J from SFO to Bali
 

My fiancee and I are trying to do J class from SFO to DPS (Bali). Have plenty of AMEX MR ponits and am willing to purchase economy ticket and upgrade or buy J reward ticket. Problem is, can't seem to find an airline with any availability. Tried DL, CX, and SQ, but nothing besides 390k+ full award ticket on SQ. AC has rewards available, but in mixed Y/J where Y is for the long-haul SFO to Asia.

Any other tricks? Running out of ideas, but of course obsessively checking for availability. Would be willing to do J from SFO to Asia, Y to Bali, on separate tickets.

I have found ample availability on CX from HKG-DPS. Just flew it 2 weeks ago. I watched it for months, and never had any issue finding space. Used Avios FWIW.

Wednesdays are a little tough as they run the A340, but even then, availability opened up 2 days before departure.

There is also TONS of space from HKG to CGK and SUB on CX. Several airlines run the quick hop to both DPS and LOP for under $50usd a ticket.

When are you trying to go? Specific dates or some flexibility?

Specific dates. Feb. 1 to Feb. 9. Want to arrive by Feb. 3. Tried BA and NOTHING. Broke it up HKG-DPS, bc I know award availability on regional CX flights tend be wide open. Where am I not looking?

CX may have more space through their own program. AMEX transfers to Asia Miles.

If you can't find it on CX, it won't be on BA.

Try awardnexusdotcom to search and do it a segment at a time.Good luck.

Your problem is the specific dates. When I used KVS to find award space to use my old BA EC miles, before the switch to Avios, I could only find space in J on SFO, LAX or YVR to and from HKG on CX for about 3 days in any given month. (YVR had nothing)

Fortunately, we were looking to go to Indonesia (into CGK, out of DPS) for about two weeks out of a three-month span of time, Q2 2012, so we were eventually able to get tickets ex-LAX on the newest (Cirrus) business class 77D.

So, if you have to use miles for one of the tickets I would check every gateway city and be as flexible as you can. But you might have to earn rather than burn on this trip. It might be worth paying for Diamond KVS access too - it's certainly easier to find space that way, but, be sure to read all of the details, as CX does not release award availability to all partners evenly.

Yea, we could go a different week but it must be a Fri. to next Sat. to maximize time. Would love to upgrade an CI flight with Skymiles. but nothing. I feel like the Asia-region airlines skimp on biz-class award seats or upgrades, especially SQ. Frustrating...

Chinese New Year is Feb. 10 and might be very busy travel time around these dates and lower award availability.

You are using BA to search? Try JAL. Bloggers have details on using JAL to search CX. Check LAX and YVR in addition to SFO for the transpac.

I tried BA and YVR worked but the route was tortuous and too long. I changed my dates and found some SQ availability. Thanks for all your help!

FYI, SFO-HKG is usually an easy route to book CX First award seats. If not available now, CX will release more First awards seats at T-7 unless the cabin is sold out.

The typical route to Bali is either via Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo, or Seoul. Usually you can't book the ticket online all the way to Bali so check the gateways first.

I booked award tickets with Delta by checking to Singapore. I held the reservation

I then used KLM and/or Delta (sorry I don't remember) to find the SIN-DPS ticket. I called Delta and added the SIN-DPS segment.

Cheers,
Ryan

It's not ideal but if you wait until a week before your trip CX usually opens up seats in F and C class from a west coast gateway to Hong Kong. You should be able to snag award space on the connection to Bali at the same time.