Questions and Answers

I have a trip already booked in October: MEM-PHX-SFO-SYD-AKL on AA/QF using AA miles in business class.

I’m a little concerned because the MEM-PHX-SFO legs only gets me to SFO about 1.5 hours before the QF flight to Sydney and I’d prefer a larger time window. I’ve been monitoring award space and it seems like AA is just not opening up much in the way of domestic first space. I’d much rather go through DFW because the MEM-PHX leg (over 1200 miles) is on a CR9. But even looking at flights earlier in the day, I see business class award space MEM-DFW and MEM-PHX but the PHX-SFO or DFW-SFO legs are in economy and this is on A321s that have a first class cabin – they’re just not opening up any award space. Right now there are no F seats taken on the PHX-SFO flight and only one taken on the DFW-SFO flight.

Is this normal for AA these days? Can I expect seats to open up as we get closer to the trip dates? I would have thought they’d have had at least one seat open on each flight when the schedule opened but I did not find that to be the case.

It is normal on SAAver awards these days. If you shell out the extra 20K miles for an Anytime award, it’s all in F. Also, you can set an alert on EF to notify you if space opens on your segment and then phone in and they should give you that seat. I’m running about 50% with space opening prior to departure and when it does, it’s last minute.

Thanks for the data point. Yeah, I’ve got EF alerts set and they’ve been set for awhile now, I was just hoping the seats would open up earlier.