I just joined so please accept my apology if I post this on the wrong forum. I was checking out the award chart to redeem my miles. They seem to list Suriname and French Guiana under Northern South America but these two countries don't appear on its route. What does this mean?

I assume it means that you could use NW miles with one of their partners, but I don't know of any WP or Skyteam parterns who fly to there (including COPA which was the only candidate that comes to mind).

KL flies AMS-PBM (Paramaribo, Suriname) three times a week.
AF flies ORY-CAY (Cayenne, French Guiana) daily

AF also flies MIA-PAP-PTP-FDF-CAY three times a week

Welcome to FlyerTalk

Thanks. The thing is that if you look at the Award Chart flying from 49 states, when you move your mouse to Northern South America, you can see Suriname and French Guiana but if you look at the route(which already includes their partners), it doesn't list those. I was hoping to fly free to French Guiana(from NYC) and fly out from Suriname because that usually costs about $700-800. I have another plan which is Central America but the tickets are only $300-400. Any suggestion to make the most out of this? Any other route you wanna recommend(flying out from NYC)? I have about 40,000 miles.

For 35k (a standard US49 to Northern South America award) you MIGHT be able to string together some sort of NYC-(CO/NW/DL)-MIA-(AF)-CAY roundtrip.

But...

• You'll need to call WorldPerks and have them search for availability on AF3949. There's no way you'll find this award on nwa.com. Make sure you're picking the right days, too (it currently operates only on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, but that could change with the season).
• Because AF3949 leaves MIA at 9:30am and AF3948 doesn't return until 9:50pm, you'll have to overnight in MIA both ways (the earliest SkyTeam NYC-MIA doesn't arrive until 10am and the latest MIA-NYC leaves at 8:20pm). Awards typically allow stopovers in gateway cities, but I don't know if MIA is considered a gateway for NW award purposes and I don't know if they'd allow stopovers both ways, so this could kill the deal.
• You'll have to go round-trip in/out of CAY (if you can do it at all). AFAIK there's no NW partner connection to PBM other than through AMS. And routing through Europe will probably cost 140k miles (50k for the award to Europe, and 90k for the Europe to Northern South America Award).

In the end, unless you're willing to spend 9 hours bouncing around the Caribbean on an AF A320 (and that's after you get to Miami), I'd say you're much better off booking a trip to Central America instead. Continental and Copa offer a load of nonstop and one-stop destinations from NYC, and you can either earn NW miles if you buy the tickets, or try to find yourself a good-value award ticket with your existing miles.

themicah-

that reply was really the sh--. every time i think i've learned a lot about flying and NW in particular, someone throws down with this kind of knowledge.

i'm in awe.

I'm tempted to take credit, but will let you in on the secret: about 10 minutes with a timetable (and a serious desire to procrastinate on the stuff I should be doing). I really don't know why I find this airline stuff so fascinating... But then I suppose a lot of folks around here are in the same boat on that one.

you're being modest. who the heck besides a FTer would have, in hand, copies of so many SkyTeam Partner timetables?

True, but all you need is one:

http://skyteam.com/EN/travelPlanner/...bles/index.jsp

(although I keep the NW and CO timetables on my computer, too, because sometimes they work better than the Skyteam one)

First off, very nice response themicah, but then, that's what we've come to expect from you
Does anyone know if AF3949 is actually AF metal or is it a codeshare of some sort? Usually a high flight number like 3949 means codeshare.

It's not a stopover if it's 23h59 or less, or you fly out on the next available flight to your destination. Remember, an overnight is not necessarily a stopover. That being said the Original Poster (OP) will need to book a hotel room both ways and that will add considerable expense.

I will second this. Although I must admit that flight AF3949 would be an adventure. Kind of like the CO micronesia flights island hopping across the Pacific. If you took this flight on a day with great weather, I bet the views would be unforgettable. Actually, I just might take that flight on purpose someday.

The NW electronic timetable (which includes full KL/AF schedules) lists AF3948/3949 as "operated by AF" and both ITA and the SkyTeam timetable just call it AF, with no mention of operation by anyone else. So I guess AF must keep an A320 stashed in CAY for these flights going up to MIA one day and coming back the next. It's a strange flight, but I guess since French Guiana is still technically a dependency of France, that would explain the AF presence, just as Suriname (independent from the Netherlands only since 1975) has that KLM flight.

Looking in native WorldSpan, AF3949 is operated by AF and not a codeshare. It is just a A320 with bizarre class buckets. S class is considered biz class. Rows 1-4 show S class only. Never heard of AF having S class as a biz class product. Anyone else?

Nope... this flight is an oddity. Which makes it all the more intriguing!

www.AirFrance.us won't price MIA-CAY in business or first. Only economy.

ITN (via the http://flyaow.com/classcwt.htm) shows the order of buckets for these flights as:

S A E Y M K H W T V L

Travelocity's fare lister only lists four published AF fare bases for MIA-CAY (S,A,Y,KE--from most expensive to least) with the addition of VKIOSK21 and TSX1M for the route originating in CAY). Both A and S are listed as unrestricted economy fares--not business or first.