AAFrequentFlyer

<i>Just booked the following with the exact dates I wanted. 180K AA miles, (pay attention to the dates):</i>


AMERICAN AIRLINES

1805

TPA Tampa

10/18/2006 08:10 PM

MIA Miami

10/18/2006 09:10 PM

First
Z 3E


LAN PERU S.A

511

MIA Miami

10/19/2006 01:20 AM

LIM Lima

10/19/2006 05:50 AM

Business
U 2D


LAN PERU S.A

510

LIM Lima

10/23/2006 10:40 AM

MIA Miami

10/23/2006 05:25 PM

Business
U 2D


<i>Finish the first part of the trip. Need to purchase a R/T ticket MIA-TPA. At the moment it's $178 all in.

Starting the second part in March 2007.</i>


AMERICAN AIRLINES

1562

MIA Miami

03/06/2007 01:35 PM

YYZ Toronto

03/06/2007 04:49 PM

Business
U 3E


BRITISH AIRWAYS

92

YYZ Toronto

03/06/2007 06:25 PM

LHR London

03/07/2007 06:25 AM

First
Z 2A


BRITISH AIRWAYS

846

LHR London

03/07/2007 08:20 AM

WAW Warsaw

03/07/2007 11:40 AM

Business
U 2A


BRITISH AIRWAYS

849

WAW Warsaw

03/21/2007 07:30 AM

LHR London

03/21/2007 09:15 AM

Business
U 2A


BRITISH AIRWAYS

1388

LHR London

03/21/2007 10:55 AM

MAN Manchester

03/21/2007 11:50 AM

Economy
V unassigned


AMERICAN AIRLINES

55

MAN Manchester

03/27/2007 10:45 AM

ORD Chicago

03/27/2007 01:00 PM

Business
U 3D


AMERICAN AIRLINES

781

ORD Chicago

03/29/2007 11:02 AM

SFO San Francisco

03/29/2007 01:39 PM

First
Z 3E


AMERICAN AIRLINES

392

SFO San Francisco

04/01/2007 10:15 PM

MIA Miami

04/02/2007 06:24 AM

First
Z 1E


AMERICAN AIRLINES

1724

MIA Miami

04/02/2007 08:10 AM

TPA Tampa

04/02/2007 09:10 AM

First
Z 3E



<i>I guess I'm spending my yearly, month long vacation in Europe next year. Get to visit family in Poland, take sidetrips to Romania and Bulgaria, wrap up the European adventure in UK to see ManUTD put the rest of the league behind them far enough to guarantee championship and finally see my sister in Chicago and visit a good friend in San Francisco for couple of days. How can you beat that?</i>

AAFrequentFlyer

It got better. I changed the BA YYZ-LHR from F to J and the entire award changed from an F award (180K miles) to J award (130K miles) plus $210 in taxes and fees.

A straight AA All Partner J award to Europe is 90K miles and to South America is 60K miles. 20K miles is 20K miles.

AAFrequentFlyer

and the stopovers in MAN, ORD and SFO, of which only 1 would be allowed under the normal ALL PARTNER award, (and SFO probably would not be allowed at all), so basically another 40K miles saved....

Love the mileage game!

clevelandbrown

You obviously play the game very well.

You are a top level status in the frequent flyer program, I believe, and that gives you an edge, an earned edge in my opinion.

I'm curious how much time you spent putting this all together. It seems like the type of trip where you have to do a lot of research, then guide the phone agent through making the bookings.

JaneB

I also just booked 2 AAFF award tickets for Corpus Christi to Johannesburg returning from Victoria Falls (Jan 15 - Feb 26) using 75,000 miles for coach plus $137 for taxes each. I merely printed out schedules for the possible flights on AA web site, selected what I prefered, and phoned the agent. It works!

LvSun

Also depends on who you talk to at the airlines. I tried booking a ticket online for my Mom using Divided Miles, had troubles since she was not already listed in Preferences, had all the flight info in front of me, etc. Gave up and instead tried to book over the phone. Gal on the phone told me I could not use my Dividend Miles to get from Point A to Point B (contradition of what I found on the net). Went back to the net, called support for the 3rd time (got 2 different answers to one question), and finally got the flight booked. Took 3 hours.

What??? Can you get more flights on the net than you can by calling. I had given the gal all the flight info I had in front of me.

wally34949

I think it is obvious who is causing this &quot;Global Warming&quot; problem.

rkkwan

Looks like I will be doing IAH-AMS, CDG-IAH on CO's non-stops over the Labor Day weekend.

No room for IAH-CDG on the outbound for 50K standard award even for elites on Friday 9/1, so I'll be training down to Paris.

cynstalker

&quot;It got better. I changed the BA YYZ-LHR from F to J and the entire award changed from an F award (180K miles) to J award&quot;

<b>AAFrequentFlyer</b>: How did you make that change? I've been trying to get a bc mileage trip from BOS or BDL to Windhoek, Namibia in Feb/Mar 2007 with no luck on the AA website.

<font color="green">Cyn</font>

AAFrequentFlyer

www.aa.com will only allow award booking on AA metal.

So, first you need to figure out the acceptable dates and routings and then call AAdvantage reservation.

AA has 2 different awards, All Partner Award and OneWorld Awards.

Both awards are totally different in structure and mileage requirements.

I have posted the basic rules here on the airline forum sometime back. Do a search for OneWorld or OW award.

You can also read a great &quot;sticky&quot; at the top of the OneWorld forum on www.flyertalk.com, which will explain in detail all the rules.

