Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky- I had posted a question earlier but it didn’t seem to ever appear on the site, so I’m giving it another try:

I was fortunate enough to be able to use American Miles to book a Business Class (‘Studio’) seat on the AUH-JFK leg on the A380 in early december and am looking forward to it greatly.

Two unrelated questions:

First, how much time do you advise arriving prior to the flight at AUH? I want to check out the terminal and the premium lounge, but have to do all those prior to pre-clearance, right? And how long currently does pre-clearance take? I recall it was a nightmare several months ago but has eased considerably. do they have the automatic kiosk machines that they have at JFK or does one have to go through a manual process?

Second, so my actual destination is Dubai and I originally had booked a roundtrip JFK-DXB-JFK on Emirates (economy class, using cash, not miles), well before I realized I had the option to use miles to return in J on the AUH flight. So I will be using the outbound leg of the Emirates tickets, but then Etihad for the AUH-jFK flight. Question is what do I do re: the Emirates DXB_JFK leg? Do I call them to cancel it? Do I just no-show? Do I tell them I have switched to a different airline? I’m assuming that this should not be an issue as EK and EY are distinct carriers so there’s no problem per se having a reservation with both; and also if I miss my DXB-JFK segment, there are no additional segments or ‘onward journey’ that EK can cancel. Any thoughts?

[SIZE=5][B]Hi Lucky- I had posted a question earlier but it doesn’t seem to appear, so I’m trying again:

I was fortunate enough to be able to use American Miles to book a Business Class (‘Studio’) seat on the AUH-JFK leg on the A380 in early december and am looking forward to it greatly.

Two unrelated questions:

First, how much time do you advise arriving prior to the flight at AUH? I want to check out the terminal and the premium lounge, but have to do all those prior to pre-clearance, right? And how long currently does pre-clearance take? I recall it was a nightmare several months ago but has eased considerably. do they have the automatic kiosk machines that they have at JFK or does one have to go through a manual process?

Second, so my actual destination is Dubai and I originally had booked a roundtrip JFK-DXB-JFK on Emirates (economy class, using cash, not miles), well before I realized I had the option to use miles to return on the AUH flight. So I will be using the outbound leg of the Emirates tickets, but then Etihad for the AUH-jFK flight. Question is what do I do re: the Emirates DXB_JFK leg? Do I call them to cancel it? Do I just no-show? Do I tell them I have switched to a different airline? I’m assuming that this should not be an issue as EK and EY are distinct carriers so there’s no problem per se having a reservation with both; and also if I miss my DXB-JFK segment, there are no additional segments or ‘onward journey’ that EK can cancel. Any thoughts?

Regardless, greatly looking forward![/B][/SIZE]

[USER=278]@Adi[/USER], welcome. If you want to hang out in the lounge I’d plan to get to the airport about two – three hours in advance. The lounge is nice but about an hour should give you a good feel for it. You’ll have to figure out how much time you want to spend walking around the terminal. You are correct that pre-clearance will be after the lounge. When we went through in October it was pretty painless though your experience will differ if your flight is bunched with a bunch of other flights and there is a lot of traffic or if you get pulled aside for secondary inspection (annoying but also moved fairly quickly).

For your EK flight, I would look into seeing if canceling the return might net some financial benefits after change fees (usually unlikely but worth a shot). You might get charged a fee to cancel it and if so you can just no-show for it. Like you’ve said you have no additional segments or luggage to worry about.

Enjoy the experience!