Figuring Mileage for a OneWorld Award
 

Hello,
I now have 150,000 miles banked and wish to cash them in for a OneWorld Business award (25,000 miles). How do I figure out the distance for my proposed ticket?

What I would like to do: WAS-EZE-SCL-AKL-SYD-Melbourne-Brisbane-WAS.

Although I would much appreciate it if someone could help me by giving me the mileage, or ideas on how I could make this fit (such as open jaw, and buy a ticket from LAX-WAS and/or WAS-MIA), I would also appreciate a website or whatever so in the future I can figure this out on my own.

Thanks for teaching me to fish!

It's fine, a little over 24,000 miles. Keep in mind, though, it's been reported here that the SCL-AKL segment can be hard to get as a discounted paid ticket, let alone an award ticket.

BNE=Brisbane
MEL=Melbourne

Site for finding out mileage:
http://gc.kls2.com/

Thanks!

If I were you and had few extra days, throw in Easter Island (IPC). LAN can take you there from SCL and to Tahiti after you're done, were you can connect to AKL. It's only few extra miles and fits under the 25K miles. It's worth a stop, but no more than 2-3 nights.

Just a suggestion.

Wouldn't this involve a non-OW (paid) flight Tahiti-AKL?

I believe so.

Unless the poster was referring to the long way around, i.e IPC-xSCL-xLAX-MEL.

Thanks for all of the help. I've come up with two routings that I like. Now I have to figure out which one will prove more entertaining, and the exact dates (I have August 1-31...but figuring how much time in each city).

Either: DCA-EZE-SCL-AKL-SYD-BNE-CNS-BNE-IAD

OR

DCA-EZE-SCL-AKL-ADL-MEL-SYD-BNE-IAD

I may post in another forum for ideas on the Australia portion before I call to book. The last of my miles needed should post on the 14th, and then I can book.

Should also mention that I'm more than willing to except other ideas. I'm using a 25,000 mile award, and really want to go to AKL and SCL, and I would like to hit up Australia but I don't have to.

Good luck, I think you will find no U inventory SCL-AKL (when LAN does make some available, it is for SCL-SYD only) so you might spend the month of August in SCL standing by for the flight. Of course you cannot book it yet (330 days out), but you might have to fly SCL-LAX-AKL (not that it is easy to get U seats on that route, either).

I beg to differ on this one [again ;) ]. IMO, LAN offers award seats either SCL-AKL or SCL-SYD, without distinction. It is a matter of general availability only, not "fly to SYD or nothing".

Right now most of August '07 flights SCL-AKL have Business award seats available, in fact I would call it wide open.

Of course they are available now, they cannot be booked on AA until 330 days out (or about a month from now), so that inventory can only be booked by LA and QF plans. Once AA has access, it disappears in an hour or 2.

So how come there's quite a few seats available for June and July?

for some reason I thought that QF flew that route or at the very least to SYD, but now I know better.... :)

It's only a codeshare.

Interesting ... quite a change from last year (and the year before that, for that matter). Has LA made more inventory available, or has the novelty of the route worn off and the pent-up demand satisfied, making for empty seats? QF stopped operating SYD-EZE precisely because there wasn't enough traffic to keep the flight profitable (but QF didn't have any hub feed at EZE, unlike SCL). So much for additional flight frequencies on this route, I guess 4 per week is it (presuming it is still 4 per week -- haven't bothered to check).

Unless I can't count (a real possiblity), I've already entered the 330 day period for the beginning of my trip. Since i wish to depart on August 1st then September 5th, was roughly 330 days. The last of my mileage has posted so I'll start booking. The only real decision left is whether I book the AUS/NZ to be the first part of the trip and finish up with SA or do it the other way around.

I'll post my routing results!

Thanks again for all of the help. I appreciate help from the village elders (referring to time on flyertalk...not a judgment of what your actual ages may be. ;)

Not sure that having the beginning of the trip within the 330 day period will get you bookings for later flights on your trip that are occuring more than 330 days out.

True, but given the 14-day hold on a partial itinerary (offered by AA), I start the booking process at 340-342 days before the last segment. (This of course assumes the itinerary spans more than 14 days, such as the one proposed by the OP.)

I called AA Aadvantage Reservations this morning and was told they could start booking me now, reopen the hold every time a date comes within the 330 days and then book me through without losing my dates. I hope they are right....

Anywho, I've settled on where I want to go and when. Regrettably, I don't have Expert Flyer (living off of government loans, I keep my non-school related purchases/memberships to an absolute minimum), so I don't have a clue about availability.

A few questions for the experts out there:

1) If my preferred routing is not available (e.g. SCL-AKL), may I request to be routed SCL-DFW-LAX-AKL, or SCL-DFW-LAX-HKG-AKL?

2) W/O Expert Flyer is there any easy way (I've dowloaded the OW schedule) to look up all possible flight routings between 2 cities so I can suggest routings to the AAgents. (I've found that often if you -the customer - have an idea it goes quicker than if the AAgent has to go looking).

Here's my schedule (again it's a OW Business Award):

July 28 (2007): WAS-EZE
July 31: EZE-SCL
August 6: SCL-AKL
August 15: AKL-SYD
August 17: SYD-ASP
August 20: ASP-CNS
August 24: CNS-BNE
August 26: BNE-LAX

And that's it. I'll have to buy a cheap oneway to get home from LAX, but with SW going LAX-BWI, I'll be fine there.

