I'm close to starting to book a oneworld business award to points in Asia and Australia/New Zealand, and after joining Qantas to look at their award availability charts, and hearing talk of awards drying up at 329.5 days, my question is:

What time of day does the 330 days count from?

Is it from midnight my time?

The time of the HQ of the carrier I am claiming the award from?

The time of the HQ of the carrier of the flight I am trying to book that segment on?

The time of the departure point of the segment I am trying to book that segment on?

Other?

Thank you very much,

Steve

The time the flights are loaded in the system.

Yes, but when is that defined by?

The flights don't load consistently at a particular minute. I realize that doesn't help you, but that's the situation.

It would be great if it was like an onsale time on Ticketmaster, but is not.

It is targeted at midnight Dallas time (as CDT or CST), however as mentioned there is a lot of 'midnight' processing that has to be done, and it can take hours to actually be done (sometimes early, sometimes late).

Sometimes two days late. I was booking an OW award, calling each day for the flights that were due to open. Got several LAN flights then hit one where no inventory showed. Tried several times that day, still no inventory added. Didn't happen the next day, but finally on the third day it popped up. Might be significant that it was a Saturday when it should have been made avialable.

Could be a system upgrade time at LAN or some other reason they were slow to pass over inventory, but it can happen.

I've noticed this as well. Often on time and often several days late. Also, inventory appears and disappears at any time. Also, not all flights get award seats at all that far out or at all.

If award seats don't show up at all within a couple week timeframe, that can spell trouble for me.

At what point does the oneworld award "ticketed" flight plan become "etched in stone (can't change route nor carrier)?

As I am still building it up, or when I have completed the itinerary and booked the last segment?

As I have to wait for each segment to become available, and we plan to take a month so the building of the ticket will also take a month, if there is no availability for a segment while still building the ticket, can I go back and change the routing (possibly also requiring changing the carrier) to be able to continue proceeding (maybe cutting out that stop altogether) with the trip?

For instance, I would want to figure out what I can get tickets for from the East Coast to Tokyo before I arrange for the flight(s) to reach the chosen gateway. Or returning would be nice to do SYD-LAX-WAS, but I may have to go SYD-HKG-WAS or SYD-HKG-LAX-WAS or even another. If spanning more than one day, I won't find out if I can take a route until the next day's segment opens posts to the scheduling computer.

Is flexability until final itinerary is ticketed okay?

Thanks,

Steve

You have complete flexibility while holding the ticket to do whatever you want to it, completely. It is only once you ticket it that your routing becomes etched in stone.

I had a long complex itinerary to book, waiting for each flight date - 330 to hit to snag award seats. You have some time as courtesy hold, but not an extraordinarly long time -- a matter of weeks IIRC. Then you can get it extended but the process involves rebooking each segment, so if any one of them no longer have award availability, you need alternate flights or are just out of luck. I stretched a few times until the awards ran out, then I had to lock it down and ticket or lose the whole thing.

This can be a nerve-racking part of booking a 3 or more week award itinerary. I did a 6 week OW trip several years ago that really pushed this to the edge; my most recent is a 3 week jaunt through the Americas next summer, the one where I hit the rebooking inventory issue while still hoping to optimize some elements of the trip.

once ticketed I can still look for more convenient times and even dates but can't change any destinations or sequencing. Well worth it given the amount of travel in premium cabins you can cram into a relatively low-mileage award.

Thank you for the info.

Planning a 31-day business class award trip with my parents to NRT, HKG, Aust. & N.Z. Planning to ticket us seperately in case we have to take different routes to reach the stopover destinations at about the same time.

Does the re-ticketing each segment of the whole itinerary also kick in when trying to upgrade a cabin from the Economy I might go with to optimize the timing to business class that got more availability later?

Thanks again,

Steve

Not sure what you mean by "re-ticketing each segment", but if you want to know if a class change (after ticketing) requires a reissue the answer is yes, although the bookings not involved in the class change 'hold', in other words, you do not lose them.

That is what I meant--do I have to lose and re-secure from scratch all the rest of the segments to gain a class change on one segment.

Ooh, good. So the segments in which I don't really have any choices, I can just secure the spots in Economy on them, then hope that something shakes loose in Business class later on.


Some of the freeing up happens when it's really closing in on the flight date. I suppose it's a real headache to try to pull that off when in the middle of actually doing the itinerary? (I almost feel a little silly asking it )

What about in terms of upgrading at the airport the day of? Since I will be on an overall business class award, do I get involved in the potential last minute upgrading into the class I am "supposed" to be flying on? If so, where do I fit in the priority queue?


You guys are really great answering all these questions. I'll have to write up a summary of them and post it into the sticky thread on oneworld awards to help others.

Thanks!

Steve

No way. As far as the check-in agent is concerned you have an economy ticket, so no upgrade is possible. First you contact AA, they reissue the ticket and only then you can check-in.

About what I would expect. But the good news is that it sounds like AA will re-ticket me to nab that upgrade even while I am in the middle of my itinerary, so it's not all bad, at all.

Thanks a heap, everyone!

Steve