Questions and Answers

I have a bit of a conundrum. I am going to Australia next spring for a couple of weeks. I already booked the flights to get there (IAD-NRT-BKK-MEL) on ANA and TG in C.

For the return I don’t see any *A options at this point. (But obviously I have a long time to go) I did search from other Australian cities including SYD, BNE and PER. However I do see CX availability MEL-HKG-USA in C to ORD or F to JFK. MEL-HKG on their new A350.

I have 90K AA miles in the bank and about 9K AS miles. I thought I was set and called AA to book but I had forgotten about their stupid routing rules. So I would need 110K to book this as 2 separate awards.

So, my dilemma. AA currently is running a sale with bonus miles plus 10% discount. So I can buy the number of miles I need for business class for about $500. (Or if I want F on the leg HKG-JFK it would cost about $1500 for enough extra miles). The latest AS bonus offer expired a few weeks ago which is unfortunate. In order to buy the 51K miles I would need for the business class option it would cost about $1500. For F it would cost a further 20K miles which I think is another $500 or so.

It seems like just spending $500 for the AA miles to fly in C makes the most sense. (I just hate that I would have to pay them 110K miles for this trip while AS only charges 60K). I am a planner by nature so I prefer to have the return booked and set rather than waiting and hoping the CX availability remains or that some other option comes up. (I have a boatload of Avianca miles and also UR points as well). According to AwardNexus there are 4 seats on each of the CX flights (MEL-HKG an HKG-ORD). So I am not feeling super pressured at this point, but as we all know that can change any time. The dates I have in mind are not super flexible either. There do not appear to be any saaver award seats on the ORD-DCA or JFK-DCA flights I would need to tack on at the end but there are anytime awards available. I’m not sure if that matters…will I have to pay cash or can those be included with the partner awards? Thoughts on options that make sense in my situation?

As I read through your post I came to the same conclusion you did – just pay the $500 for the extra AA miles unless you’re just absolutely set on experiencing First.

Unfortunately you cannot tack on AAnytime awards to the end of a SAAver award, so it would have to be two separate tickets. But I would think/hope they could check your bags all the way through to your final destination.

Thanks. In the past when there are no award seats at all they would just let me pay cash for the final AA leg and put it all in one reservation.

Ah well, yes, they may let you do that. I was thinking of award seats.