ARCHIVE: Success stories of award booking on Etihad using AA miles
Jul 20, 2012, 10:02 pm
#16
Join Date: Aug 2011
Programs: many
Posts: 1,437
Since expert flyer does not show award availability using miles on EY, there must be some issue there.
Jul 20, 2012, 10:17 pm
#17
Left Expert Flyer 4/23
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 2,741
You might be confusing the Occupied seat icon with the Available seat icon. If you want us to look, either email us or PM me the flight details.
Jul 21, 2012, 5:41 am
#18
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: RDU
Programs: A few
Posts: 5,499
Now 1 seat is showing occupied. Auh-JFK on 10/24/12
To be clear I think the error is on the EY site showing all seats occupied. Flight is F9 so clearly not all sears can be taken unless they oversell a 12 seat cabin by 9 or more seats
@pcharles - award availability has got nothing to do with ability to lookup availability and seat maps on expertflyer
Jul 21, 2012, 8:57 pm
#20
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Dubai, UAE
Programs: Skywards Plat, Etihad Gold, Aerosvit Gold, Virgin Silver, AA lifetime Gold, Sirius Gold
Posts: 1,229
EY seem to block most of their seats (certainly in Biz and especially First) from viewing on line at time of booking. Weird but true - at least every time I look. Thus their recently enhanced upgrade of the site which it is says includes ability to change seats is effectively useless for me. For example yesterday I booked two award seats in F AUH-LHR-AUH for November - no problem with award availability and yet all seats occupied on both flights! Thus a call to them will be needed to get seats allocated as they clearly have most of not all still available. Perhaps they do it to create a false sense of urgency in those of us who set up dummy bookings to check seat availability?
Aug 26, 2012, 8:37 pm
#22
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Chicago & AUH
Programs: AA PLT Pro, EY Gold, Hilton Gold, Marriott Gold, Hyatt Globalist
Posts: 172
This past march I booked 4 tickets via AA using miles - business class, ord-auh direct and first auh-jfk and then caught a connecting aa flight lga-ord. Booked 90 days out.
Aug 26, 2012, 8:46 pm
#23
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: RDU
Programs: A few
Posts: 5,499
Aug 27, 2012, 11:25 am
#24
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Chicago & AUH
Programs: AA PLT Pro, EY Gold, Hilton Gold, Marriott Gold, Hyatt Globalist
Posts: 172
My apologies for not being more specific - 3 award tickets on one flight and 1 on the flight the next day. To be honest, I never tried booking all 4 together as 1 of the people had to fly out the following day due to work so I'm not sure how common getting 4 is. All 4 did fly in first from AUH-JFK together on the same day/flight.
Aug 29, 2012, 5:59 am
#25
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: ORD
Programs: AA Platinum, PC Plat, Hertz 5*
Posts: 350
Just put on hold a flight from ORD-AUH-DEL and back in 2 weeks time Sep 6-17 using my AA miles in coach. No biz class available. Not my ideal dates but im hoping I can tighten it in before departure. 90k miles and USD $167 including a 75 early award processing fee.
Nov 28, 2012, 12:16 am
#27
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: PER
Programs: BA Gold, QF Gold, VA Gold, IC Diamond Amb., HH Diamond
Posts: 777
At a quick glance I couldn't find anything telling me which fare buckets were award seats - but Virgin Australia and KVS showed that there was some quantity of award seats available - called AA, gave them the date and the flight and it was confirmed within 2 minutes.
Very impressed!
Very impressed!
Nov 28, 2012, 11:24 am
#28
Join Date: Mar 2012
Programs: AA Platinum 7+ million miles
Posts: 139
Was able to get two RT F seats with AA award: SEA/JFK/AUH/CAI for June. 90k each way pp. Had to call Etihad for seat assignments but that went smoothly and we got the seats we wanted. AUH/CAI is in business as no F available.
Nov 28, 2012, 2:12 pm
#29
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Chicago & AUH
Programs: AA PLT Pro, EY Gold, Hilton Gold, Marriott Gold, Hyatt Globalist
Posts: 172
Just secured 2 seats in business ORD-AUH and AUH-IAD-ORD & another 2 ORD-LGA/JFK-AUH and AUH-ORD. 67,500 per person, each way for end of March.
Dec 19, 2012, 2:05 pm
#30
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: DFW
Programs: AA EXP, mid-tier with pretty much everyone else
Posts: 873
Just booked a one-way AUH-LHR for 40k in F in April.
Found availability on Etihad's site, whatever appears at the reduced mileage availability is what the EXP desk could access.
Found availability on Etihad's site, whatever appears at the reduced mileage availability is what the EXP desk could access.