Questions and Answers

I am new to the forum and have been trying to find 2 business class AA seats to Australia from BWI for my wife and me. Does anyone have advice on finding 2 SAAver fares together?

Welcome [USER=1725]@LanceB[/USER] – the North America-Australia route is one of the hardest places to get to in a premium cabin. Finding one award seat is tough; finding two is even harder. If you can be flexible with dates it will certainly help.

First you’ll want to start searching the day the schedule opens up for your flight dates. Don’t just search BWI-SYD (or MEL or BNE) but just look for the overwater legs as those are the hardest to find: LAX-SYD, LAX-MEL, LAX-BNE, DFW-SYD, SFO-SYD, YVR-SYD (seasonal)

You can also look for flights on Fiji Air via Nadi (NAN). It’s angle flat, not lie-flat, but still better than coach! You can search Fiji Air availability using the Alaska Air site (be sure to check the box for award flights).

If you find space but for some reason can’t find connecting space to BWI, personally I’d still book the longhaul flights and worry about connections later. Even if you find connections but aren’t happy with them, go ahead and book them as American will let you change them for free as long as the origin & destination stay the same.

Hopefully this will get you started but feel free to ask if you have more questions.

Thank you [USER=184]@MidSouth Skier[/USER]. I’ll start searching that way! We just earned the SW Comp Pass, so the BWI piece should be easy enough. We are pretty flexible, but would like to go between November to February due to work, etc.

I also keep seeing that you can book the award space and then change for free. But I have also seen something about a 21 day window for that. Do you or anyone else have info on that piece?

Thanks!

That may be in reference to 21 days before your trip. Some airlines will charge a close-in change fee. But I believe with AA if you’re keeping the starting & ending points and dates the same and all you change is routing, you shouldn’t have to pay that even if you are within 21 days of departure. (But someone correct me if I’m wrong.)