AA Status Credit Run

[kempvet]

I have looked around for a few days, seems that the best that I can do is $1.80 US a SC.
I heard chatter that if I look at Central America and the Caribbean I may do a little better, but I fail to see how, when business is only premium fare offered.
Question is, should I settle for $1.80 a SC, my other half wishes I would, and once again become a normal interactive person, and not a bleary eyed zombi mumbling airports codes in my sleep!

 

[kempvet]

by the way, when I post 15 messages, I can answer private messages to those that have sent them

 

[serfty]

by the way, when I post 15 messages, I can answer private messages to those that have sent them

Until you reach 15 posts, you are still able send a PM to a moderator. Please PM a mod with your reply to a PM and we'll forward it for you.

 

[Blackadder]

Depending on where you want to go etc, it may be worth looking at the smaller airports at a starting point.
For example if starting out of California don't look at LAX or Orange Co (even that is getting pricey these days), try Ontario as a starting point

 

[TimB]

I have looked around for a few days, seems that the best that I can do is $1.80 US a SC.
I heard chatter that if I look at Central America and the Caribbean I may do a little better, but I fail to see how, when business is only premium fare offered.
Question is, should I settle for $1.80 a SC, my other half wishes I would, and once again become a normal interactive person, and not a bleary eyed zombi mumbling airports codes in my sleep!

I posted about a new find (for me), costing about $1.39/SC, here: http://www.australianfrequentflyer....es/the-great-sc-chase-29553-8.html#post546719. However, in keeping with how things are done, I haven't provided many details, and you'll need to be familiar with discussions in the rest of the thread to make much sense of it.

The trick with travel to Central America and the Caribbean is to fit in as many first-class sectors as possible before the final business-class sector to your destination. That typically also means that the final sector is as short as possible. For example (and this isn't a particularly high-earning, low-cost example), don't fly JFK-SJU for 80 SCs when you could fly JFK-MIA-SJU for 150 SCs, or better still, LGA-RDU-MIA-SJU for 210 SCs.

 

[kempvet]

I guess that is where I have gone wrong, I have been trying to use San Juan as a kind of hub, I will try again and make the last business sector out of the USA a short one and see what happens. My other half is not keen on me doing this out of the USA thing, she is a US citizen, maybe one day I will be as well, and these sorts of things may need some explaining at question time, like Mr M, lot of "day" trips out of the country, anything you should be telling us?

I guess we need to two versions, one for domestic and the other for domestic and international in these SC runs, just wondering what the record is for an entirely domestic SC run, I have one already at $2100 for 1200 SC, maybe not worth killing myself looking for better value.

 

[TimB]

I guess that is where I have gone wrong, I have been trying to use San Juan as a kind of hub, I will try again and make the last business sector out of the USA a short one and see what happens. My other half is not keen on me doing this out of the USA thing, she is a US citizen, maybe one day I will be as well, and these sorts of things may need some explaining at question time, like Mr M, lot of "day" trips out of the country, anything you should be telling us?

That's one of the advantages of travelling to San Juan - it's still in the US, so no border crossings are required. There are also the US Virgin Islands, although I never seem to find a good status run there which is any better than just stopping in SJU.

 

[kempvet]

TimB

Just a few questions, when these flights are booked, are they all appearing on the one multi city booking page (with up to 6 options), so when the results are shown, it is one large result page with 8 or 10 flights. And are they all on consecutive days (ie new city pair needs the next day etc) or are some of them on the same day, and how critical is it to place the time of day (I am thinking that if the next leg leaves that night, it may be better than the next day), and is a key to a lower price, to avoid going twice through the same hub. Finally if I place "All day" is this going to cause a problem, or do I have to be more careful

I am familiar with how the SCs are deterimined, I am assuming that the miles show on the AA site are the ones that Qantas uses. But I want to check that this is exactly the case as MIA is just short of SJU a little less than 1200 miles, so it is definitely 60 and not 80 SCs

I guess that I know which cities to start in, and where to end, but I think that it is something that I am doing in the booking process that is wrong.

I have a run in mind, 1200 SCs for 2100 dollars, but it is not the easiest one to position, start and finish, but I want a few more options to see if I can improve on this.

 

[TimB]

Just a few questions, when these flights are booked, are they all appearing on the one multi city booking page (with up to 6 options), so when the results are shown, it is one large result page with 8 or 10 flights.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean here, but I think it depends on how you specified the search. I've done status runs where I've just specified start and finish, and the option with many connections appeared towards the end of a long list. But sometimes you need to do a multi-city search in order to get the flights you want.

