Hello All,
I have a query. I am trying to book an award from SFO/SJC/OAK into BOM in Aug using AA miles. As you can guess, NOTHING is available on AA or any of its partners.
My question to you was do airlines allow a combination ticket - let me explain:
Assuming they have an award availability for SFO-SIN , would they allow me to buy SIN-BOM, and charge me just that airfare?(roundtrip). SIN was just an example, it could be BKK, DXB,CMB any destination close to BOM.

Please help me with your expert advice..!

Thanks..

I don't think there is a "combination" ticket, but they'll be glad to redeem an award if inventory is available. And they'd be glad to sell you a ticket at the regular price. But if the first flight is delayed, you will have problems - you missed the flight, it's not a missed connection.

you might try doing two awards via pacific

we recently booked 2 award seats LAX-DEL using JAL split as follows:

LAX-NRT-lax first class 135000 miles
NRT-DEL-NRT business 60000 miles

You have to ask for two awards via pacific and to check JAL, otherwise they will only check via Atlantic. Originally the rep only checked CX and said nothing was available i November when booking in April. The difference in mileage awards via pacifc v. atlantic was only 15000 more than just business via atlantic

They are both one one PNR so no problem on missing connections etc.







l

As other have mentioned, it's one thing to buy a pair of tickets, it's another to have them be protected in case one flight is late but the next is on time.

If both the tickets are on AA flight numbers and COULD have been a connection, you should be able to get them combined into one PNR after you pay for one and get an award for the other. (But do it over the phone with a CSR to whom you alert UP FRONT that this is what you want to do.)

If the BOM flight is on another airline (but a OneWorld partner), HOPEFULLY AA can put that onto one PNR too, but I don't know for sure offhand.

If the BOM flight is with someone with whom AA has no relationship, you're probably up a creek, and would want to plan a long stopover in the city where you're making the connection to minimize the problems should the first flight be late (and "late" on transoceanic can mean "next day" sometimes!), or buy fully flexible tickets.

Finally, do you JUST have enough miles for this award ticket? If not, when you say "nothing is available", do you really mean nothing is available, or only that nothing is available at "SAAver" type award rates? (Usually availability is far better at "AAnytime" award rates.)

Different situation but potentially illustrative.

I needed a last minute flight DCA-SEA-YKM-SEA-DCA, redeemed AA miles for an F award on AS. Problem was that DCA-SEA-YKM was available and SEA-DCA was available, but not YKM-SEA. So I purchased that short segment. Did it all through AA, and it was all on one PNR.. both the award and the paid segment.

Wanted to be sure of protection in the case of a misconnect... the YKM-SEA was full Y, and only AS flies the route, so it wasn't so much protection for that segment as much as protection for the ongoing SEA-DCA leg.

Several times, I have bought a ticket to LHR, for the miles, and then used an award for the LHR Europe connection. One reason I do this is to go business LHR Europe to avoid some of the carry-on hassle. The other is to save a little. It may not be the best use of miles, but it does suit me. I ticket the whole thing on the phone with AA, after holding the part I would be paying for and making sure about connection times, etc. My suitcase gets checked through to the final destination without any problem. It's worked fine for me so far.

Sylvia