Questions and Answers

Hi Lucky!

I’ve been following your blog for the last year and love it. Hoping you can help me with a quandary i’m in concerning AA miles i wanted to use for a honeymoon.

My fiance and I plan to get married in April 2017 and honeymoon in April-May 2017. I currently have 145K AAdvantage miles and 154K Krisflyer Miles (soon to be 200K+) that i was looking to use together to fly first-class to/from Asia for our honeymoon. But the pending AAdvantage devaluation is throwing a wrench in my plans.

I originally planned to use my AAdvantage miles on Cathay Pacific to fly HKG-LAX (or LAX-HKG). I know Cathay typically only releases one First class seat when the flight schedule initially opens up, and then frees up First Class space within a few weeks of the flight date. So my plan was to get two one-way business class tickets for 110K and then hopefully upgrade to First Class within a few weeks of the honeymoon for 25K. However, due to the devaluation, if i go with this plan, i will be out of reach of any First Class seats when they go up to to 220k for two seats.

My question: should I bite the bullet and give up on the dream of CX First Class and book business class seats on CX pre-devaluation for 110k to avoid having to paying 140K later on (and just pay any change fees later to change the flight date to align with our honeymoon plans), or is there another alternative, like Japan Airlines, that releases two first class seats when the schedule opens up 330 days prior, that i can book for 135K pre-devaluation (and pay to change at a later date)? I know CX is covered Ad Nauseum, but i haven’t found much online about how much award space is initially released by Japan Airlines.

My fiance and I have never flown J or F class before, and this being our honeymoon, I really wanna make it happen that we travel in the F class cabin on both our departing and return legs.

Thanks in advance for your help.

ncabanil Congratulations on the wedding but I’m not sure your plan will work even without the other issues. Tickets are usually valid for only one year after issue so your post April 2017 travel plans will take you past the one year horizon after March. My guess is that any changes beyond that will require a full redeposit and rebooking at the increased rates. I think CX J is rated as one of the best J products out there so I wouldn’t hesitate to fly it if that was all that was affordable.

You could also try to bump up your AA mileage balance. Citigold just brought back the checking bonus and there are always the personal and business credit cards.