ReneeMoss

Need help with o/w Bus. Cl. Award from CPT to MIA......
How many (lowest) airline pts. do I need for the Bus. Cl. Award ticket??
BA wants 100,000 CPT/LHR & another 80,000 LHR/MIA
Wow! - 180,000 pp is a little much!
Can I do this for less miles??? on what airline??
Is the one-way a problem???
Thanks to all you knowledgeable folks for help with this.
(Of course I would prefer non-stop - I think South African Air does this - but I don't know who "partners" w/SAA???

CApreppie

Here is a list of SAA's airline partners: SAA Airline Partners

Looks like 120K miles will be the going rate for a biz class r/t award. I don't think most airlines allow one way awards. I know that UA does not.

hauteboy

I don't know of any airlines that allow one-way awards on SAA.

Check out http://jph.bytestacker.com/award.htm , this will show the # of miles required on different programs.

Looks like the best deal would be an AAdvantage oneworld award (via JNB+MAD), for 80k in biz. BA should also do this for 90k one-way, not 180k..

ReneeMoss

I called different airlines - perhaps the Reps did not know -but I was told BA needed 180,000 for the award (Maybe they were counting this as 2 different awards?)
Northwest seemed my best bet @120,000 per award - (ticket round trip - only use one/way) CPT/AMS/DTW/PBI - using KLM for CPT/AMS - I have enough miles on NW to do this. will have to do a lot of "scambling" to put miles in place for AA and/or BA - I might "squeak" through with "creative" effort as I have time (Looking for this award for April 2007 & leaving by ship from FLL to CPT) it will have to be "called in" approx. May 2006 - gives me a year to add mileage.... - cannot find information about KLM routing CPT to AMS - I would like a stop over in JNB, if possible????????? Really appreciate your help with this.

rogodwin

The award that I have found best for cruises is the AA oneworld award. These awards are mileage based and allow you to fly from point A to B to C, etc., without returning to A, or an open jaw A to B then C to A. You must use 2 other carriers other than AA and you cannot fly across the Atlantic on BA.

For your trip you might do CPT-LHR on BA, then LHR-MAD on IB, then MAD-MIA on either AA or IB. This mileage is ~ 11220 and the closest award for business is 115K miles for < 14000 flight miles. Thus you have ~ 2700 miles left if you want to expand your trip. Any expansion must not have any land segments. Suggest you go to the One World forum for more of the rules.

hauteboy

Actually the beauty of the AA Oneworld awards is they only calculate the distance between stopover/origin/destination points. So a CPT-MIA award only takes into account the CPT-MIA distance; you can use any reasonable connection between the two cities. You could fly CPT-JNB-MAD-MIA on BA/IB/AA, or even CPT-JNB-HKG-LAX-MIA on BA/CX/AA for the same # of miles.

ReneeMoss

Just spent time w/AA on the phone -

One World needs 115,000 miles for the CPT/MIA award - the agent could not route for 80,000 miles........something about "backtracking"???? She really was very nice and spent a great deal of time trying to use CX, IB etc. etc. - but could not find (3) partner airlines to do this routing -

Any way you think is possible??

Looks like the "cheapest" is 90,000 British Air miles or the same 90,000 AA miles for the ticket.......

But since I already have NW 100,000 miles in place the 120,000 NW miles needed for the (same) award looks easier for me. The only "drawback here, is I would like a stopover in JNB, and KLM only flys direct from CPT to AMS.

And - I can never seem to use NW miles - it's easier to get award seats on other airlines......

I have a year to plan how to do this - so would appreciate any other suggestions here..............

Thanks much, Renee

LRD

The agent was wrong. This is easily doable with a oneworld award for 80K. (In fact, you could throw in GIG for no additional mileage.)

Several routing options, including CPT-JNB-LHR-MIA, CPT-JNB-MAD-MIA, etc., as hauteboy has mentioned.

LRD

Only two partners (other than AA) are required; you don't need to include an AA flight.