A couple of questions from an AAdvantage newbie

[dalereardon]

With CX I have found excellent availability about 6 months out as well on the MEL-HKG route. Then try checking about a month out onwards.

Dale.

 

[MiLK_MaN]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Just signed up for a platinum challenge. I am currently QF WP, at which point should I change my FF# over to AA for my QF flights? Basically I want to ensure that I still have lounge and/or possibility of an upgrade opportunity (hopeless I know..) before crediting the flights to my AA#.

 

[legroom]

Just signed up for a platinum challenge. I am currently QF WP, at which point should I change my FF# over to AA for my QF flights? Basically I want to ensure that I still have lounge and/or possibility of an upgrade opportunity (hopeless I know..) before crediting the flights to my AA#.

Just before you leave the lounge for boarding.

Into the lounge with QFF number on BP

Out of the lounge for boarding with AA number on BP

Keep the BP or take a photo showing the FF number on the BP.

 

[v8Statesman]

I think he means out with QF in with AA =

Do it as you're leaving the lounge for the flight.

 

[Danger]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

I made an AAdvantage reservation for PER-xSYD-xHKG-MNL yesterday with AA miles, the first two flights on QF and the last on CX. That came to 35k miles and a pittance in taxes. I really wanted the overnight CX flight so I called back to change it. The agent then said it would be 52.5k. I asked how it could be different when it was exactly the same routing but with a different carrier and he said that CX's maximum permitted mileage is less than QF's for PER-MNL. (Incidentally, ExpertFlyer shows both routes as being beyond MPM+25% but apparently the QF one is valid.)

I was able to change to PER-xSYD-xHKG-MNL with CX instead of QF and wasn't penalised with additional points (ie. I was able to get what I originally told I couldn't have for 35k miles by booking the QF flights first and several weeks after ticketing changing it to what I wanted originally).

 

[Kangol]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

I was able to change to PER-xSYD-xHKG-MNL with CX instead of QF and wasn't penalised with additional points (ie. I was able to get what I originally told I couldn't have for 35k miles by booking the QF flights first and several weeks after ticketing changing it to what I wanted originally).

Interesting, did you get charged the phone booking fee?

Edit: Whoops, didn't see that you are EXP and don't get charged it anyway.
I had an idea of doing that (booking an award with origin-destination available online and ringing to change to another carrier to avoid the phone booking fee) but haven't had the need just yet...

 

[Nizar]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Is it possible to book QF PE using AA miles ?

 

[knasty]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Is it possible to book QF PE using AA miles ?

Aa doesn't do PE awards.

 

[austgap]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Regarding routing, I've done a few AA awards which have had used that handy 23hr stopover rule, yet their have always been travelling in one direction.

Could you with one award do BNE-PERx-MEL-KUL-HKG-BKK or does by going back east push it into two awards vs one South Pacific - Asia2?

 

[Kangol]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Regarding routing, I've done a few AA awards which have had used that handy 23hr stopover rule, yet their have always been travelling in one direction.

Could you with one award do BNE-PERx-MEL-KUL-HKG-BKK or does by going back east push it into two awards vs one South Pacific - Asia2?

Just to be clear, are you talking about transits (ie <24hrs) in PER, MEL, KUL and HKG?

Because the way you wrote it indicates that you are talking about a transit in PER only and stopovers (24hrs and greater) in MEL, KUL and BKK. This is not allowed anymore because AA removed their distance based "oneworld" awards. I don't know if you intended on this. "x" = transfer, "o" (which is usually left out) = stopover.

If you are talking about the former (transits everywhere except the final destination of BKK), then no. This is due to MPM.

See here:
American Airlines Award Routing Rules - One Mile at a Time

BNE-BKK MPM is 5424 miles, 25% over that is 6780 miles.
BNE-PER-MEL-KUL-HKG-BKK is 10484 miles.

There is the issue of "most direct routing". Drop a couple of segments and you should be fine to price it as one award.

 

[austgap]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Just to be clear, are you talking about transits (ie <24hrs) in PER, MEL, KUL and HKG?

