Patty

I was also able to get all the way to the purchase screen on Expedia for a one way ticket on KL 566, but not on Orbitz or Travelocity. Prices out at $2319 in business. I didn't complete the transaction for obvious reasons so don't know if there would be any problems at the time of ticketing.

The Kenya Airways site also let me go all the way to the payment screen and I even got an email confirmation of my booking with my record locator (though I didn't enter any credit card details). The fare was $2376 and you must select either ticket pick up at NBO or a KQ ticket office in Nairobi. The flight is listed as e-ticket eligible, so I'm not sure why you need to select a pick up option at all. Now I need to figure out how to cancel my reservation though I suppose it will just self cancel when I don't pay.

Next I tried the KLM site with the country set to Kenya which produced the same $2376 fare as the Kenya Airways site and again I was able to go all the way to the purchase screen and you can select United States as your billing address. Only Visa or Mastercard are accepted online and you can select e-ticketing as an option.

So it looks like you may be able to purchase online through Expedia, Kenya Airways, or KLM with Expedia seemingly the most user friendly at the lowest cost.

For future reference, I just remembered that KL upgrades book into D which is the same fare bucket that's used for business class awards, so unless they have a sub classes within D, then no award seats = no upgrade seats.

Finally, another FYI, with CO, NW, or FB miles you can override award capacity restrictions on KL flights by spending more (usually double) miles.

Good luck!

sevendown

Patty -- Thanks so much for helping, but I can't seem to make it work. Strangely enough it will not let me do it in business class -- just economy. Instead, it tries to put me on a Kenya Airways plane that KLM codeshares with, leaving in the morning, not the evening when I need to fly. My date of travel is Jan 5, 2008, and you are correct that I want to get on KL0566.

Thanks for the help. This is perplexing. The reason I want to buy business class tickets is 1) that is the class I want to travel in ultimately, and 2) I need a fully refundable ticket at this juncture in case KLM ultimately does open up some award seats on that flight.

Patty

Aha! That date really makes all the difference. According to www.seatcounter.com that flight is showing zero seats available. Could you possibly fly on Jan 4 or make the KQ flight work?

lifelist

Patty - when I suggested doing a RT Economy AMS-NBO, it was with the implication that sevendown would then cancel their award flight AMS-NBO, and use the miles to upgrade the economy class ticket; rather than trying to simply abandon one leg.

Be careful about thinking that just because a travel site like Expedia or Travelocity lets you buy the ticket, that it'll work. For my safari to Tanzania, I did SFO-LHR on an award ticket, and LHR-JRO on a paid ticket through Kenya Airways.

I tried to buy the LHR-JRO portion through Travelocity, and it let me - I even gave them credit card information. I got the confirmation e-mail and thought everything was fine. Within a week, I got an e-mail from Travelocity to call their customer service, and when I talked to them, they told me they couldn't actually book the ticket and cancelled my reservation. I actually tried it with another travel website, and the same thing happened.

I ended up having to call American Express and have a regular travel agent take care of things for me. And, this actually turned out well, as my aunt was traveling from Cleveland to LHR, and her flight got cancelled because of a big storm. She was going to miss her LHR-JRO flight, but called up the American Express travel agent and they took care of everything. There's something to be said for good old fashioned travel agents.

Patty

Problem resolved http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34980514

Patty

Or maybe not http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34981073