Hi,

My husband has a conference in Rome Sep 12-15, 2012. We'd likely fly Sep 8-15.

What is our best strategy for getting both of us business class RT tickets, and what is the critical timing for doing so?

His airfare will be reimbursed (couch only) and mine will not, so we'd want to purchase his ticket and get an upgrade through miles if possible. For mine we could do pure miles or purchase base and upgrade with miles; whichever is the smarter use of $$ and miles.

Like many, we're on a mileage acquisition streak, so we'll soon have 300K AA points, 100K Chase Sapphire points. (No Amex MR; I'm trying to decide whether to apply for the various Amex MR deals out there.)

Now that I will have a lot of miles, it is time to learn how to use them. If anyone can recommend good resources to start with, I would appreciate it, and am grateful for any advice about this particular flight.

Thanks.

You've mentioned you want to fly Rome, but you haven't mentioned where you'd be flying from.

AA flies to Rome (and it's within the season where all its flights to Rome are still happenenng). And you have enough miles to do what is needed there, and not necesarily anywhere else. And you have the miles already at the airline, so you can use them "instantly" if/when seats become available.

And since AA flies it own planes to Rome, assuming AA provides service from your statring airport, you can check availabliity of outright awards seats online.

However, you'll need a thrid-party service (such as ExpertFlyer, a paid service, www.expertflyer.com) to check upgrade availability (without actually calling).

You also need to think about whether you absolutely need to be on the same plane, in case each flight only has 1 award seat.

You also need to figure out how certain these dates are. Because to an upgrade (or outright award) with most certainty, you want to be ready to book 330ish days out (as soon as AA puts the flight into the system). On some flights, awards can be available from day one, but once those disappear, they may never reappear.

AA allows you to book one-way awards, so for yourself that may make sense, since you can book each direction (a week apart), as it becomes available, if it becomes available at 330ish days out.

The paid fare your husband is reimbursed for, he'll have to "float" for almost a year (because he preusmably won't be reimbursed until he actullay flies, but for best chance of upgrade, assuming he has no status with AA), he needs to buy ticket the moment ExpertFlyer shows that an upgrade is available.

(Note: Upgrades and awards come out of the same bucket. So if you find out at the same moment that one upgrade and one business award is available at the same time, the moment you book one the other may disappear. Which is why you wnat to understand this process completely before it's 330ish days before Sep 8, ie by early October of this year.)

Be awrae that you'll have to pay about $700 in co-pays to upgrade one ticket with miles. That co-pay is separately billed (when the upgrade goes through), so chances are he won't get reimbursed for that part. For you, if both options exist, it comes down to 100k for doing it all with miles or cash cost plus 50k plus $700 co-pay for doing it as an upgrade. You have to decide if saving 50k miles for later is worth the cash cost of the trip plus an extra $700 miles.

Please note: You can only upgrade on AA metal. So for your husband to upgrade, he has to fly AA all the way. For your outright award, if you can't get a second seat on the same plane, you might be able to get it on another routing (involving AA partners), but for that you'll have to call. (And if it's not avialable that day you call, you'll have to keep calling back.) Only AA's own metal awards are searchable / bookable online at aa.com. You can try to search award inventory on partners through various means, which you'll have to research, between now and October, but it's a bit tricky and not 100% reliable always (it may involve, for example, setting up accounts at certian other Oneworld airilnes).


If you decide yoo do want to go the AA way, you can ask the moderators to move this thread to the AA forum. (You're not allowed to post the question again in that forum, which is why the moderators would have to move it.)

(The reason I think it's probably AA specific is because you don't have enough points in Sapphire for both an upgrade for yout husand and an award for you at any other airline. Whatever the ariline, per person, you'll need about 50k miles for upgrade both directions and/or about 100k miles for outright award both direcitons. So Sapphire could only help if you decide each of you will fly a different airline, or both of you will try to upgrade from a more expensive fare at an airline Sapphire can transfer to, and will give up on using outright awards. But, as I said, you want the miles in the airline you're going to try to upgrade to at the instant you buy the tickets, and you want to try to buy tickets at the instant a third-party site tells you upgrades are confirmable.)

Or you can research the various aspects of what you need to learn and post in the appropriate thread (in the appropriate airline forum, AA of whichever) for each specific question.

I am new to the AA awards too, do you say we can search for AA award flights on AA.com? where to search for award tickets on AA's partners airlines?

I am asking about the free search tool, something similar to aeroplan.com & ANA tool for *A airlines. Thanks.

Thanks for all the detailed information - what a great start to my research. I'm still confused but at least I have somewhere to start

AA does provide service from Kansas City (my home airport) to the AA hubs, and I agree that AA is our best option.

We would be fine traveling on different flights, but prefer traveling together. (After my husband flew back from HI solo in June in coach, he said never again! He had a an aisle seat next to a cranky old man in the center who fought him over the armrest and yelled at him. LOL.)

