Clarification for booking award J/F on EY

[Mars2atk]

Hi, so I'm planning to go to South America/US next year and flying home from JFK. I'll be doing JFK - PER, and hoping to use my points for a J or F seat. I'll be flying in Sept 2016, so obviously seats aren't out yet, but I wanted to confirm a few things so I'm ready to jump on a seat as soon as they're released. I've never flown anything beyond Y and I'm a newbie trying to learn the system, so I'm pretty excited to experience a J/F flight. It'll also be my first trip with some solo travel, so a little nervous too!

Figured I'd put all my questions in one place and be grateful for any help/confirmation.

• Is there a list of DJ and codeshare planes with the newest refurbished J/F?
  • If i'm going to blow all the points I've accumulated over the years on one flight, it'll be nice to be on one of the fancy new seats.
  • From my understanding EY have the newer J seats on their A380s and 787s?
• If I want to book EY JFK - PER, I've read that some flights don't show up on the VA website, so I should be looking for an available Guest Seat on the EY site and calling VA to book with points. Are there any fees associated with calling to book with points?
• Are award seats for J/F a standard rate for JFK - PER? ie 125k and 187k?
  • I'm a little nervous since I've been looking at flights on the VA site for the JFK - PER route and every single day seems to be sold out of J reward seats. I'll probably only have enough for a J seat by the time seats are released, I'd reach enough for F by the end of the year, but then risk not getting either J or F
• How early are seats released? I know general rule is 11 months. I'm planning to fly 5/6 Sept 2016, but am pretty flexible +/- a few days either side.
• Would also love advice regarding planning flights into/within South America and whether a LAN pass is worth it. I don't have enough points to cover any other flight besides my flight home, and would rather use them for a comfortable trip home after trekking Macchu Picchu!
• *NEW* How would I go about booking a return trip with one Y leg with cash and the other J with points? Would I have to book them seperately. My concern is that occasionally there are sale return fare for eg. $1600 return PER-JFK, which is pretty good considering a one way Y fare is about $1100 by itself.

Still getting used to all the lingo, I've been trawling through as much of the forum as I can, I've even printed the abbreviation summary for quick reference, so apologies if I misused any terms. Guess I have to start somewhere!

Many thanks for the help

 

[RooFlyer]

Good questions re EY/VA; I'm interested in the answers too. Re getting a J guest seat; always worth looking at alternative departure airports (?BOS?) if you have that flexibility; JFK is obviously a very popular port to fly out of.

Re LAN pass, there is one thread you may want to check out here. When I looked into it (my TA also) earlier this year, LAN were re-jigging things, and the LAN Pass disappeared, except for their USA site. It may have re-appeared, but irrespective, dealing with LAN is a major PITA - calling the Aussie number gets you transferred to Chile (I guess) on bad lines with operators with a basic control of English.

If you have some additional budget, purchasing AA miles and redeeming for J seat on EY is possible. When there are bonus offers on (eg you might get 35% extra miles over the amount you purchased) it can be really good value, but with the coughpy FX at the moment, the value is only so-so. In this case you would book use your AA miles and book on the AA site. Of course there still has to be a Guest Seat available ...

 

[knasty]

Have you got your Amex velocity yet? Will help with the potential points shortfall.

 

[Moindardt]

I just looked on the ey website and found the seats and flight numbers and called the velocity line and booked. Had to feed her the flight numbers for the F tix as the a380 didn't come up but the 777 did. Was no booking fee because you couldn't book online from memory. Make sure you work out the points on the velocity website because they will give you the lower of the website and their system if a discrepancy. Saved us 80k points over the 6 tix.

 

[Mars2atk]

Re LAN pass, there is one thread you may want to check out here. When I looked into it (my TA also) earlier this year, LAN were re-jigging things, and the LAN Pass disappeared, except for their USA site. It may have re-appeared, but irrespective, dealing with LAN is a major PITA - calling the Aussie number gets you transferred to Chile (I guess) on bad lines with operators with a basic control of English.

Thanks for the link, that'll be handy as I'm planning on doing Easter Island too. I spoke to a LANTAM rep at one of those travel expos (which was largely useless!) and she said if I booked a flight into SA with a LANTAM codeshare, I could get an "airpass" or whatever they're called now. Supposedly StudentFlights TAs are able to come up with a quote on the spot and others had to send away for a quote.

I considered the AA approached, but like you said, with the current exchange rate, the value is a little meh. I'll look into it further for my other flights within the US. I actually need to get home from DTW, but I figured I was more likely to get a J award seat within my point budget from JFK. I'm piling as much of of my bills as possible onto my Velocity Amex to get my point balance up a bit, but any holiday bookings probably won't be put on the card in time to book my flight.

 

[Mars2atk]

Have you got your Amex velocity yet? Will help with the potential points shortfall.

I got one! But thanks for the suggestion. Regrettably, I wasted tons of my reward points on my old Citi platinum card on a bunch of lousy JB hifi gift cards before I realised I could've transferred them over to VA. And of course, now I'm short of the 20k min to transfer my leftover points.

Had to feed her the flight numbers for the F tix as the a380 didn't come up but the 777 did. Was no booking fee because you couldn't book online from memory. Make sure you work out the points on the velocity website because they will give you the lower of the website and their system if a discrepancy. Saved us 80k points over the 6 tix.

Sorry to be a pain, but could you explain what you mean by the a380 not coming up and the point discrepancy? I know that when I search EY for JFK - PER flights, sometimes the A380 flights JFK - AUH don't show up, unless I do the JFK-AUH and AUH-PER legs separately. Pointwise, of course I can't seem to find a day now to use as an example to compare points, but from memory J VA seats were 125k, but the SQ ones were about 187k.

 

[knasty]

I got one! But thanks for the suggestion. Regrettably, I wasted tons of my reward points on my old Citi platinum card on a bunch of lousy JB hifi gift cards before I realised I could've transferred them over to VA. And of course, now I'm short of the 20k min to transfer my leftover points.

Get a family member friend or random neighbourhood animal to apply for another one using your referral link, family pool the points to you, and partially fund their $350 annual fee with gift cards from the balance of your citi card.

 

[RooFlyer]

Get a family member friend or random neighbourhood animal to apply for another one using your referral link, family pool the points to you, and partially fund their $350 annual fee with gift cards from the balance of your citi card.

You've been running the Greek economy for the past few years, haven't you?