mtkeller

It always amazes me when people manage to transit a hub more than one time per direction. It really shouldn't work, but sometimes it does, apparently. Good find, especially being able to do West Coast-Europe and vice versa rather than having to head out to the East Coast first.

Mileage Lover

Congrats on an awesome redemption, and some low mileage Delta segments as well.

I'm doing a similar journey this October:

LAX-CDG-EDI (Air France/CityJet) in Business
EDI-AMS-VIE (KLM/City Hopper) in Business
VIE-CDG-SLC-LAX (Tyrolean/Delta) -- was on AF CDG-LAX but a schedule change made the connection too tight so I was rerouted on DL through SLC. Now the AF connection is fine again but no more avails!

Congrats again -- I'm excited to fly the AF A380 (and the China Southern A380 in Biz from LAX-CAN next summer!).

Have a great trip.

SusanDK

That's impressive, congrats! I need to look for something similar going the other direction, Europe to the US with a stopover/destination in the US,and didn't know it was possible for so few miles. I better start my research.

Jaimito Cartero

Get ready to pay some fuel surcharges.

michael_v

So the 4-segment each way rule does not apply when booking on the phone or when it is one's lucky day?

mtkeller

The destination is actually CPH, not VIE, at least as far as the fare construction is concerned.

acjflyer

Booked this yesterday for travel in April 2013, all flights on Vietnam Airlines in J for two people:

FRA-HAN (stopover) HAN-SGN-SYD (open jaw) MEL-HAN-SGN-FRA

150,000 miles per person + 219.10 USD in taxes and fees

It looks like DL doesn't collect fuel surcharges on Vietnam Airlines, not even on departures from Europe and the availability in business class awards is great, because it books directly into J class, which is a discounted revenue fare at Vietnam Airlines.

So a great redemption opportunity for Europe-based Skymiles members who are usually faced with the high fuel surcharges at AF, KL, and DL leaving from Europe. In comparison, I checked on airfrance.com site, which shows Vietnam Airlines award availability and they collect another 500 USD or so alone in fuel surcharges.

3Cforme

Congrats. I'll hope you'll return to FlyerTalk (maybe the SkyTeam forum?) with a review of Business seating on the VN 777 and A330 equipment.

metoo

Stopping in AMS for an overnight ,Stopping in CPH for 10 days, then flying to VIE and stopping for 5 days then from VIE back home to LAX

metoo

Maybe a lucky day. I changed my awards travel free of charge after receiving the electronic ticket . Yesterday, Delta CSR was going to change my economy class to biz class for free but KLM wouldn't give the seat to me even though it is showing a seat is available on Expertflyer.com and on Delta's computer.

mtkeller

Very interesting. I'm seeing €451.40 in ITA on that routing (via a broken fare since VN doesn't even publish a FRA-SYD/MEL fare). Also, you got undercharged miles if they only took 120K per person, as Europe-Australia is supposed to be 150K in J.

redrobster

Hey all, looking for some help here on how to get AZ seats for an award booking.

I've researched all the flights I want and confirmed there are at least 2 award seats available on EF. This is for travel in May 2013. Desired itinerary is as follows:

05/06 LAX-CDG AF65
05/12 CDG-NAP AF 2378
05/18 NAP-FCO AZ 1264
05/19 FCO-JFK AZ 608

This should price out to 100K miles each in J, correct me if I'm wrong.

The rep was able to confirm the first two flights, but said he was not seeing any availability for the AZ flights. He also said in his experience AZ never releases award seats for skymiles redemption, which I know is not true. On EF AZ 1264 shows 7 U seats available (plane is in an all Y config) and on AZ608 3 Z seats. I tried saying "long sell" and he came back with nothing. Said all he could see was the DL FCO-JFK for 200K miles. No thanks.

Is this a case of hang up and call again? For those with experience getting AZ tickets booked, any magic words I can say to get the agent to see the availability?

mtkeller

Definitely HUACA.

roknroll

Go back a page or two and look at my posts for my recent AZ redemption. I modified my sister's res to fly BCN-FCO-JFK, modified half of my parents trip to have them fly LAX-FCO-BCN, and later called to change their return to be on AZ as well. ALL 3 times I called the agent said there was no availability, when I could see it on AF.us and ExpertFlyer. Each time I asked the agent to do a long sell and check directly with Alitalia, and each time they came back after a few minutes saying it was available.

In my parents case, I even got a $12 refund on taxes/fees . They had been on AF outbound and return before.

acjflyer

You are right, it was 150K in J, had been looking at other options for 120K before to Southeast Asia, but then decided to spend the extra 30K to head down under. I'll correct my post above.

But the fees were that cheap!