I am so confused as to go about booking FF tickets for our Europe trip next year and hoping somebody might help.

Here is what I want to do - hubby and I want to fly business class to Europe using FF miles. So, 90,000 miles each. Our itinerary would be the following:

* Depart Chicago O'Hare on Weds June 20th, arriving in Amsterdam June 21st. (I have been there before but hubby hasn't)
* Fly out of AMS June 23rd, to go to Paris CDG
* Rent a car or take train to Avignon on June 30th, spend 6 days in Provence region.
* Fly out of Nice on July 6. I'd like to fly from Nice to London so we don't have to backtrack to Paris.
* Spend 3 days in London with friends, returning to ORD Monday July 9th.

A couple of questions about this:

1) I don't think AA has any direct flights out of ORD to AMS and I'd prefer to fly direct. Do I look for their partners in the One World Alliance to try to find these flights? Where do I look online for these routes and times? Or, as another option, can I fly into Paris and then connect with a One World member to fly to Amsterdam from Paris?

2) I've read several posts stating that when you book your flight for 90000 miles or whatever, you can make several "stops" along the way, sort of like extended lay-overs, but I'm not sure how to do this. What do I say to the agent over the phone?

3) I called and confirmed that the first day I can book my flight for June 20th 2007 is July 24th, after midnight. However, only the departing flight will be open for booking that day. How do you ensure that you will be able to book your return date when you want it - I don't want to book my departure without booking my return at the same time?

This is my first time booking a FF flight other than easy ones to Vegas, and it has taken us a long time to accrue these 180,000 miles, so I don't want to screw it up!!

Perhaps you could email me at [email protected] if you want to email off-board.

Thanks,
Jennifer

I'm not an expert but:

1) I would use www.oneworld.com and www.aa.com to see what is available.

2) Tell the agent what you just told us. You want to outbound from Chicago to Paris with an enroute stopover in Amsterdam and return to Chicago from Nice with a stopover in London. That is two stopovers and an open jaw. I *believe* that you will be permitted only the one open-jaw OR one stopover. I *doubt* that AMS is enroute to CDG, anyway. Probably an award for ORD-AMS, LON/ORD is what you can get, and fill in the other legs with train/plane tix.

3) Book outbound at first opportunity and wait for the opportunity to book the return. OR, wait for the opportunity to book the return and then book both.

You'll probably get a lot of responses but the simple answers are:

1) You have to book FF Award tickets through AA. They will link you up with One World Partners flights when appropriate. You'll find schedules on the AA website (sometimes flights on Partner airlines are shown as code shares. You can check other airline websites or sites like Travelocity, Orbitz, etc. for other scheduling info.

2) You book what is call a Multiple City "open jaw" route that will allow you to make short stops in several cities before returning home. Open Jaw means that you will arrive in one city and depart for home from a different city. Ther's a multi-city option on AA.com and the other airline and travel websites.

3) Since you are trying to make your reservation as early as possible you'll only be able to inquire about your outbound flight 330 days before departure. If its available, ask the agent to put a hold on this portion of your trip (they generall will let you hold the reservation for 10 to 14 days). You than try for your return trip the first day it becomes available - if it is that's when you book your entire trip.

When trying to get FF Award Seats it helps if you can be somewhat flexible with your dates of travel. There are only a limited number of FF Award Seates available on any given flight and you increase your odds of success if you are not wedded to traveling on specific dates.

Hope this helps.

AAdvantage has oneworld awards that allow for multiple stops, like in your original itinerary. The cost of the award depends on the number of miles travelled.

To get to AMS, the best route is probably thru LHR. No nonstops, I think, on oneworld from AMS to CDG, so again you'd probably go thru LHR.

ORD-LHR-AMS-LHR-CDG is ~ 4631 miles
NCE-LHR-ORD is ~ 4600 miles

So that's approx 9231 miles. You can get an award based on that mileage.

