OutOfORD

Hello,

As the title suggests, I am looking to travel RT from ORD to Tanzania (with the final destination being JRO).

It looks like most of the airlines that fly to that region go to Nairobi, in which case I could take a short flight from there to JRO.

I have 130K Amex Membership Rewards points and will soon have about 100K Ultimate Rewards points via the Chase Sapphire Reserve sign up bonus. I also have about 40K AA miles and a couple thousand UA miles.

My goal is to fly in Business Class (if it can be done relatively inexpensively) and maximize my available credit card points to do so, as well as maximize any AA EQM/EQD that I can for any paid fare.

Also, I am AA Gold but all of my flying is done within North America, so as a side question, how much benefit is there to this status on international partner airlines?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Yoshi212

You're going to be spending a lot of time doing award searches to JRO & NBO looking at the options. If you're lucky enough to find a flight to NBO or JRO as an award it will probably be a better savings than ORD-EU.

EU-JRO has a few options which can be seasonal or require a 1-stop "direct" flight via another African city.
KL via AMS-JRO which can be direct or via DAR.
ET from various EU cities via ADD which can be on a prop
QR via DOH from ORD but with 5.5 hours on an A320 with recliner seating.

NBO has many more options such as on BA, TK, LX, QR, ET.......

Any ticket out of the UK in J will come with a high amount of taxes & fees.

Your status won't get you much as it is lower but there are some perks listed on the AA website.

Terminator8

Previously best option was through Alaska via partner redemption on Emirates. Unfortunately, they devalued early last year so those award rates to Africa no longer make sense.

OutOfORD

Thank you for the responses. I have been playing around on Google Flights and with the BA award search (without much luck on the latter), since it looks like the best options in terms of flying time are through LHR.

A follow up question that I have is, if I can find certain legs of the trip on an award search is it safe to book, say, an ORD-LHR award RT with a LHR-NBO paid RT in the middle? If there is a delay on the outbound ORD-LHR flight, will there be any protection if the LHR-NBO is missed and it is a separate reservation?

Additionally, one of the options I came across was a paid Premium Economy ticket on BA. If anyone knows the Ultimate Rewards portal well, is it possible to book Premium Economy through there? I could not see it. And if it is possible, do they allow paying part with points and part with credit card? I was thinking I could book through there using all of my UR points and pay for the rest, with the flight being a fully "paid" fare. Then, is it possible to request a upgrade to J with Avios and transfer points from Amex if the upgrade clears (or do the Avios have to be available for the upgrade to clear)?

I know this is a lot, so thanks in advance for any responses, as well as for the ones provided so far.

Terminator8

If you're going to pay with points, I'd highly recommend you get an AMEX Biz Platinum card and buy through AMEX Travel. 2 reasons: 1) It's better to hold onto your Chase UR as they are the most valuable currency after Starwood and 2) By having the AMEX Biz Plat, you'll get 50% back.

LondonElite

BA will not protect you on separate tickets. At least you shouldn't count on it as you may get a sympathetic agent. BA will also not interline on separate tickets with itself, so you'd have to get your luggage in London and re-check it.