Strategy for Long Trip (17 days) Using Miles
 

I apologize if this thread is repetitive-I did a search and didn't find anything.

I am planning a long trip using miles to Nairobi. One itinerary will be SFO-LHR and back, probably on United. Second itinerary will be LHR-Nairobi and back on BA.The trip is about 17 days so I am concerned that if I book the outbound flight as early as possible, the airlines won't allow a 17 day hold until I can book the return flight. Any strategies on how to make this work? Thanks in advance.

Welcome to flyertalk lunarbrian.

Generally speaking, many airlines will allow you to make an award reservation and hold it for several days before actually ticketing it. Assuming your airlines allow you to do this, simply make a reservation on the first airline and hold it, then make the reservation on the second airline and hold it. Once you get the itineraries you want and everything is all worked out, you can then go ahead and ticket them. Hope you have a great trip.

The details may be airline specific, so you may want to ask both in the BA and UA forums.

With BA, I can tell you that it's not as simple as flights 17 days later becoming available 17 days later. BA award availability goes in and out and up and down in magical (black magic? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif ) ways, and seats can be there and disappear and be there again and disappear again many times, perhaps sometimes even within a span of 17 days (but certainly over a few months MANY MANY MANY months out when hardly any tickets have actually been booked yet).

But you did say this is with miles. Again, I can only tell you about BA, but at BA, as long as the flight is on BA metal (do NOT use miles for BA partner flights unless your flight dates are SET IN STONE!), you can make changes after the initial booking (as long as the seats are available for the same awards on the new dates/times you want), with either no or a fairly small (compared to the "cost" of the flight) change fee. You'll want to (a) verify exactly how this works at BA, and (b) find out how it works at UA, because if one airline has a more flexible change policy it may make sense to book something/anything early and then change it to something better as the schedule opens up (or again, as award seats reappear after disappearing http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif ).

(I presume you don't have enough BA miles to make it all BA, since it'd presumably be easier trying to keep it all BA if you did.)

I booked a reward flight to Hawaii on United, and they allowed me 2 weeks to confirm it. This included a seperate inter-island flight on Aloha.

ua award to australia, was allowed 2 weeks before booking.

Is it possible to book the itin as 1 award with a stopover in London? Pick your alliance - *A or OW - don't they both allow a stopover on int'l awards along a valid routing (which I'm assuming LHR is)?

Yes. And with less miles.

eg. on *A Awards
North America - Europe is 50K in economy
Europe - Africa is 60K a Total of = 110K for two separate award tickets.
While
North America - Africa with a stopover in Europe is 80K.
The only problem is There are no *A carriers which fly to Nairobi http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Well, you could do it on OW - North America to Africa for 75K in coach with the stopover at LHR.

You don't specify when you are going...which makes a world of difference in strategy. You may consider buying a rntp to London (remember,though, BA transatlantic does not accumulate miles on Aadvantage) and using your miles to Kenya.


I will give you an example.
I am going to Nairobi at the end of November 2004. Mileage on CO (including NWA/KLM) was 90,000 from the US, but I had to fly thru New York. (I live in Dallas)

So, I finally booked an AMS-NBO mileage ticket for 50,000 miles (CO miles)and $50 tax and I will fly CO DFW/AMS via Houston for $580 rntp and I get double miles for elite status. I will get roughly 23,000-24,000 miles rntp on my pay ticket.

FInally, I end up using only about 26,000-28,000 miles from my account, pay a little over $600 total, get a stopover in Holland, instead of paying $2000 for a rntp DFW/NBO.