Help! AA Award Booking issues

[kirstyoz]

Hi All. So I'm looking to use a combo of award programs to book a trip in J from Perth to Tokyo for 7 or 8 nights first week in December.

I've got Asia Miles converted from Amex awards and AAdvantage points based on their website (that I've used heaps of times, most recently about 2 years ago though) showing a lot of availability.

I purchased the AAdvantage miles and went into their award bookings site. Found 2 J tickets for hubby and myself PER-SYD-HND Monday Dec 3, QF 580 (departing 11:30am) connecting to QF 25 departing 9:25pm. Get all the way through the booking and it is fine until I have an Australia billing address and then it won't allow me to book and I have to move to the Australian site. Australian site shown no availability. So I call the Australian AAdvantage call centre and the person says there is no availability at all for a week either way, nor for the return trip.

Is it that there is no availability for Australian customers only, maybe? What am I missing here? Do you think if I call the USA AAdvantage number I'll get a different outcome? I can't think of another explanation for this massive discrepancy. I don't want to book with my Asia Miles until I know what's happening with this.

Help!!

 

[serfty]

Search this site for "El Segundo" ....

I don't have much time to elaborate but I have used it many times ... as soon as you involve a human it gets complicated ...

 

[drron]

Booking on the US AA site you need a valid US zipcode.I am lucky as putting a 0 in front of my postcode gives me a zip code in Maine
Here's one site that you can find which zip codes beginning with 0.
Otherwise use a US city or suburb.El Segundo is next to LAX.
PS.Sometimes I have to put in the US state-Maine in my case.

 

[jxv]

Two or three years ago someone on this forum reported that "El Segundo" was no longer necessary. I made a note of how to do it:


For bookings on AA.com:

• Select country as Australia
• Don't put anything in the Post/ZIP Code box.
• Put the address, city, state and post code in in the address boxes (address line 1, address line 2)
• Leave the last two boxes blank... the form still works.

It has worked several times for me on paid fares as well as award redemptions.

 

[Danger]

Wiki - A couple of questions from an AAdvantage newbie

 

[serfty]

Two or three years ago someone on this forum reported that "El Segundo" was no longer necessary. I made a note of how to do it:

Yes, I had forgotton about that:

A couple of questions from an AAdvantage newbie

 

[kirstyoz]

Two or three years ago someone on this forum reported that "El Segundo" was no longer necessary. I made a note of how to do it:


For bookings on AA.com:

• Select country as Australia
• Don't put anything in the Post/ZIP Code box.
• Put the address, city, state and post code in in the address boxes (address line 1, address line 2)
• Leave the last two boxes blank... the form still works.

It has worked several times for me on paid fares as well as award redemptions.

The issue is there’s availability when it’s the USA site. None when it’s the Australian site. I’ll try the el segundo method today - thanks aff-ers and thank you serfty

 

[jxv]

The issue is there’s availability when it’s the USA site. None when it’s the Australian site. I’ll try the el segundo method today - thanks aff-ers and thank you serfty

Sorry, my previous post may not have been clear enough. Let me try again.

For bookings on AA.com: select the US website, select your flights, then:

On the page where you have to provide your details:

• Select country as Australia
• Don't put anything in the Post/ZIP Code box.
• Put the address, city, state and post code in in the address boxes (address line 1, address line 2)
• Leave the last two boxes blank... the form still works.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Hi All. So I'm looking to use a combo of award programs to book a trip in J from Perth to Tokyo for 7 or 8 nights first week in December.

I've got Asia Miles converted from Amex awards and AAdvantage points based on their website (that I've used heaps of times, most recently about 2 years ago though) showing a lot of availability.

I purchased the AAdvantage miles and went into their award bookings site. Found 2 J tickets for hubby and myself PER-SYD-HND Monday Dec 3, QF 580 (departing 11:30am) connecting to QF 25 departing 9:25pm. Get all the way through the booking and it is fine until I have an Australia billing address and then it won't allow me to book and I have to move to the Australian site. Australian site shown no availability. So I call the Australian AAdvantage call centre and the person says there is no availability at all for a week either way, nor for the return trip.

Is it that there is no availability for Australian customers only, maybe? What am I missing here? Do you think if I call the USA AAdvantage number I'll get a different outcome? I can't think of another explanation for this massive discrepancy. I don't want to book with my Asia Miles until I know what's happening with this.

Help!!

Have you booked these now? BA, JL and AA are all showing no availability SYD-HND, only economy class MEL-NRT