Hi all,
it is two week that I am trying to book two round trip business class ticket from Italy to US.
The first destination was Bozeman, then Calgary.
There is no way to get there and to get out of there in all august!
There is no one single seat available??
Is that possible??I really do not think that they are all booked. I have tried to leave from MXP, CDG, AMS and stop by EWR, JFK, ORD, SEA, ATL, BOS....no one seat!!
I have so changed my destination to Hawaii.
Same story!
It seems that there are no award business class seat available starting 1 august ending 15 september.
The call center told me that Delta flights are almost impossible for every destination year around, and that I may have a bit of luck with CO or NW.
They told that business class award are usually booked from Gold status and that they have the right to keep the booking till the week before the oubound flight.
SO I asked forn another flight for next october, when I asked for time limit I was told one week from today! I am gold status and I cannot hold the reservation while they told me that every flight to US is booked because of gold members!!
SOmething is wrong here....Guess what??
I strongly believe that they do not want to give away F class seats for free!
If anyone have some suggestion...
Matteo

If you are looking at getting business class on NW, CO, or DL, the summer is extremly difficult. You are quite right that the fundamental problem is that no one wants to give away business seats for free that would otherwise go out as revenue seats.

The best way to search within skyteam for awards online is through NWA's Japan website. Here is a link:

http://asiares.nwa.com/?offsite=fals...t.cabinClass=C

It may also be a matter of the agent you talked to was not well trained enough or too lazy to do the difficult searching necessary.

Try KLM/NWA through AMS/DTW or MSP.

I don't know if all the availability from the other airlines are there for AZ FFers either. That could be a problem as well.

It is very difficult to impossible to get seats between the US and Europe in Business, especially in the summer, but it is not impossible. There are a LOT of options with all the SkyTeam carriers. A small sampling includes (some are seasonal):
AF:
CDG - NYC/YYZ/ORD/LAX/ATL/CVG/IAD/DTW/PHL/IAH/BOS

AZ:
MXP/FCO - NYC/YYZ/ORD/BOS/CVG

OK:
PRG - JFK/YYZ

KL/NW:
AMS - NYC/YYZ/BOS/IAD/ORD/DTW/MSP/IAH
DTW/MSP - CDG/AMS/FRA/DUS and a few others

DL:
ATH/BCN/NCE/MXP/FCO/AMS/FRA/MAD/CDG (and lots more, but I don't feel like looking them all up) - JFK/ATL/CVG

CO:
More than DL - Lots of destinations and I don't feel like looking them all up.

SU flies from Moscow to a few places in north america, too.

Basically you have to figure out which carrier can get you across the ocean. Once you do that you can back-fill the rest of the flights on either end. Some may be in coach, but that shouldn't matter too much.

And there may not be seats available - there is no guarantee from any of the carriers that there will be, and those seats sell for a lot of $$$, but if you do some of the work yourself to find avaialability the agents can fill the rest of it in.

Right now I see a fair amount of availability scattered throughout August '06 for CDG - DTW, specifically on NW 49. If you can add on the Bozeman flight to that you should be all set.

S.

AZ's award availability has generally been what comes up on www.nwa.com, www.delta.com and www.continental.com when not logged in as an elite and looking at standard award segments -- that is don't log in with an elite account and ignore those segments only listed at the "anytime" (i.e., "choice", "perkpass"/"easypass") level.

The biggest problem is not get to US, but the HUB to Bozeman or Hawaii.
AS agent told me they have availability to get to LAX or NYC or MSP or SEA but not the others legs.
He just told me that all flights are closed to AZ awards.
Keep looking...

DL has availability DTW-SLC-BZN on some days in August for standard coach rewards. I know you want the J tickets, but the SLC-BZN is in a CRJ anyways, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. The flights are operated as a NW codeshare as well.

Got it finally!!!!
They drove me crazy.
I had to ask to speak to a Supervisor and get upset to get the ticket.
After that in 20 minutes they found me all the round trip from Italy to Hawaii with the dates I wanted.
Now I can say thanks to Skyteam.