horse glasses

I would like to fly to Brisbane sometime in November or December for about a week. Assuming I am flexible with dates and what airport I leave from (PIT or CMH is ideal, but not necessary), is there an easy way to search for flights with confirmed upgrades available (through miles + copay). I fear booking one with a wait list because I know I can't make that flight in Y and I have the impression that upgrades to Australia are not easy. What is the best way to do this (besides just buying J)?

jsloan

UA doesn't fly to BNE, so you're looking at flying to SYD/MEL (or AKL, but that's a long flight in Y) and then connecting from there. Your best bet is to activate expert mode and search just the long-haul flights -- IAH-SYD, LAX-SYD, LAX-MEL, SFO-SYD, SFO-AKL -- and look for R > 0. A miles + cash copay will clear immediately on the longhaul flight as long as R space exists. Once you know which flight to target, search for PIT/CMH-BNE and look for an itinerary that includes the flight(s) you found.

It's often more difficult to find domestic R space than international, so while you might end up in Y to the gateway, IMO it's worth it to get the confirmed space on the long flight.

Now, having said that, Nov/Dec is approaching high season for ANZ travel. So that's going to add a bit to the difficulty. If you can travel mid-week, that will help -- if you have go fly on the weekends, you're going to run into a lot of other people with the same schedule.

findark

Early November mid-week is your best starting point; believe high season as coded on fares starts 11-Dec-18 for New Zealand and 30-Nov-18 (from memory so I might be wrong) for Australia.

horse glasses

My schedule is pretty flexible, so I'm able to fly whenever is cheaper/more available. I can deal with Y for flights under say, 8 hours, but for the long one, I definitely don't want to! For some reason I thought there was a way to do this, but I guess I just need to manually look through every long flight to find one with R? No way to search just that? PIT-BNE is only around $1100 in Y in November, so that's why I figured it was an ok time to go.

jsloan

You can go into advance search and search for an upgrade-eligible flight. The problem is, nearly every single flight will be yellow -- indicating "upgrade not available all the way through," and you'll have to click separately on each result to see which segments are actually clearing. (Also, there have been frequent reports of problems with this search anyway).

Antonio8069

Route via SIN & buy an LCC ticket from there. I am seeing availability PIT-MEL via PEK - Polaris First connecting with SQ. Sounds ideal!