The.walker

I've got about after a million avios but I'm trying to purchase tickets for my mom and a kid (she's 4) along with me and the wife. Is there any possibility of buying 4 in a single flight? How should I go about it? These are for the next 2-3 weeks btw.

KTM-SFO

KingCanute

Not apart from searching for 4 tickets every day between now and departure and hoping for the best...

I would suggest your chances are probably about as close to zero as it is possible to get to find 4 x J award tix across 2 connecting flights.

ph-ndr

Sure it's possible. As long as you don't want to travel with the three other people, on the same day, on the same flight, to the same place.

-A

KingCanute

Actually one option may be to book cash fares and then reduce the cash element with avios. It's not always as good value for using avios as a redemption though (with or without a cash element), but at least you will earn some more avios back on the tickets

The.walker

I've thought of that option, too but with a different approach. Purchasing 2 reward tickets and 2 cash (and upgrading them using avios).

85k avios + $242 is the normal cost of tickets but these days, even economy tickets are around $1400 (one-way). Not sure how many avios would be required to upgrade 2 tickets, though.

KingCanute

Assuming 2 x J reward tickets were even available at the normal x1 rate you cite, you would then run into the same problem trying to upgrade the other 2 from cash fare Y to J in advance on the same flights using points. Advance upgrades with points come from the same fare bucket as full redemptions. No redemptions available equals no advance points upgrade availability either.

Your only options then would be to chance upgrading at the airport subject to space available (but even then that is only allowed for the immediately departing sector, not for the full itinerary), or to look at travelling on separate flights or in different cabins. Or all in Y which may have better award availability.

Perhaps there may be some x1 or x2 award availability for 1 or more of you. But for 4 people wanting to travel together in J on the same flights I suspect cash or cash plus avios are your only realistic options, other than looking elsewhere.

Crisu69

I dont want to disappoint you, but there are no business award or upgrade seat available KTM-SFO in the next 2-3 weeks. Not even Q2.

All flights look like this:





You should try to book not from KTM but from DEL for example. There are some flights available with "normal" Qmiles (not Q2) DEL-LHR-SFO but i doubt there ares 4 seats available:

The.walker

Availability changes on a daily basis and at times, hourly, especially on this route. That said, how the hell is it showing 80750 avios to you? It's ALWAYS 85k (at the very least).

KingCanute

High tier members get a 5% discount on redemptions

Schwann

You'd have to have booked this about 11 months ago to have any chance of booking one redemption J seat, let alone four.

RK23

It's very very rare but there are some dates with 4 out of SEA, YUL, and I think I saw one day from ORD and DFW.

sadiqhassan

I recently booked 2 award seats JFK-DOH-JNB (2 total were available). The following day 2 more seats were available

Schwann

Maybe I need to eat my words. I don't think I've ever seen four QR J seats available for redemption. Finding one is often hard enough!

The.walker

More often than not, people that book using AA miles are likely to cancel their flights. I found 2 up for grabs this morning and managed to book them. My dad literally booked his flight 24 hrs prior to his flight. It was 2x for 10 days straight and voila! 85k for KTM-Doh-SFO (3 months ago) with a very short layover (4 hrs).