Thank you to everyone who chimed in on my OWE itinerary questions - I think I have a good understanding of the OWE rules now! If you'll pardon the continued questions, I have a few more "tactical" questions for the experienced RTW folks:

1. How difficult is it to find "A" availability on short notice?

Its seems like the best course of action for ticketing a OWE is to only make reservations for the first few segments on your ticket and to leave the remaining segments "open". Given this, how far in advance do most of you make reservations on the open sections? How difficult is it to find "A" availability on each of the carriers?

If there is no "A" availability when you want to travel, can they make a reservation in "D" and waitlist you for "A"?

Lastly, lets say a flight shows F2 A0 availability and (assuming it is possible) I waitlist for First on the flight. If they don't sell those two "F" seats, will they rollover into "A" inventory or will they be given to NRSAs, upgraders, etc??

Bottom line: I have no problem paying for the AONE ticket if I'm going to be sitting in First and be able to (for the most part) choose the flights I want. Otherwise, I'll save my money and buy the DONE.

2. What is the best "second" OW FF program for a US-based AA EXP?

I know I touched on this in my other post and I apologize for continuing to bring it up, but I was hoping for futher clarification now that I've done the research to understand it better.

I have a US address and should have no problem requalifying for EXP this year. I would like to earn Sapphire status on another OW carrier for free Admirals Club access on domestic US tickets. From the research I've done, it looks like the best options are either BAEC Silver or Qantas Gold. If I've done my math correctly, it would appear that either can be had by crediting your inter-zonal First class travels to these accounts (e.g., JFK-HKG, HKG-LHR and LHR-LAX). There is probably an even more optimal way to do it.

Anyways, here's the real question: are there any other features of BAEC or Qantas that make one obviously preferable to the other? For example, it appears that Qantas would allow me to use miles to upgrade flights, whereas on BA, the "u" word is not in their vocabulary. Any other major differences?

One other obvious benefit to crediting to BAEC or Qantas would be the ability to use BA across the Atlantic and still get credit for it (I really don't care to fly AA if I can help it).

Again, thanks to all for your patience with my newbie questions. This whole OWE thing is making me feel like a rookie traveller again. I really appreciate the help.

A inventory is usually easier to get than D, on most flights. I can't remember ever being unable to fly on the date and route that I wanted in A, and very rarely was there a need to request F inventory to be released. This has been true on some high-demand routes (CX trans-pacific, QF11, etc.) and I often change flights on short notice. But I don't try for some of the "blacked-out" routes, for example AA has some JFK-LAX flights that have no A inventory (ever). As far as I can tell BA, CX and QF do not play that game (they do have inventory on every flight). You'll have much more trouble with D availability despite the greater number of seats on the airplane.

If status is the main aspect that you are looking for, I would recommend joining BAs Continental Europe scheme. You will get silver status in almost no time at all since only 400 tier credits are required for Silver (300 renew) and then 800 (600 renew) for Gold rather than the normal 700(500) and 1700(1200) credits under the other BA schemes

In 1st class

JFK-HKG will give you 180 credits
HKG-LHR will give you 240 credits and give you silver status and your membership year will be reset and start from here as silver

LHR-LAX will give you 240 credits. You just need another 60 credits within 12 months to renew for another year or 560 to attain Gold status ( just 2 flights of 1-1999 miles distance will meet this requirement )

As far as getting A availability, I have had v little trouble. When I have had a ticket and wanted to do date changes where A was at 0, I have had it waitlisted and it has cleared within minutes

Dave

[This message has been edited by Dave Noble (edited 01-27-2003).]

Hmm, 400 tier points really isn't anything, is it?

240 LHR-LAX (no AA miles, must go to BA)
180 Any four short AA F flights (4x45=180)
----
420

Anyone on the continent have an address I can borrow? I suppose I'd need to actually take possesion of the physical Silver card to use for club access in the US.