I gave a really long-winded response on the Europe board: http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...p;tid=34820387

<b>Gardyloo</b>,

your above mileage calculation is incorrect for OneWorld award.

This is what the OW award would look like:

ORD-AMS-CDG/open jaw/NCE-LHR-ORD = 9399 miles.

The mileage is based on stops ONLY, regardless how one gets there as long as the connection is under 24 hours, so you don't count ORD-LHR-AMS, just ORD-AMS as long as LHR is just a connection. Unfortunately open jaw counts as segment and the mileage counts, so CDG-NCE mileage needs to be added.

Another important factor to consider, especially in this instance is that 2 OneWorld airlines have to be used and AA does not count. The OP would probably need to fly through Madrid on Iberia at least one way and utilize BA for most of the other segments, but since BA can't be used between UK-USA then either take AA across the big pond one way or fly BA to Canada and connect there with AA to get home.

So, the itn may look something like this if the OP decided to go with OneWorld award, instead of the All-Partner award:

ORD-mad-AMS (Iberia) (the mileage would still only be ORD-AMS.
AMS-lhr-CDG (BA) (again the mileage is only AMS-CDG).
Open jaw - CDG-NCE
NCE-LHR - BA
LHR-ORD (AA non-stop) or many other possible connections through BOS, NYC OR MIA.

or

as explained above, LHR-Toronto with BA and connect to AA to ORD.

The award would be:

70K miles for economy
90K miles for business
120K miles for first

Reporting from the Osaka Hilton.

<b>AAFF</b> - Your quote from this thread:

<i>Gardyloo,

your above mileage calculation is incorrect for OneWorld award.

This is what the OW award would look like:

ORD-AMS-CDG/open jaw/NCE-LHR-ORD = 9399 miles....</i>

My quote from the other thread:

<i>So you could fly ORD-xMAD-AMS-xLHR-CDG//NCE-LHR-ORD for 9399 miles total.</i>

Sounds the same to me.

<b>Gardyloo</b>,

didn't look at your other post. I was simply replying to your post on this thread.

It was my computation that was wrong.

I saw on Gardyloo's other post the rule about AA plus two other oneworld carriers needing to be used. I had not considered that fact in the itinerary. The Iberia connection to AMS will take care of that. Also, Aer Lingus could be used for LON-DUB-ORD.

I tried, but could not find, a webpage at aa dot com listing the ranges of flight miles at each award level.

<i>Gardyloo,

didn't look at your other post. I was simply replying to your post on this thread. </i>

??

ooops, sorry <b>Gardyloo</b>, it must be the sake.....

it's not correct <b>mrwunerful</b>. AA does not need to be used at all. The rule calls for at least 2 OW partners and AA will not count as one nor is it needed. One can use AA if so inclined, but then they still would need 2 OW partners.

Also, I believe the same person posted <b>almost</b> identical question on the AA forum on Flyertalk.com. I say almost, because there she has the following itn:

ORD-CDG/open jaw/NCE-LHR-ORD

She took out AMS completely.

So in that case here is a possibility:

ORD-mad-CDG (Iberia)
CDG-NCE (open jaw)
NCE-LHR (BA)
LHR-mad-ORD (Iberia)

This would satify the 2 OW partner rule and bring the award to under 9K miles which lowers the price to 80K miles, even a better deal.

I didn't finish,

she could also just do non-stop return LHR-ORD (AA) or the BA option through Canada.

<i>I tried, but could not find, a webpage at aa dot com listing the ranges of flight miles at each award level.</i>

It's been cunningly moved to the &quot;about us&quot; tab on the main screen, thus:http://www.aa.com/content/aboutUs/on...nce/main.jhtml

For some reason, I thought that if I went to the &quot;AAdvantage Participant Airline Award Chart&quot; page and followed the &quot;View complete oneworld award details and information&quot; that I might get some oneworld award details and information.

Does AAdvantage have any opportunities for earning bonus EQMs?