Hi, I'm a newbie here so I'm sorry if this is a frequent question. My hubbie and I are planning on a trip to France and Italy in May 2007. (open jaw into Paris and out of Rome) We don't have a lot of flexibility with our travel dates, and I was just curious how difficult it is to use miles for those tickets. I am planning to call as early as possible - this June - but I don't know if a lot of people do this so they fill up quickly? Any input would be much appreciated!!

Book as early as you can. Yes, people are wise to FF award timing.

You need to call on the first possible date -- approximately 11 months before you go. Before you do anything else, call the Advantage number 1-800-882-8880 and ask what the exact date is you can reserve for the particular date you want outbound. Then on that date you need to call (I've stayed up to call right after midnight so I'm sure I get my choice). They can hold the outbound until the exact date you can book your return.

Yes, it is a game and you have to play by their rules, but you have the luxury of knowing when you want to go. I've done free tickets with AA for every year for about 10 years now and have never failed to get what I want (although once I missed the first possible day by a couple days and had to do a second choice -- my fault).

What kind of reward are you looking for? Number of miles -- free coach, free business, upgrade? Let us know, there are some other hints we can give you depending on the reward, including possible additional stopovers or free flights along the way or between destinations.

We are just looking for 2 free coach tickets from Dallas to Paris, and then return from Rome to Dallas. Right now we have close to 100K miles and we are planning to transfer an additional 20K from Starwood points to get us up to the 120K we need.

A couple of years ago we booked three seats on AA from DFW to Paris using FF miles; I booked in late July for a mid-March trip. I was told that I had gotten the last three FF seats on the plane. (May have been the ONLY three FF seats on the plane.)

According to aa.com, if you travel between Oct 15th and May 15th you only need 40,000 miles each for a roundtrip ticket to Europe. So, depending on your travel dates, maybe you can travel for 80,000 miles!

Good luck,
Marla

call them at 12:01am 331 days before you want to start your trip - that is when the seats will open up. We were also told (by an airline guy on a flight) that they don't release the non-stop seat options right away and will try to book you on connecting flights to increase passenger load. I think airlines are required to hold something like 5% of their seats for FF travellers but that is distributed between all the classes on the plane. Good luck!

May shouldn't be too hard if you book early. If they don't have want you want, call them and consider flying into any city and out of any city. Have them put you on a BA flight--they are partners. You can always pick up a cheap flight with Easyjet, Ryanair or Air Berlin so you can get where you want to go.

Like Neopolitan we've used AA FF miles to travel to Europe for probably eight of the last ten years. We always travel in the "lower price" period that Ozres mentioned. Italy is lovely the first two weeks in May.

It helps if you have some flexibilty in your dates (a day or two either way can get you what you want). I think you also need to be persistent---if they don't have what you want the first time just keep calling. Things do open up as you are allowed to hold reservations for I think two weeks before you actually have to commit. So what is unavailable today may pop up tomorrow.

Obviously the earlier you call the better off you are. But this year we decided very late to go to Turkey at the end of April (always have to be home before that May 15 date!!) and in late March I was able to get reservations (Boston-Heathrow-Istanbul). Frankly, even the AA person was pretty amazed.

The other thing I would suggest is do your homework. We almost always have to fly Boston to Heathrow and then usually British Air to wherever our destination is. I always go on the BA website and know what flights they offer to our destination so if I'm offered a connection with a very long layover I know if there is an earlier possibility.

The other thing that has worked for me is to book what I can get, again almost always BOS-LHR and then somewhere on BA. If you can't get the BA connection you want you can keep calling to see if it opens up and can change for no charge. Last year I changed our return to a better connection after we were actually in Italy. (I believe the no charge part is still true as I did it again in the fall but you should check.) It's a little risky because you can end up stuck with layover from hell but I've found BA opens up seats on the more desireable connections the closer you get to the actual date.

I have found the AAdvantage people for the most part to be incredibly helpful---I think many of them enjoy the "thrill of the chase" for the perfect connection almost as much as we travelers.

The keys are persistence (and politeness) and flexibility. Good luck.

Well, flying from DFW and with those two cities, you shouldn't have to worry too much about no options. Of course, you'll want to do the non stop to CDG but if worse comes to worse there are many more option on American with a single good connection. And from Rome there are a number of options too -- all with only one connection. Do the earliest possible booking and you really shouldn't have any problem getting what you want.

Do it the 330 days out for your departure date..they can hold that for 2 weeks..if you are going to be gone longer than 2 weeks they can make the return earlier and then you call back within the time limit and correct it to the actual longer date..all sounds crazy, but that is the way it works. I use it often..get up at midnight and do it...my trip this fall, I had to do it at midnight 2 nights in a row, as I was connecting in CDG to TLS...with it being an overnight flight to CDG, it was another day, so another call..I happen to use Delta for our area of the country.
Enjoy...........

Although I have always tried to book long in advance, sometimes there are seats on shorter notice. I called AA to check about seats to Germany, and much to my surprise, just two weeks ago I was able to get our first choice (into Frankfurt and out of Zurich) for this coming August 30th with a return on September 15th. I nabbed the tickets. Connections are good too which is sometimes rare for the area from which I fly. You just never know. Of course, the advice to start early stands, but twice in the last few years, I have been able to get tickets on short (compared to 300 days) notice. PJK

It all depends on your location. My biggest problem is getting out of Asheville..we have small shuttle flights either via ATL or CVG for International connection. They allow VERY few seats on the shuttles!

Thanks so much for all your input!!

I can only tell you that I've used FF miles to cross the pond with AA many times, and didn't always call that far ahead, but I always got it done.

You need to be a bit flexible sometimes, once I had to shift my plans by one day, another time I had to have my homework in front of me to know about and suggest alternative routes when the agent didn't see those possibilities on the screen before her (that was after AA took over TWA and their computers didn't show routes through St. Louis for some reason - a route that saved my bacon in getting from the West Coast to NY to catch a flight out of JFK).

Another time I got the last seat and my lady-friend flew on a different flight - despite a different routing and different stopovers we ended up on the same airport parking shuttle on arrival back home!

So do your home work, read the fine print, know what works and what doesn't (like BA - even though a tight partner in other respects with AA, doesn't carry you to Europe on AA FF miles), and write down alternate routes you might find acceptable.

Like if you can't get into Paris, already scope out alternatives, like the cheap flights from London where thirty bucks might get you to Paris (look at www.skyscanner.net).

Or be ready to fly AA into Zürich if that's what they offer instead of Paris, and figure out how to get to Paris (maybe from nearby BSL airport?).

Dodge and weave, as long as you come out ahead.

WK

Thanks for all the great advice. Got my AA FF tickets (2) for next April (Orlando-Miami-Paris).

Really wasn't hard at all and got both the outbound and return flights that I wanted.

Now I just have to wait until April 2007.

I think you are lucky to have the Dallas gateway to use for AA...many flights..of course many folks trying to connect thru DFW too...
One thing to consider is to fly on a Tuesday or Wednesday...when the crowd isn't as large...and of course, be flexible on your dates and times of travel...I was once able to roll over a 'hold' for months just by calling on the expiration date and then resetting the 'hold'...the agents will help you do this....

The Tuesday/Wednesday suggestion is good. We've booked several FF trips to Europe on American and generally have better luck on those days. On our trip this October, I had to extend our trip by one day and return on a Tuesday. "Bad" luck with a "good" result!