Most of the time but NOT ALL the time, the OneWorld awards are better and little cheaper than the straight All Partner awards, but there are also some restrictions and rules which make it less appealing to some. These are not easy to understand at first, but if you do enough research, it really isn't that hard.

All Partner awards are your basic awards between 2 cities (if within a region) or 2 continents. Very easy to understand and put together (as in (your city) in North America and the (destination city) in Africa. Again, this may work better in some instances but it restricts the passenger to flights between the 2 continents only and very limited stopovers.

But either way, you have to call AA to actually book it. www.aa.com does not have the capability.

Good luck!

(if you want to post your basic trip requirement and any and all stopovers and some dates, I will try to tell you which award may work better for you).

AAFrequentFlyer

The award I posted above is OneWorld award in business class and it's 130K miles.

If I wanted to do the same thing with the All Partner award, then it would be:

NA to SA - 60K miles
NA to EU - 90K miles
NA to NA - 40K miles

TOTAL = 190K miles.

cynstalker

I would appreciate any help you're willing to give!

We can be very flexible in our dates - we're looking at taking 6 weeks or so in February/March - even into April. We can fly out of either BDL or BOS (bdl being soooo much easier). It really doesn't matter <b>where</b> in Namibia we land - although I think there is a limited choice there. We have no routing preference.

Thanks AAFrequentFlyer!

<font color="green">Cyn</font>

AAFrequentFlyer

Just some quick observations:

AFAIK, AA does not fly to BDL. They do fly to Hartford or Providence if it helps, but BOS may be your best bet when doing an award.

Also, AFAIK, British Airways will get you to Windhoek with a connection in JNB.

Ok, we got that out of the way, now the award possibilities:

OneWorld - 130K miles for business
All-Partner - 150K miles for business

It would seem like the OW would be the logical choice, but maybe not in your case.

OneWorld is great when you want to stop in different places, because they only count the mileage between the stopover places and it's in straight line. Since you are going to Africa and OneWorld is somewhat limited there, your possibilites of doing stopovers are VERY limited, and thus it may not be worth it to fly with many connections just to satisfy the rules and save 20K miles.

The biggest deal breaker in your case is the fact that you need to use 2 OneWorld partners(British,FinnAir,Qantas,Cathay,LAN,AerLing us,Iberia) and AA does not count. So basically, you would need to fly to from BOS to JFK on AA, connect there to Iberia to Madrid and connect there to British to LHR and finally connect to another BA in JNB to Windhoek. On the return it could be just a simple BA through JNB to LHR and connect there to AA to BOS, since you already satisfied the 2 OW partner rule on the way out. This could also be done in reverse, but I hoping you get the point.

I think in your case it may be just easier to do a straight All Partner award for 150K miles. It costs little more, but saves you from a lot of connections and possible headaches.

BOS-LHR on AA
LHR-JNB-WDK on BA

(or there may be other partners from Europe that fly directly to WDK, such as Iberia, Swiss, Turkish, FinnAir, SN Brussels, I'm not sure)

In any event, write down some acceptable dates, pick the city you want to depart from and Windhoek and call AAdvantage reservations. Boston may be your best bet, as it's a major hub. Many times there is no award availibility on AmericanEagle and people get disappointed when told there is nothing available from the smaller airports. You can always ask about Hartford or Providence, but be prepared for Boston as well.

I hope this helps in some ways.

Goos luck!

Gardyloo

You could do either an all-partners or a OW award BDL (AA) ORD (IB) MAD (IB) JNB (BA) WDH and vice versa. Getting BA award J seats to South Africa is like pulling teeth. Molars.

Patty

Is there any way to check BA and IB availability before calling AA to book?

Gardyloo

<i>Is there any way to check BA and IB availability before calling AA to book?</i>

Sadly AFAIK no. I have ExpertFlyer and have tried to see hidden award inventory on both, but either can't see it (IB) or can't see the whole picture (BA) as AA awards access only part of the available inventory. I may be missing something though. Luckily AA (especially the EXP desk) is very willing to look around for callers.

AAFrequentFlyer

If you have BA FF number you can check availibility on www.ba.com. I'm not sure about IB.

cynstalker

Thanks - you're very kind to help me! BDL <b>is</b> Hartford, is it not? (Or am I not understanding something?) I'm sure you're correct though - we will probably end up flying out of Boston.

I just joined flytalk, and read the &quot;sticky&quot; you mention (which, btw, <b>what</b> is a &quot;sticky&quot; - couldn't find out in FAQs or search?) so I <b>think</b> I'm beginning to understand what you're saying:

Rules require the use of 2 airlines other than AA. So, we could fly to, say spain, on one airline, and stay a day or 2. Then fly to somewhere else on a different oneworld airline to meet the requirement. Yes?

I will call AA when I get more time - and thanks again for your help!

<font color="green">Cyn</font>

AAFrequentFlyer

I don't know what I was thinking when I said that AA does not fly to BDL (Hartford)??? Yes they do.

Anyway, since you are over 14K miles if flying BDL-WDH-BDL (130K AA miles for business) you have almost 6K miles to spare with the OW award. You can do few stops in Europe and even a stop in JNB, SA.

Remember with OW awaqrd only the miles between the stopover places count, it doesn't matter how you get there.

You could do the following:

BDL-MAD(stop)-WDH(stop)-JNB(stop)-LHR(stop)-BDL

and it would still be only 130K AA miles. Isn't that great?

The above routing is just an example, but as long as your total mileage is under 20K miles the award will be 130K AA miles, and with the above example you still have another 2K miles to spare....

mrwunrfl

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe that AAFF's elite status gives him any edge in booking an award trip like this