pkerr

Saver awards go quick and early and there also may never have e been any to begin with. Anytime awards are probably available but they cost ALOT.

GeezerCouple

I think the Partner awards can be better in terms of AA points needed.

https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-p...ward-chart.jsp

https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-p...ward-chart.jsp

And the equipment and service has, thus far, been so much better on the partner airlines, at least the ones we've used

GC

SanDiego1K

I checked both TPE-BOS and TPE-JFK, using AwardNexus. I'm sorry to say that I found nothing in the span of dates of interest to you. If there are any other cities from which you can get home economically, I'd also check them.

Unfortunately, it really is late to be looking for international business class tickets. My schedule permits me to book at the 11 month mark when seats become available. Then, it's easy to find seats. Closer in, it's very hit or miss. You can sign up for AwardNexus and set up searches to run each day. (This is a paid online tool.)

pkerr

But do they have partner awards that pull out of Anytime inventory or Saver Award inventory?

GeezerCouple

How would "partner" seat inventory directly relate to AA seat availability?
On code-shares?
We've not flown AA metal when using AA awards.

Or am I misunderstanding something about how this all works, which is certainly possible.

GC

pkerr

I don't know all the ins and outs of all the different partners and rules but here is an example. British airways is a partner with AA. If you wanted to use Avios points (BA's currency) to book an American flight there has to be AA Saver award space available in order to use Avios. I'm pretty sure it is similar with the other partners as well.

GeezerCouple

Hmmmmm.

If that's the case, then it also means there's no way to use "more points" to get a partner seat, given there is only on "point price" for partner flights, is that right?

There are certainly occasionally times we'd happily "pay more" if that were to be possible.
We've been delighted with the lower points needed for the "nicer" partner fights (thinking here of JL and CX F to Asia!). But if it were necessary, we'd want to use more points to get preferred partner dates/routes, IF there were to be a way to do that...??



GC

SanDiego1K

Partner awards only pull from saver award inventory.

GeezerCouple

But do all partner airlines, such as CX or JL, actually *have* the same "saver award" categories, like AA has?
I guess I need to learn a lot more [obviously!].

Thanks.

GC

WorldID

Thanks, SD1K, for looking into it for me. You sound very knowledgeable and I wonder what's your opinion about hiring an award booking service in my case?

No offense, and I'm new, but I simply couldn't comprehend the possibility of any award booking service provider be able to locate my tickets whilst AA told me that there are no seats available for the month of May via AA's oneworld partner airlines...

SanDiego1K

I think award booking folks are good if you have mileage in several places. But it appears you only have AA miles. If I were you I'd take the time to find the international routes from Asia that AA partners fly. Perhaps there is a gateway city, such as JFK which I tried for you, which has space. Then you only need to buy a ticket on to Boston. I am throwing ideas around here, but what about ORD or PHL. Perhaps you can piece together business to the gateway and coach onward. Or perhaps you can book an award to that city and find a cost effective coach ticket onward. If I were you, I'd spend a bit of money with AwardNexus and see what you find. I'd start a notebook as to the routes that you check because it can quickly get confusing. Another option is to look for award space for one person. For my personal case, Cathay has 3 flights a day from HKG to LAX. My husband and I are currently booked on different flights on the same day. We will fly as ticketed if need be, but Cathay sometimes opens up more space in the week or two before travel. AA doesn't charge to change the tickets as long as the arrival and departure airports remain the same.

GeezerCouple

Some awards seats do indeed open up during the last 2 weeks.

We were booked out of HKG last June, but couldn't get 2 F seats, so we got 1F and 1J on the same flight, and crossed our fingers.
Sure enough, about 2 weeks prior to that flight home, another F seat opened up, and we both had the best flight ever, thus far.
If we had needed to go F and J, that would have worked, too.

GC

WorldID

Thank you for your inputs and suggestions. I do have other airlines mileage, not much tho, about 105K on UA. I've been checking daily with CX availability for about 10 days now, but so far there's no Biz class seats are available within my traveling dates from TPE.

I think it's rather frustrating that all airlines seem to heavily advertised with earning high mileages, under certain terms and conditions, and get you to apply for their affiliated "credit card", but then when you attempt to redeem it for travel, there's simply no seat available for your travel dates at the class level you desire for. It's kina sad, no? What a system that is!

GeezerCouple

We've now had opportunities to use Jasper2009/LuxuryConsulting several more times.

And most recently, today, he got us two LH F seats to FRA, so we can then also experience the FRA F lounge and terminal!

This will be a real treat.
We had understood that for those without LH status, it could be almost impossible to get LH F seats, and we needed two.
But we also knew that about 2 weeks in advance, there was at least a possibility.
Lo and behold, there was a very special email this morning, that Jasper2009 had found 2 seats for us. How nice!!
We'll now cancel our other F tickets and re-bank those points for use in the future.

It was a surprise that he does more than awards bookings, but he sure does.
(Bye bye, Amex Platinum Travel, unless it's something no one else can do.)

He can get us just about the same perks as Amex Plat Travel, and with him, we are always dealing with the same person. He has a great memory and/or some great software, in terms of what type of accommodations we tend to prefer, and even if we are taking the younger set with us, etc.
He really does seem remarkably well traveled, with amazing recommendations, often from personal experience.

But it's getting the premium (mostly F) air tix that is so special. He's even "made it work" by using routings that I wasn't seeing on, say, matrix software, so we wouldn't even have had a chance on our own.

I forget if I mentioned that we had the pleasure of meeting him in person, about a year ago. By a weird coincidence, he was going to be staying at a hotel we had long since reserved, a year earlier, through a conference. So we meet briefly in the Gold Lounge at a Fairmont in Vancouver. This was when he had helped us with a single round trip to Japan and Hong Kong (and hotel for a few nights of an already planned 3 week trip), but we hadn't made the trip yet. Those CX F seat/beds will keep us spoiled forever (or perhaps until we try the new Singapore suites double accommodations somehow...).

We've since booked a very special cruise with his assistance, with F flights, of course :-) , plus a short holiday trip, and then another trip for later next year including those special premium air tickets), where he'll also be helping to arrange some private tours and drivers.

It was just luck of the draw that we chose "him". Well, there must have been *something* in his description here on FT that led us to try his services that first time.
We feel very fortunate to have crossed paths with him.
The level of personalized service is extraordinary.

GC

matinicus rock

Anyone got a contact email or phone number for Book Your Award?

I had them book award tickets for my family, then I decided to change my itinerary and so they changed it for me, but failed to have the miles from the original cancelled itinerary reposted to my AA account. I have tried reaching them for the last several days, but no response.

Just this morning I finally got so frustrated I decided to call AA myself to ask them to reinstate the miles to my account. I gave them the booking reference number and they told me the award was never cancelled! So I asked them to cancel the award, refund the taxes paid and I would gladly pay the $150+25 extra pax reinstatement fee. They then asked me for the expiration date of the card originally used to book the itinerary. Well, of course, that card was some card used by Book Your Award so I didn't have that info.

Well, that just set the alarm bells off at AA. The agent on the phone freaked out. She said you can't make a booking using miles unless the credit card paying for the taxes for the booking has the name of the AAdvantage member whose miles are being used. This constitutes a security breach. I said if this was the case then why on earth would you and/or the financial institution have accepted the booking in the first place!

I was then put on a series of holds for the next 35 minutes, only to be told I could not be helped because they needed the expiration date of the credit card originally used for the booking, so therefore they can't reinstate my miles. All 120,000 of them.

So now I'm out 120,000 miles, and Book Your Award has gone MIA. Can anyone please help me??!!