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Phuket to Seattle for Holidays 2021
I’m worried all the business class award ticket availability will be snatched up soon for the holidays, so I’m trying to book business class flights now. Currently missing the leg back, from Phuket to Seattle for end of December 2021. I’m considering a few options (in order of preference):
1. Routing through HKG on Cathay
2. Routing through Taipei on EVA
3. Routing through Doha on Qatar (would need to spend two legs, Asia 2 to Middle East, and Middle East to North America)
First question: it seems all three are only showing award availability for LAX/SFO right now. Cathay doesn’t even currently have flights for $ from HKG to SEA at all, while EVA and Qatar do have those flights for $. I’m not sure if EVA and Qatar awards have just not been opened up/will not open up or if they’ve already been snatched up? Similarly would Cathay open the award availability back up later in the year once the HKG to SEA flights resume? Should I just book flights through one of these carriers back to SFO/LAX on points now and then buy a separate flight to SEA from SFO/LAX?
Also I would try to use AA miles to book Cathay or Qatar while using the BA Avios site to search for their availability. BA shows dates further out (showing availability to end of Dec 2021), which is beyond what AA site shows for dates (now showing early Dec). Since AA is now able to book Cathay and Qatar flights directly on their site, do I have to wait until the dates become available on AA site, or can I still call in now to have the agent book the Dec end flights using the availability I see on BA?
Thank you!
Since AA charges the same price for a round-trip vs. 2 one-way tickets, you could go ahead and book your outbound flights now and then book the return flights whenever they open up. I do this all the time. Since you can’t use AA miles to book on EVA you could just wait and see which one opens up first.
But AA has a cool thing where you can change award tickets for free as long as the origin and destination remain the same. So you could book Phuket-HKG-LAX/SFO-SEA on one award ticket and if the non-stop HKG-SEA eventually opens up, just call and have it changed.
You should be able to include the LAX/SFO-SEA leg in your award. The downside to that routing is that the HKG-LAX/SFO leg arrives just after 9 PM and that’s too late to catch a flight to SEA that same night so you’d have to spend the night.
Another option might be HKT-HKG-NRT-SEA with the first two legs on Cathay and the last leg on JAL. That did come up as an option (in economy) when I used Dec 3rd as the flight date. That routing has no super-long layovers, which is nice.
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