Please pardon my naivete, but why do I need a third party service to check on upgrades for me? Is this something mere mortals don't have access to, or is it a knowledge base issue?

thanks again!

Anita

@PM6163
As previous poster said, there is either a paid service or you need an account with another partner to check the flights. I've created an account on Iberia.com and there you can search for award availability on all OneWorld partners.

You don't need a third-party service if you're willing to call AA endlessly.

But it's simply that AA doesn't provide that information itself online. It's considered "geeky" information that "average" mere mortals would not be interested in.

It's in the form of bucket codes and their avaiabilities. Fares are arranged in buckets, correlating (for paid fares) with the first letter of the fare code. AA does show you this for paid fares while booking (on the summary page after you select flights in both directions, assuming it's a round-trip booking). It's typically stuff like Q, N, etc, for discount economy fares, for example.

What you need for upgrades, though, are "hidden" buckets which (because they're not used for sold tickets) are not available to typical travel agencies (and other people who have access to "public" buckets). So you need a special third-party service to see these "hidden" buckets.

Buckets are followed by a number from 0 to 7, which means how many seats are available at that moment in that bucket. (7 means "at least 7"; you can't tell the difference between 7 available and every seat on the plane available.)

The AA "hidden" bucket for upgrades from coach to Business class (the second class up on international flights, as well as on three-class domestic flights, though the latter you won't likely run into when leaving from the middle of the country) is "C". "C0" means no availabliity, "C1" means only one seat available for upgrade, "C7" means at least 7 seats available for upgrade.

The AA bucket for upgrades from coach to first class, on domestic two-class flights, is "A". This bucket happens to also be used for some paid fares, so it's much rarer to have a problem with "A0", while it's very common to run into "C0".

So now, to see upgrade availabliilty on an AA flight, you have to use a service such as ExpertFlyer and enter your origin city, your desitnation city, choose AA as the airline, optionally specify a connection city (if you want to narrow down), and specify which award you want (check the ones corresponding to "C" and "A"). Then you run the search, and you get "C0" or "C2" or whatever, on a per-flight-leg basis.

But if you get "C0", you have to search again, perhaps looking for another routing. Or maybe search again tomorrow.

So while in theory you can do this on a 5-day free trial, in reality 5 days may not be nearly enough. And thus you need to pay.

Meanwhile: Once you find availability, you cannot use it instantly AFAIK. I think you have to book the ticket and wait for it to go from Purchased to Ticketed before you call in to ask for the upgrade. (At least I know that one time years ago when I didn't do it in that order, it got all messed up. But maybe they've changed it since?)

Because of this delay, if I want upgrades that can be confirmed at booking time, and I only need "C1", I still prefer to see "C2" or "C3" rather than just "C1", because there's always a chance that someone will grab a seat or two between when I run the search and when book, wait for "Ticketed", and then call in to request the upgrade.

If no upgrades are confirmable (all "C0"), you can still ask to be put on a wait-list. But that way, you're not sure if you'll get the upgrade (and your chances go down the lower your elite status at AA, with the lowest chances if you have no elite status at all). Thus if you have no elite status, confirmable upgrades ("C1" or preferably higher) are IMHO all the more important to know before you choose your flight.

(Of course, I'm not sure how much flexibility on dates you have. But you presumably have at least some flexibility on routing. But remember, only flights operated by AA qualify for upgrades, so you can't book a BA or IB flight number, or an AA codeshare operated by BA or IB, and then expect to be able to upgrade it.)

SD, thanks once again. I need to re-read so i can process all of this adequately.

I love the geeky stuff generally but I'm in the totally intimidated stage.

Anita

Welcome to FT!

It's probably to late to get award tix to Rome on AA. Word on the street though is BA has good award availability, but there is a hefty surcharge, though it may be cheaper than buying tix on AA and upgrading.

Sign up for a BA Executive Club account and see if they have award availability and if they do call AA with the flights you find and try to book.

Or join QANTAS and you can view all OW carriers availability. You may need to rout through MAD or HEL, but that may be the way it goes at this late date.

I'm talking about travel in Sep of 2012.

Anita

Hi akp, welcome to FT!

You've been given some terrific information from sdsearch - who should be commended for the effort he expended on your behalf by rewriting what has already been compiled on FT. You're a better man than I Gunda Din.

I'm not so patient(!) but since you've asked for "good resources" and seem capable of using this site, let me point you in the right direction.

It seems AA is going to be your program - so best to acclimate yourself with that forum:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/american-aadvantage-445/

Read the stickies on the top of the page. There's even a sticky just for newcomers like yourself.

The 2 main master threads from that forum that you should be familiar with are:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...solidated.html

and

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...ld-awards.html

In those 2 threads do a search for FCO and also do a search for Rome. That will cover your bases to insure you'll be able to read up on how others have secured their award seats to FCO.

