AA OneWorld non-RTW Africa...*** Enhanced :)
 

Yesterday I had wondered if the following AA All partner Award was valid for 200K miles first class

GRR-ORD-LHR-NBO [Nariobi]
NBO-LHR-ORD [4 month stopover]
ORD-MIA-SJU-AUA [Aruba]

Basically we start in Grand Rapids and finish in Aruba with our destination being Nairobi. Honestly I added ORD-MIA-SJU-AUA [Aruba] 'for efficiency' to be married to anther trip later on.

Someone mentioned that I should look at a OneWorld award first class award for 180K.

Made me think, wouldn't it always make sense to use a OneWorld award for Africa? Can you think of any exceptions?

Back to my itn...do you have any suggestions for me? Is it easy to convert a reservation from All Partner to OneWorld?

The problem with your routing and a OneWorld award is getting that second non-AA OneWorld airline in. The last time I used one of these to Nairobi I had to add a LHR-DUB-LHR day trip to get Air Lingus into the mix. And that won't work for long now at they are leaving OneWorld...

It can be tough to get two OW members (in addition to AA) into some itineraries; since Africa from Europe is just BA and IB as far as OW members, and since certain BA routes are extremely hard to get in J or F (e.g. LHR-CPT) then the all-partners option, which doesn't require multiple OW members, might work better. Last year we used a partner award PRG-JNB//CPT-PRG (75K miles in J, helluva deal) that involved SN, IB, BA and LX. Would have been much much harder (and more costly) as a OW award.

That said, your itin ought to be easy enough to configure for the <20Kmi OW award. Don't know where your planned transits/stopovers are, but one imaginary routing for "counted" miles could be - GRR-FRA-NBO-BCN-ORD-MIA-SJU-AUA

Where actual flying would be
GRR-xDFW-FRA (AA) (F on AA)
FRA-xLHR-NBO (BA) (J/F on BA)
NBO-xLHR-BCN (BA) (F/J)
BCN-xFRA (IB) (J)
FRA-xDFW-ORD (AA) (F)
ORD-MIA-SJU-AUA (AA) (F/J)

The counted route comes in at under 19,000 miles, thus a 180K F OW award or a 130K J award (which I would consider given new AA J seats on 767s and new BA J seats on 744s, plus no F on European or Caribbean routes.) If MIA and/or SJU are just connections, then the counted miles are less.

The key is stopover/connection management so that you don't hit any place three times if possible.

To answer your specific first question, you cannot do this as an All Partner award. You could do it as a One World award as others have stated but you have to add another OW carrier so you'll have to tack on some additional flights. For example you could fly GRR-DFW-FRA-MAD-LHR-NBO.

LHR-NBO is a pretty easy route to get 2 FC award seats. I just looked and it ranges from generally available to wide open from now until December. You have a wide pick of dates every month.

Thanks for the responses. 3 random educational questions

1
It seems like this would be a valid all partner AAward (AUA/Caribbean is part of North America)
AUA-MIA-ORD-LHR-NBO [end]
NBO-LHR-ORD [stopover]
ORD-MIA-AUA

Is it valid?
Could I just substitute the first AUA-MIA-ORD with GRR-ORD [open Jaw]. In other words using this logic s my original itn valid as an partner AAward

2
How do you look at AAward inventory LHR-NBO?

3
Would this be valid for OneWorld?
GRR-ORD-LHR-NBO [dest]
NBO-LHR-MAD-FRA-ORD [stopover]
ORD-MIA-AUA

No idea, doesn't seem so in my reading of JonNYC's fab award sticky on the AA board, but 1-800 calls are free.

Either phone or sign up for QFF (Qantas FF) where you can see QF award availability on partners - probably the same inventory available to AA pax.

It's valid, but with stopovers everywhere it would exceed 20K miles, thus putting you into the next award tier. If you designate one or more intermediate connection points as plane changes only, then you can probably easily get it below 20K. Remember "counted" miles are only those between origin, stopovers, and ultimate destination, which in your case is Aruba, not Nairobi. In addition, there's no FC on FRA-ORD (only J) so I didn't look there in the first place.

I hate this web-site. My wife is upset for making her go places for the sake of using miles :)

Does this look valid for a 25000 mile award?

GRR-DFW-FRA-MAD
MAD-LHR-NBO
NBO-LHR-ORD
ORD-MIA-AUA
AUA-MIA-DTW
DTW-DFW-RNO
RNO-ORD-MKE

GRRMAD4059
MADNBO4304
NBOORD8499
ORDAUA2305
AUADTW2205
DTWRNO1899
RNOMKE1664
Total 24935

1) I know this would bust the mileage in my case, but has anyone confirmed lately that you can have two connections plus a stopover at a city. I.E. finish my trip (DFW has two connections plus one stop over).
DTW-DFW-RNO
RNO-DFW
DFW-MKE

2) Has anyone had success changing a All Partner reservation and converting it into a OneWorld reservation? I am guessing since it comes from the same buckets that would be okay.

I had looked into OW award for Africa last year, but decided on an all-partner (while LX was still a partner), mainly because SN and LX opened a lot of other possibilities. The nice thing about the OW award is that you can utilize either QF or CX to JNB the other way around.

If its just a reservation then no problem. If its been ticketed then big problem.