Because the way you wrote it indicates that you are talking about a transit in PER only and stopovers (24hrs and greater) in MEL, KUL and BKK. This is not allowed anymore because AA removed their distance based "oneworld" awards. I don't know if you intended on this. "x" = transfer, "o" (which is usually left out) = stopover.

If you are talking about the former (transits everywhere except the final destination of BKK), then no. This is due to MPM.

See here:
American Airlines Award Routing Rules - One Mile at a Time

BNE-BKK MPM is 5424 miles, 25% over that is 6780 miles.
BNE-PER-MEL-KUL-HKG-BKK is 10484 miles.

There is the issue of "most direct routing". Drop a couple of segments and you should be fine to price it as one award.

Sorry Kangol,

I wasn't very clear, the booking doesn't involve any stopovers, simply a 22hr stop in Perth before continuing onto Bangkok via MEL,KUL,HKG (no availability on the direct PER-KUL). The question was is it an issue going backwards within the some zone.

The MPM is a weird thing - my last AAdvantage miles booking involved BNE-SGN 4,018miles - yet I was able to easily book a six sector route with two 23hr stopovers of 7,597miles. Is this a newly enforced rule, as I did my last booking in Easter.

 

[Kangol]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Sorry Kangol,

I wasn't very clear, the booking doesn't involve any stopovers, simply a 22hr stop in Perth before continuing onto Bangkok via MEL,KUL,HKG (no availability on the direct PER-KUL). The question was is it an issue going backwards within the some zone.

The MPM is a weird thing - my last AAdvantage miles booking involved BNE-SGN 4,018miles - yet I was able to easily book a six sector route with two 23hr stopovers of 7,597miles. Is this a newly enforced rule, as I did my last booking in Easter.

Oh. The issue with "going backwards in the same zone" is subject to "most direct routing" (these *rules* are likely to be intertwined), which a phone agent may enforce - my guess is that you'd have to ring up to make a 5 segment one-way itinerary as described.
eg. a valid "going backwards in the same zone" itinerary would be PER-xSYD-LHR (on QF), which is the "most direct" due to the lack of QF int services from PER. So going backwards alone isn't the issue, it's the most direct routing (where applicable).

The MPM + 25% isn't a new rule AFAIK, you may have been lucky with your BNE-SGN booking (did you book it over the phone)?

It's worth a shot, the worst they can say is no.

 

[The Rok]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Does anyone know if you can use AA miles to book an award flight on EY ex Australia?

Say PER-AUH-DUB return? And if so, how many miles?

 

[knasty]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Yes but two separate awards not a single Aus-Europe.

 

[Kangol]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

What time (Dallas time) do AAwards become available to book?

 

[serfty]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

What time (Dallas time) do AAwards become available to book?

See these FT posts:

Originally Posted by serfty
Thank you armus for the post from last year which I have re-quoted below. I was surprised that there was no comment on it at the time - it is worthy of a Wiki.

What you describe is exactly how I saw things when researching and booking an ex LAX award this evening for April 1st 2015. (I did a couple of dry run sover the last week or so.)
.________
Cliff Notes:

Availability showed up (E/F) just after midnight Central time but was not bookable from West coast origins. Awards were bookable from Central (DFW) and Eastern ports (NYC).

Two hours later after midnight WST time I was able to book ex LAX.
________

Expertflyer showed no availability on the target flight at around 11:30pm DFW time, but appeared soon after midnight in Dallas.

It was not showing as bookable on AA.com however.

At about 3 minutes after midnight in LAX these flight showed up and I was able to make my booking.

Originally Posted by armus
I haven't seen a centralized & complete hot-to guide on how to grab sAAver seats on flights that typically offer such seats when the flight first becomes available 330/331 days (aka 11 months) in advance. Either I'm not looking in the right place (I'd expect it to be here in the wiki) or y'all are trying to avoid empowering more people compete with you for those seats

.

I'll share my observations for someone based in US trying to book strictly AA metal for Europe to US. Your options/experiences may vary -- experiment in advance of the day you want to determine if a different model applies (or if days have shifted due to a leap year). Today is Sunday and I'll use that as an example.