And are they all on consecutive days (ie new city pair needs the next day etc) or are some of them on the same day, and how critical is it to place the time of day (I am thinking that if the next leg leaves that night, it may be better than the next day), and is a key to a lower price, to avoid going twice through the same hub. Finally if I place "All day" is this going to cause a problem, or do I have to be more careful

Almost all the status runs I've looked at are on the same day, or near to it; e.g. first flight leaves at 23:55. I think there's a maximum time (maybe 5 hours) that you can spend at an intermediate point before it's considered a stopover, and stopovers usually aren't allowed.

As for going through the same hub twice, that's controlled by the routing rules for the fare in question, which you can see with expertflyer.com. I know of one run that allows you to return to your point of origin, but I think all the crazy routes which allowed multiple transits through the same hub have disappeared.

I am familiar with how the SCs are deterimined, I am assuming that the miles show on the AA site are the ones that Qantas uses. But I want to check that this is exactly the case as MIA is just short of SJU a little less than 1200 miles, so it is definitely 60 and not 80 SCs

Sorry, I don't know for certain. I've always just relied on the great circle distance, as given by gcmap.com or Mileage Monkey.

I guess that I know which cities to start in, and where to end, but I think that it is something that I am doing in the booking process that is wrong.

Booking can often be the hardest part. I've been unable to book some trips on americanairlines.com.au, but have booked okay on aa.com. And I know that many Delta runs can't be booked on delta.com, but need to be booked through Expedia or something like that.

Hope this helps.

 

[dk4]

LGA-RDU-MIA-SJU

Be aware that if AA is experiencing network issues on the day that you are flying, they may "assist" you by rerouting you onto a direct New York to Miami flight, without informing you before you check-in!

 

[Flashback]

Be aware that if AA is experiencing network issues on the day that you are flying, they may "assist" you by rerouting you onto a direct New York to Miami flight, without informing you before you check-in!

Could you not apply for ORC in that case?

Sent from my HTC Desire using AustFreqFly

 

[TimB]

Be aware that if AA is experiencing network issues on the day that you are flying, they may "assist" you by rerouting you onto a direct New York to Miami flight, without informing you before you check-in!

The possibility of being rerouted exists with most status runs. However, airline operations usually go awry during the course of the day, and recover overnight, so it's most likely that you'd be able to get a couple of sectors flown before any disruptions hit.

Still, it's wise to try to avoid known causes of disruption, such as snow in northern airports during winter, and thunderstorms in the south in summer. MD-80s are also more prone to delays, as are particular airports (such as LGA).

Could you not apply for ORC in that case?

Yes, you should be be able to request original routing credit in case you've been rerouted. Note also that rerouting is the most likely cause of not flying in first class on an instant-upgrade fare.

 

[kempvet]

good point TimB,

I guess that at this time of year, best to avoid the northern part of the USA, and ideally connection times need to be 2 to 3 hours.
I have seen some good potential runs, but some of them have connection times 45 minutes right at the beginning of the run, if you miss this, then likely the
SCs on the remainder of the run could be diluted with downgrades and direct flights.

One last question. Do you routinely search for these flights away from the aa,com site, and then use the ss.com site for confirmation.

 

[TimB]

I guess that at this time of year, best to avoid the northern part of the USA, and ideally connection times need to be 2 to 3 hours.
I have seen some good potential runs, but some of them have connection times 45 minutes right at the beginning of the run, if you miss this, then likely the
SCs on the remainder of the run could be diluted with downgrades and direct flights.

When there's a choice of flights with the connections I want, I always pick the earlier options, which means that if any flight is delayed, there should be later flights that still let me complete the status run on the original routing (although with the risk of downgrades). However, I've been lucky, and haven't had to rely on this yet.

One last question. Do you routinely search for these flights away from the aa,com site, and then use the ss.com site for confirmation.

Oh no, I never search for flights on aa.com -- that would drive me insane. I search on matrix.itasoftware.com, and when I have something I'm interested in, I look to check that it's bookable on aa.com.

 

[kempvet]

also see that these flights are very time sensitive as you already stated, could be this connection time issue that you talked about, I tried changing to morning from early morning and there was a 400 dollar difference by simply doing this.