Thanks Again for all of the help!

Yes. But, you're still subject to the 16-segment limit.

Get a QF account (free) and use their very nifty award-search engine to check availability. (It won't show availability for every OW route, but it's pretty impressive.)

Tip du jour: When using the QF tool, you'll sometimes run into a situation where you cannot query a given o/w segment because your origin does not appear in the list of cities (e.g., SCL). A workaround in these cases is to select an r/t using your desired destination as the origin (e.g., LAX-SCL-LAX) with a dummy outbound segment; then you'll be able to check the return segment (SCL-LAX).

or SCL-LAX-AKL, for better J and less segments than SCL-DFW...

By the way, there's nothing available SCL-AKL (direct on LA) on your dates; first direct flight you could take, at present, is on the 11th.

SCL-LAX-HKG-SYD-AKL looks available for 06Aug.

Just a thought, but often one can find lower fares between WAS-FLL/MIA than LAX-BWI. Use FLL/MIA as your starting point and that will allow you to do BNE-(LAX/SFO)-WAS in J for just under 25K.

You might find the long transcon more comfortable in domestic J than anything offered by WN, and you might even save a buck or two.

Thanks LRD for the Qantas tool. It has proven quite valuable. I called AAdvantage today and started my bookings now that the 300 days from the end of my trip falls within the 14 day hold period. THe lady that helped me was quite nice, and it was good to have access to flights so when she said "nothing direct sir, would you like to try different dates?" I could either say no, how about this routing, or yes, there is direct availability the next day...

Not too shabby so far! Hopefully the LAN flights will all have the new Executive Business Class by next summer!

Nice going, congrats!

About LAN's new J: ok, so the new IFE is good and the seat reclines a lot more, but when flying solo I prefer LAN's old J. To me the new seat is too narrow, too hard and too close to the pax next to you. :td:

Could this opinion differ based on who is seated next to you? :D

Fortunately, I've never flown Bus, so it'll seem nice to me! Anything'll be better than DFW-NRT in Y (which I've done)! :cool:

Ok, I've got my AKL-SYD now...getting there. As a side note, I can now see what many people on the AA board say about Qantas availability. For my flights home on the 25th of August there is nothing on Qantas directly over the pond. It looks like I'll have to do BNE-CNS-HKG-LAX-ORD-WAS (Departing on the 25th and arriving on the 26th), because to do it all the same day would require a 7:30am (or so) departure from SYD and there's no way to get there at that hour from BNE, and my trip is at like 24,960 miles so I can't go down the night before. (Either that or I have to suck it up and do coach either across the pond or BNE-HKG.

Can't book the final flight(s) until the 29th of this month...we'll see what I manage to come up with.

For my intra-Australia flights availability is pretty wide-open.

And we're Done!
 

Phew....Game over! I am now ticketed. Only $184 worth of taxes, plus the $15 phone booking fee. I will be on AA, Lan Chile, Qantas, and Cathay Pacific. I'm looking forward to my first Business Class Experience and getting to compare the Bus. Class offerings of the three Int'l carriers I am going to experience!

A few items of note:
1) AA, why is there a $15 booking fee for phone bookings that you cannot do online? If I could have done it online I would have, especially considering the trouble AAgents had in figuring out what I was asking for (see item 2).
2) AA needs to train its Int'l AAdvantage Agents better. Many didn't know what a OneWorld award was and would transfer me to the OneWorld desk, which would just transfer me back to AAdvantage (and AAround and AAround we go....). Often agents couldn't find the flights (if it wasn't for Qantas' award engine I would have been SOL a couple of times).
3) A compliment. Laura an AAdvantage agent, the last one I spoke to, was VERY knowledgeable and got everything I needed taken care of. She was a joy!
4) On my itinerary at aa.com it lists everything as Business Class (except for one leg where only coach is flown), but on my ticket, all of my Qantas segments - except for the economy segment - are listed as Discount for the class of service. What does this mean?

Thanks again for all of your help.

Congratulations!

Because they can. This is a common complaint. It seems unfair to me, too.

Always remember the Flyertalk rule: Hang up immediately and try again if you reach an agent who doesn't know his or her stuff.

What did you finally book for start/end points? Did you manage to get back to DC?

Well done!

And I had some interesting comments by the 2nd EXP agent who just completed a pair of oneworld C awards for my wife and I in April, with parts of it not having a lot flexibility (sfo-scl-ipc-tls-bud-lhr-sfo)
exp agent "We cringe when we get these requests."
me "Aren't most of pretty well prepared before we call."
exp agent "Yes, you guys do seem to have a lot knowledge"

And the reason she was the 2nd was because the 1st probably cringed too much and we "mysteriously" got disconnected.

^ for Deann (sp) @RDU

Hey LRD, unfortunately I did not make it back to DC. I played the AAgent phone game (call back and back and back) but no one gave me the answer I was looking for (although I did appreciate the comic relief given me by the agent who swore I couldn't even make it back to the states...), so I'll end in ORD at 5:15am. It's still not bad. I have friends in MIA and ORD to stay with and cheap tickets are always available MDW-BWI and BWI-FLL, so it should be ok.

Either that or I'll be so sick of flying 76:10 (in the air alone), I'll rent a car and drive Chicago-DC. :D

Congrats! I need to get on planning my bar trip. I just can't decide on where I want to go. Every time I think of somewhere I decide I want to go somewhere else as well. I'll be flying on a One World J class RTW ticket as well.