re: "oneworld" award (140K/280K/420K) Planning - The Definitive Thread
Thanks Vetrade. Have just booked my first flight SYD-SFO on 1/7/16. Have also played a little with the QF booking website and am perhaps a little wiser:mrgreen:. I think, I now can be more accurate about my plans.
There seems to be a possibility to book a SFA-YVR in J and YVR-ORD. So I am now looking at the following dates:
SYD-SFO - 1/7/16 (booked!)
SFO-YVR - 5/7/16 (+- 1 day)
YVR-ORD - 8/7/16 (+1 day)
ORD-DUS - 13/7/16 (+- 1 day)
DUS-SYD - 3/10/16 (+-3 days)
In was looking at the flights DUS-WAW but the QF showed only flights on BA. Isn't Air Berlin part of OW? They seem to be unavailable on the QF website.
How realistic is the above itinerary? Thanks!
Henk,
That itinerary is going to cause you problems. YVR is a bit tricky to get to (and out of) flying OW. I just did a RTW 280K 2 months ago which included YVR so my experience is recent. I flew from NY to YVR with CX (easy to get J) but the options to get to SFO or LAX (i.e. anywhere on the west coast) from YVR are very limited. I eventually gave up and paid for flights with Westjet. You will face the same problem but in the reverse direction.
Firstly there’s no direct flight from SFO – YVR; you’d need to fly via LAX or PHX but good luck getting even Y seats on any of those flights. Sometimes you will find that AA only has (very)
few award Y seats on particular routes on 2 or 3 days a week. A lot of main routes are near impossible to get awards on nowadays. To get awards on many routes now they force people to fly long detours and often with long transit times. I think they have set out to make it as difficult as possible unless you have top tier status with them. To give you an idea of how difficult AA have made it, I have used AA a lot in the past but I couldn’t get a single AA flight to work on our last trip.
You might have luck if you’re prepared to fly to YVR via DFW – but this is the long way around.
YVR – ORD will be another problem for you – there’s no direct OW flights on that route and indirect options are very indirect.
Now the good news: there are direct flights on AA from ORD to DUS.
For DUS – WAW the only option is to fly via TXL with Air Berlin – there are no direct flights. The same would apply to CGN – WAW (but CGN is hard to get to from the US). I don’t know what award availability would be like for Air Berlin. Never flown with them. Maybe ring QF and get them to check availability for a random date next year - that won't cost you anything.
Getting back to Oz you have several options. CX has a direct flight from DUS to HKG – you might find that to get a CX flight to SYD from HKG you might need to stay at least one night in HKG – plenty of CX flights will show J availability but if you try to book 2 connecting flights transiting through HKG they often block the combination unless you have a stopover there. QF is the other option from HKG – SYD.
Then there’s the option of transiting through LHR and DXB from DUS.