And you'll most likely come across some of my posts. I've taken many award flights to Rome in Business - and the very depressing news is that AA has stopped offering the Business MileSAAvers which require 100k miles ("U" bucket) for their ORD-FCO and JFK-FCO routes the way they have historically. Right now it appears that they load in one Sunday when the mood strikes them at about 314 days out.

I used to buy coach and upgrade for my Rome trips - but this was quite some time ago (I stopped when AA started charging the copay) so I have no helpful info on the amount of upgrade availability ("C" bucket) that AA currently loads - but I wouldn't be surprised if it was as bad as the "U" fares.

So this results in your having to find "partner award" availability - and I would steer clear of BA as much as you can. You'll be forced to pay a LOT of $$$ for their fees and surcharges that you won't have to pay on IB.

IB has thus become my carrier of choice. And I'm finding pretty decent award availability. So although your desire was to purchase one coach ticket that will get upgraded and use miles for the other - you may have to reconcile yourself of spending 200k for the 2 of you to fly together in business on IB - and forego your reimbursement. (That would be my preference over flying separately - but you could of course have one of you on IB with 100k AA miles and the other flying on AA and using 50k miles plus the atrocious copay).

Another avenue is to look for decent "I" fares, which are discounted business fares so that your one revenue ticket won't actually cost you ANY miles and you'll EARN more miles than flying coach. And then use your AA miles for the other outright award ticket. Of course this could prove problematic for expensing if the policy is only for coach reimbursement. (But the cost of a coach ticket plus the copay fee might very well be not that less than a good "I" fare).

Lastly, we have a new Iberia forum with lots of great info including detailed reports comparing AA's to IB's business class product - with the consensus being that IB excels.

Here's the link to the IB forum:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/iberi...eria-plus-683/

So these resources should set you on your way and come October when you'll be able to book your flights you should be as well versed as the rest of us!

I look forward to "seeing you" over on the AA and IB forums.

Please note the links I provided for akp and come on over to the AA forum too!

SK3, despite your claim that you aren't as patient as sdserch, you gave me a fantastic amount of information!

I will become a student of AA and Iberia now.

"You've been given some terrific information from sdsearch - who should be commended for the effort he expended on your behalf by rewriting what has already been compiled on FT. You're a better man than I Gunda Din."

I feel silly that despite reading the site for weeks, I managed to miss a wealth of already compiled information. I will commence re-reading and I will find it this time!

I appreciate sdsearch and sk3 for posting the links to good resources. Sometimes it is easy for even conscientious newbies to miss the important stuff because this stuff is very intricate, and we don't have a context or mental map yet to judge what's important or relevant.

I know I need to do the work myself and I appreciate the tips in getting me started.

Again, major thanks for getting me started,
Anita

Here are 2 more "primers" that are linked to FlyerTalk.com:

http://www.webflyer.com/
http://www.flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

And akp, I apologize, I had misread your initial post. Since you're also willing to purchase 2 coach tickets and use miles to upgrade both - then you could obviously fly together on AA if the upgrade inventory is there.

For this reason, I do highly recommend you get a subscription to ExpertFlyer to start monitoring "C" inventory.

And in terms of your question as to what is the best usage of your miles, this could be the optimum since you'll also be earning a lot of miles. You should also both take AA's "challenge" and get a fast track to Platinum status - which means you'll earn double miles for these flights. The earning of the miles offsets the expenditure of the miles of course. Or if you end up just buying the one revenue ticket your husband should take the challenge - unless he's already Platinum of course.

When I used to go this route my routine was I'd first see if "C" inventory was there then I'd call AA and in the one phone call I would have them grab the confirmed upgrade and put the flights on hold. Then I'd look it up on my AA online account and double check that it was all in order - then I'd call and ticket it. (I did it this way because IMO human error is not a rare occurrence). My point with sharing this is that I never had to first ticket it and then call to add the upgrade as sdsearch mentioned. In fact I'd ONLY ticket it if the upgrade was confirmed, because like your husband I refuse to fly coach.

Regarding the fare for your revenue tickets there are many sites you can use to track these. I used to be able to find great fares, and when I couldn't and paid more than I wanted, I would continue to track the fare and when a lesser fare was offered I'd get a rollover. But then FCO fares increased more and more, the copay was initiated, and to me it became too costly to upgrade a coach ticket and I opted from about '05 to just get outright award tickets.

If you go the coach upgrade route, an important thing to know is that you're only guaranteed a seat in coach. In other words, say you have your confirmed flights with your confirmed upgrades but you miss your connection because your first flight had mechanical issues, for instance. So you're at ORD or JFK wanting to fly in business on the next flight to FCO, but you only paid for a coach ticket (even tho you upgraded from there) so coach is where AA is obligated to put you. Whereas if you purchase a business class seat either with $$ or miles, it's business where AA has to put you if the above scenario plays out.

Lastly, I never addressed your bank of 100K Chase Sapphire Points because I have no familiarity with that whatsoever. But if you're allowed to use those pts for Star Alliance carriers then Swiss Airlines is a marvelous way to get to FCO through ZRH.