My Candy Theft Story

[chrisb]

Last year I found myself with a QF PER-SYD-LAX-LAS return ticket for Travel in early June. Being QFPS, the concept of 15 months of Saphire and QP access appealed, so I did the Plat Challenge and came out of it with about 43,000 AA points and Platinum until Feb '07.

I recently found out I have to be in NZ for my grandmother's birthday. Inspired by NM's Candy Theft story I started poking around to try and figure out my options with AA. Unfortunately for PER-NZ, there were ONLY business class awards available for the days I needed to travel, so for 2 people I needed 70,000 points - Damn, 27,000 short.

However, AA allows you to buy upto 40,000 miles per year, AND they can (unofficially) allow you to book and hold a booking for two weeks, even if you don't have enough points for it.

So, I grabbed my award seats and then put in a request to buy the 27000 miles required.

It's all come through and for a total of about $1250 ($1030 in miles, $220 tax) and 43,000 AA points I now have 2 x Business Class seats PER-NZ on the exact dates and flights I required.

While not the best value Candy Theft we've seen, this is another example of the flexibility and value of the AA program - It got me where I wanted to go in Business Class for about half the cost of buying economy seats.

Chrisb.

Ps. I also earned 2500 QF points by putting it on my Amex... Bonus.

 

[NM]

Hey Chris, great story. Now it would be interesting to see what those award seats would have cost you if using QF FF program? You would be requiring four zone 4 awards for 2 return trips, so that is 200,000 QF FF points for starters. And then the Fuel Fines would have added 2 x $37.60 plus 2 x $62.00 making a total of about $200.

So not only would you have been way short of the required QF FF points required, they would have stung you for $200 extra for the fuel fines.

What you ended up paying for the extra AA miles is still less than you would have paid for an economy airfare if you had paid for a ticket. Great deal all round. And AA's policy of holding the booking for up to 2 weeks is indeed helpful in situations like this. QF will do it for a short time for their high-status FF members, but AA seem much more willing to offer it as an option.

Enjoy your candy .