IT)
* On the other hand, I was able to find some award availability on CX/KA flights through the CX website that didn’t show up on BA. This was on the KUL-HKG segment, so maybe that suggests CX might retain more HKG O&D availability relative to partners
* I think carrier surcharges/taxes have increased significantly. My guess is if I booked this itinerary before the change in taxes/fees, it would have been at least half of what I ended up paying if not less (PM me if you want to know the taxes I paid)
* Finally, it looks like they changed the ticket issuing process. After you have confirmed your booking over the phone, they place your booking on hold, and then have an agent call you back within 24-48 hours to collect your CC info for the fees/taxes. I suppose this is due to the security breach that they experienced, but it was an interesting quirk to me. It does delay the process slightly, so keep in mind that you will have to go through this last step before issuing your ticket

A big thank you to the patient MPC call staff that helped me with confirming my itinerary!!

G-CIVC

Can you no show on this award? Given the first sector already flown?

Thing being I am worried CX will confirm my waitlisted preferred new date only after my original flight date. Twist being there are still partner segments involved in the rest of the award.