I am trying to book the following itinerary in Business Class for next June using a One World award: SIN-HKG-LAX-HNL-SFO-HKG-BKK-KUL.

The first six flights are confirmed in CX and AA. The problem is that I want the BKK-KUL sector in AY to get the two OW carriers required. AY in Singapore say they have seats for award travel. The regional AA reservations group (in Delhi) say they can't see them. I've even got AY res. in SIN and AA res. in Delhi to talk to each other by phone. No dice, so far.

AA are trying to get me to make this detour instead: SFO-SYD-SIN on QF, but this eats a lot of extra miles.

Any thoughts?

If you make a transit w/o stopover, does that not count towards total miles?

So in essence, as long as you don't stopover, miles redeemed should be the same?

Since this is in June, you may not want to wait, but if you can don't forget JL will be entering OW soon

Just a thought but QF operate a SFO-YVR seasonal flight you could book into that if there is availability it will use a lot fewer miles.

That's got to be a rare event - AA recommending J awards on QF across the Pacific...

Miles only count between stopovers, so that routing is fine.

Yes, QF is running SFO-YVR in June so that could work too. SFO-xYVR-HKG would be okay.

Two things you could do...

1. Call AA in USA to request seat on AY.
2. You could do HKG-BKK on AY instead of CX. They fly certain days during the week in winter.
3. You DO know that AY has no service between BKK and KUL but rather it is BKK-SIN?

AY will be flying BKK-KUL 3x weekly from May 07.

Last BKK-HKG-BKK on AY is 19th May 07. After this its only BKK-SIN-BKK 4p/w and BKK-KUL-BKK 3p/w.

Hong Kong will be nonstop service HEL-HKG-HEL from 20th may 07.

Thanks for the good suggestions. I already tried a few: Calling the Exec Pt desk in the US gave me the same result as Delhi AA reservations; no visibility of AY seats I am looking for two seats on AY from BKK to KUL...AY say they have award seats, but AA can't see them.

AA have confirmed two U seats on SFO to SYD, with a return to SIN on the same day (one seat U and one seat X (yuck!)) - just enough time for a nice Sydney lunch...it begins to sound tempting, except for me sitting in Y back to SIN, while Mrs VanMan relaxes in Y.

I'll let you all know how it turns out.

I experience similar things with LAN award seats and OW -- the avialability of the airline FOR ITS OWN FFs is better than the inventory they grant to OW partners. Get on the LAN site, see every flight with award seats, then call EXP desk . .. no availability. My guess is you are facing a similar issue, that the airline grants only a subset of their award inventory to their nominal alllies.

Don't get me wrong, I have had many great award flights with all the OW partners. They do offer a generous enough pool to have satisfied my needs. However, I do see the differential inventory that you are experiencing and sometimes it makes a particular routing impossible altho the airlines own FFs could book it.

That's nice to know ! ^

Why not book the BKK-KUL in economy for now. If the biz class seats become available, you can get them without too much trouble. Or just take the BKK-KUL segment in economy as it is a short flight. Not worth the extra effort, IMO.

Headinclouds: AA can't see any AY BKK - KUL or BKK- SIN award availability for any date in June; neither business nor economy. I agree economy would be fine. Right now I have all business class booked via QF and CX SFO-SYD-HKG-BKK-SIN.

Meanwhile Finnair are discussing the issue in Helsinki (or so I'm told).

I actually experienced something similar before - trying to get award seats on intra-Asia AY flights with AAdvantage miles...the HKG AA agents basically said there's no award availability on any intra-Asia AY flights, no matter what class I want or what date I pick...they just cannot see any availability / I cannot use any intra-Asia AY flights as part of any AA awards at all. (for example I was trying to get HKG-BKK on CX and BKK-HKG on AY - on dates where AY were flying - but award not possible at all).

Would appreciate some expert opinion on this as well...I always have been thinking if it's just a system glitch (e.g. in AAdvantage's system they didn't list AY as one of the airlines flying within Asia), but I just didn't have time to investigate yet...thanks a lot.