On Sunday you can see next year's Monday departure on the website. The following day's flight (on Tuesday) will appear on the website at the flight's local time-of-day departure time (e.g., Tuesday's 2 PM LHR departure will first appear at 2 PM LHR time on Sunday, or morning in US).

For sAAver, Monday's flight will first show saver seats on the website when it's midnight in the departing time zone (e.g., afternoon/evening in US for an LHR departure). The seats won't actually be bookable on the website (attempting to book flight results in a message that it's no longer available) until it's midnight in Dallas. I don't know if calling will have the same problem. Prior to midnight in Dallas about the most you can do is experiment to see how many sAAver seats will be made available by increasing the seat count until the flight disappears as a sAAver option (some flights only get 1 seat, while some get more allocated mid-week compared to weekend flights).

When it's midnight in Dallas you can jump on the flight(s) that depart in or east of the Dallas time zone. An example source of time is Page Redirection . If the first flight(s) you want are east of Dallas time zone then you can get to the flight selection step a few minutes before midnight (be sure to be logged in already), have the flight selected, wait for midnight in Dallas, and then click on "Continue" to start the reservation process. Jump through the steps as quickly as possible to place a hold. Skip the seat selection step. After the hold has been placed you can go back later to pick out seats.

If you need to get more flights that depart west of Dallas (e.g., LHR->LAX->HNL), then you'll need to wait until it's midnight in the flight's departing time zone. You can then call AAdvantage to revise your held reservation to add that next flight (if you expect a large hold time, e.g., due to recent flight disruptions, then you might want to call before midnight expecting to reach at agent at/after midnight). This should not incur an additional booking fee (at least not if you opt to keep the reservation on hold and later book via website, but regardless the website is probably faster and less error prone than via phone). While on the phone you may want to confirm via website that the flight does appear as sAAver in case the agent tells you they see no availability -- they sometimes need the prod to try harder. If you're anti-social and want to avoid the phone you can risk cancelling your held reservation and try to rebook from scratch with the additional flight (it can take up to 15 minutes for the seats to show up again, assuming they show up again at all).

That’s it. The above targets the paranoid, though the last time I did this I could tell that the remaining sAAver seats on a flight were all grabbed within the first 60 seconds of availability and they too skipped the seat selection step (either that or they really like the back row of the plane and then decided they'd rather join me up front

). Some of the things I mention here aren’t original to me – I just tried to centralize the advice a bit and fill in some voids with my own observations (and no doubt some will say it’s wrong or bad). If there’s already a post like this then maybe it should go in the wiki.

 

[Kangol]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Thanks, so for East Coast Australian departures being 15 hrs ahead of Dallas time, the earliest you can book is 331 days out at 3pm AEST?

 

[serfty]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

Thanks, so for East Coast Australian departures being 15 hrs ahead of Dallas time, the earliest you can book is 331 days out at 3pm AEST?

I have no experience with that - I suggest doing some trial runs without completing the booking in the days leading up.

Of course, this may be different in that you are looking at QF/MH/CX/BA metal rather than AA.

 

[Nizar]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

I have no experience with that - I suggest doing some trial runs without completing the booking in the days leading up.

Of course, this may be different in that you are looking at QF/MH/CX/BA metal rather than AA.

I didn't realise that some AA seats are in that sort of demand, I thought seats that hard to secure were mainly QF F transpacific.
The post from FT which you copied and pasted on here said that the seats that he saw were gone within 60 seconds of being released. That seems a whole other level !

 

[Kangol]

Re: Couple of AAdvantage questions from a newbie to it

I have no experience with that - I suggest doing some trial runs without completing the booking in the days leading up.

Of course, this may be different in that you are looking at QF/MH/CX/BA metal rather than AA.

I tried today at about 2.30pm booking a QF flight ex-SYD on 9 July 2015 (ie 331 days out), it was showing as being selectable but not bookable.
Was busy for a while and checked at ~5pm. The same flight was available and able to be booked.

So that is some evidence to support the theory of "When it's midnight in Dallas you can jump on the flight(s) that depart in or east of the Dallas time zone".
Whether it is 5 hours (UTC) or 15 hours (AEST) ahead, you'd still need to wait for midnight in Dallas.