I guess I could just be more flexible, but I am trying to craft something around a holiday, and fly on a weekend. Wow, it sounds really bad when I type it out. Anyway, the kind EXP agent diligently checked everything through Europe, and the best she could find around Labor Day had me going SFO-ORD-YUL-Zurich-NBO. This was in business, and for one passenger (I need two), which would be 150k roundtrip.

She thought business and first awards would be equally easy/difficult to find; does this match with your experience? I don't really have the miles for two first awards, but could work on it if that is the way to go.

So, we moved to Veteran's Day week, and got reasonable routes, but one of the LHR-NBO seats is in coach for now. Is it worth holding on to that and hoping business will free up?

Finally, is there a one world award that would help here? I guess there is a BA flight from JNB to NBO, so theoretically I could get CX to JNB and connect there, even though the times don't look great. I was thinking it might be fun to go through Europe on the way out, and through Asia on the way back. Thanks, as always.

edited to fix JNB

If you fly via LHR, BA (and its franchise carriers) goes to NBO via three routings according to the BA website. LHR-NBO, LHR-JNB-NBO, and LHR-KRT-NBO. Also, BA flies twice daily LHR-NBO three times a week (S, T, Th I thnk), and the 767-300 flight happens to have more availability, since it doesn't have the lie flat seats in Club World. Flying CX via HKG and JNB is not going to be any better in terms of availability.

If you can go Thanksgiving week, the BA Executive Club web site is showing
at least 2 award seats in Club World (Business) LHR-NBO for Nov. 16,17,18,19 and NBO-LHR Nov. 27 and 30. As far as I know, these seats would be coming out of the same "buckets" that you would need for an AA/BA partner award, so these dates should be good. If it doesn't have to be Nairobi and another destination in the general area will do, they also have at least 2 Club World award seats available for LHR-EBB (Kampala, Uganda) on Nov. 22 and 24 and EBB-LHR on Nov 28.
You would have to check on AA to see if award seats are also available for the SFO-LHR portion.

Since the moderator was kind enough to move this here from the AA forum at my request, I'll bump it.

If you can keep the actual flight mileage under 20K, it is only 130,000 miles in BC for a oneworld award. Otherwise 25K mileage is 150,000 miles, the same as a regular BC award from N.America to Africa. Getting 2 BC seats on CX across the Pacific is easier than on BA from what I've heard. Check the mileage, but you could do SFO-HKG-JNB-NBO-LHR-SFO/LAX.

DON'T take a voluntary downgrade. Contrary to what AA tells you, BA will not put you in BC if your ticket says coach and there are empty seats. You would have to have AA reissue the ticket with the BC as BA puts you in the cabin per the ticket.

excellent suggestions. the oneworld ticket might be the better option here IF you don't mind the EXTRA travel time. the only other issue is whether you can hit the trifecta of getting availability on SFO-HKG, HKG-JNB, JNB-NBO on the dates you need them. Note that it is just under 20K mileage distance if you don't stopover anywhere between SFO and NBO (regardless of routing) and just under 25K mileage distance if you want to stop in HKG, JNB *and* LHR. You may want to route SFO-LAX-HKG-JNB-NBO since there are 3x daily CX flights ex LAX versus only one ex SFO.

http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=s...avy&MAP-STYLE=

Thanks for the help. I certainly wouldn't mind the extra travel time in the right conditions... Maybe throwing a stopover in there somewhere will help with the availability, since it will open up a couple more days to travel. Now if only Hilton would call back about the Safari award.