Using Miles with on Flight to China
 

I have 113,000 American FF miles, 96,000 Delta FFs, & 63,000 United FFs. Will be flying from Cincinnati OH to Beijing in early December. Am taking my 10-year-old son with me. Am picking up my fiance and her 6-year-old daughter in Beijing for a one-way trip to the U.S.

In the past, I have gotten no cooperation at all with airlines when I try to book my FFs together with paid tickets. I don’t want to do one or the other separately because, if for example, I buy a ticket for my son but there are no FF miles available, I have wasted the ticket. I have also talked to several agents, and they said there is nothing they can do to try to book a paid ticket together with FFs.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can best try to use my miles. Also, if in trying to book tickets it becomes useful to transfer my miles to my fiance is it feasible to do so, or are the transfer fees so high that it is not feasible. Should also mention that my fiance's older 14-year-old daughter will be coming to the U.S. in January. Any assistance would be appreciated.

DB

DL requires 70K miles for a round-trip (no one-ways), so you will end up needing to purchase 1 round-trip plus the two one-way tickets.
UA is 32,500 miles one-way so unfortunately you only have enough miles for a one-way ticket, meaning you will need to puchase 2 round-trip tickets + the remaining one-way ticket. AA seems to be your best bet, at 35K pp each way.

AA is showing a lot of economy MileSAAver seats through December 14, at 35K per person, one-way. I'd book the two award one-way seats PEK-CVG for your fiancee and her daughter, and then buy two round-trip seats, including the same PEK-CVG return leg so you are all traveling on the same flight for the trip home (which sounds important to you). The two revenue seats seem to be roughly $900-1200, depending of course on your exact dates of travel. One-way tickets are practically the same price in $$, but only half the miles, so this seems to give you a fair amount of value. Total out-of-pocket cost would be roughly $2000 and 70K miles, leaving you 43K miles - enough for your fiance's other daughter's flight later this year. Additionally, you'll acquire more miles on the two paid tickets for another future trip.

All this booking can be done online, in two separate (though possibly even simultaneous) transactions. Afterwards, any agent should be able to link your reservations to show you are traveling together on the return leg. Book the award tickets first, to ensure availability, and then book the revenue tickets. They are unlikely to disappear in the few moments between transactions. Alternatively, you could book the award tickets over the phone - an agent can put them on hold for a few days, so those seats are confirmed while you purchase your paid tickets (online or via a separate phone reservation). Then complete your award transaction with no risk.

You can reserve frequent flyer tickets in anyone's name, no need to transfer miles. I would concentrate on booking the three one-way tickets from Beijing as soon as possible to secure availability, probably with your AA miles. Maybe you could use the UA miles for the older daughter.

It would be easiest to buy the two round trip tickets, after booking the one-way tickets, so you can get the return seats on the same flight.

While you cannot buy a ticket on the same itinerary as an award ticket, you can link itineraries after purchasing.

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"Book the award tickets first, to ensure availability, and then book the revenue tickets. They are unlikely to disappear in the few moments between transactions."

On aa.com, one can hold an award reservation for five days before actually finalizing the award booking. So place the award booking on hold, and then book the paid tickets, assuming they are still available at the desired fare.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. Didn't realize I could check the availability of FFs online prior to booking. Did one quick look on American, and web showed that for 70,000 miles I could fly from Cincinnati to Beijing -- leaving on Dec. 2 or 5th and returning on the 12th. Is that a reasonable amount of miles for that trip. It seems so for me.

Also, how do I reserve FF miles in another person's name. Do I just log in to my account and put another person's name on the flight.

Thanks again to everyone.

DB

Just log into your account, check availability, select desired flights, and when you go to book or hold the tickets, there will be a space to enter the passenger's name. This does not need to match the name on the account.

70,000 round trip or 35,000 miles one way is a good price (the cheapest level in miles). Avoid Delta for this as they charge the same for one way (70,000 miles for one way or round trip).

Placing a hold on the tickets first is a great idea.

Book the return tix using your miles asap, since if you don;t have enough miles and need to buy tix, China->US tix is more expensive.

What about a business class award? They are often offer better value than coach awards.

OP: If I were you, I'd burn 55k AA or 50k BA to fly there in business class... or even 67.5k AA for F on JL, which is very, very nice. But, sadly, this approach wouldn't leave you with enough miles to get the 3 of you back home.

As such, use the DL miles for yourself, assuming you can get seats (unlike AA/UA, DL awards must be used on a round trip basis... more accurately, OW costs the same as RT).

For your wife and daughter, plan on spending 70k AA miles to fly them on AA or JL.

I'd recommend putting one of the tickets on hold first, then the other if possible, making sure they both match up, confirm everything, and then book both. AA allows holding their award tickets for 5 days, delta does 48 hour holds (but they can be unreliable if you want to make changes), Continental only allows a 72 hour hold if you don't have enough miles in your account (easy since yours are in UA), United allows a 72 hour hold (easier since your miles are in UA).

I'd say book AA/CX/JL tickets with AA miles for yourself and your son and book you fiance and her daughter together using UA miles (you'd have to get a few more as it's 32,500/person in Y).

I missed the part about the son, but I would still advise the OP to try to use his DL miles first because they are the least valuable. Perhaps he could redeem an award for his son and buy a revenue ticket on the same flights for himself.

thanks for posting ? helpful info for future plans

What kind of R/T fares are you finding? It might make sense to book two R/T paid seats on either AA or UA and then redeem miles for the two one-way travelers. (Getting an extra 2,000 UA miles quickly should be easy - just read the UA forum if interested.) I was seeing $900 R/T's to PEK and PVG recently out of Chicago...sort of makes you want to hold the miles for another day, especially if you plan to do periodic trips back to Beijing.

I scoured the entire Oneworld and Star Alliance universes earlier this year looking for business class awards to China for a trip I completed a couple weeks ago. I couldn't find a thing on any airline, looking six months in advance. First and Economy both had reasonable availability, but C/J was nothing but zeroes no matter how creative I got, using all of the tools that FTers like to use to get at hard-to-find awards.

So we flew coach one-way: exit row (31H/J) on an AA777. Good seats but we actually had *too* much room, leading to people congregating at our feet for most of the flight.

We flew First Class the other way, also on AA. We felt like it was a bit of a weak international F service. Not that I loved the experience of 13 hours in coach but I left feeling disappointed that I'd spent 67.5k each for two of us to fly F. I truly believe that biz would be optimal on this route, which is probably a sentiment held by many...hence the difficulty finding award seats. :(

I've been flying between China and the US almost exclusively on miles (in biz) for the past 1.5 years, and have gotten pretty good at finding seats. The trick is focus on flights that: 1) have large business class cabins; and/or 2) routinely have unused inventory.

JFK-HKG is probably the best example in both cases (half the plane is J, and there are 5 flights per day). Direct flights between the US and Haneda are a close second.

On *A, I've had good luck with IAD-NRT on NH, and UA to KIX is often on offer as a last resort (when redeeming miles, I now try my best to avoid UA and AA on long flights at all costs).

I wouldn't even bother trying to use the delta miles. They are almost useless.