Until recently, American had a NYC-DUB fare priced at $51 (with $202 in additional fuel surcharges).  While prices have gone up slightly (the base fare is now $151), sub-$500 roundtrips to Europe are nothing to scoff at.

My starting point for any itinerary like this one is to glance at ExpertFlyer.

The fare rules for the OKX7Q5G1 fare include a few interesting snippets:

American tends to use MPM-based routing rules for its international fares; this fare is no different:

/VIA THE ATLANTIC/ MPM 3811
MILEAGE SYSTEM APPLIES BETWEEN ORIGIN AND DESTINATION
 MILEAGE SYSTEM APPLIES ORIGIN TO DESTINATION
       TICKETED POINT DEDUCTION OF 550 MILES APPLIES
       WHEN TRAVEL IS VIA CHI AND/OR DFW AND/OR RDU AND/OR
       MIA
       TICKETED POINT DEDUCTION OF 705 MILES APPLIES
       WHEN TRAVEL IS VIA SUB AREA 21

American directly serves DUB via ORD, but this trip is 4413 miles:

The CHI ticketed point deduction provides an additional 550 miles beyond the 3811 base when we connect in ORD, so routing via O’Hare is permissible.  With a base fare in-hand, we now want to try looking for itineraries that might work:

The “Advanced Routing Codes” have two components:

• “c:aa+” specifies that I want to fly on one or more AA-coded flights.
• “/f bc=o” specifies I want to fly under an O booking code.

Unfortunately, since this fare has been around for about a week, the O inventory on AA metal has largely disappeared:

Rather than fly entirely AA metal, we can try flying to Europe, then connecting to Aer Lingus:

The “c:aa+ c:ei” routing code specifies that I want to fly one or more AA-coded flights then an Aer Lingus-coded flight.  On the inbound leg, I need to reverse the order.  This search yields some prospective dates:

Clicking through on the 18th yields a few options:

Examining the price breakdown, we see that our $151 base fare was applicable.  (The variations in price are due to changes in government-imposed taxes.)

The next tricky part is trying to actually book this itinerary.  Roundtrip quickly stops providing the relevant flights and even Multicity may fail.  Generally, my complex revenue trips (including this one) have been booked by calling.  Even if the phone booking fee could not be waived, spending $25 to book an itinerary substantially cheaper than the “obvious” trips offered on the airlines’ websites may be worth it.

One Mile at a Time reports that due to Singapore Airline’s computer system switchover, SQ award availability has suddenly opened up dramatically.

I’ve tried ticketing three itineraries and obtained three different outcomes.

1. A simple JFK-FRA-WAW-FRA-JFK trip in business class for August (with both TATL segments operated by SQ) led to a “one or more flights may not be available” message after the payment screen.
2. My JFK-GVA-ZRH (LX C)-FRA (LH C)-JFK (SQ C) is currently “Pending confirmation from Singapore Airlines.”
3. My ICN-SFO (SQ F)-EWR (UA F) one-way for August is ticketed and confirmed.

Per the Singapore Airlines announcement about this switchover, their operations will “resume progressively from 2200 hours on July 8th Singapore Local Time.”  That leaves about 11 hours for me to deploy the rest of my United miles towards further awards…

Last year, I picked up the Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa Signature card when they were running a 40k miles after first purchase promotion.

Alaska offers its members using the card a 1K mile bonus on each booking.  At the time, I figured I would pick up Alaska-coded American Airlines flights occasionally when the AS-coded flights were cheaper or the same price as American’s own flight numbers.  Since making Executive Platinum last year, I’ve stuck to American-marketed and operated flights for the sake of my complimentary upgrades, so this part of my plan didn’t quite work out.  As of a few days ago, Alaska quietly inserted the note in July statements that the booking bonus was going to end August 1st.

As a further enticement of the card, Alaska offered a $110 companion ticket for cardholders annually good on any fare (for itineraries entirely on Alaska metal).  Since Alaska offers rather cheap, fully-flexible first class fares from Newark to Hawaii, this can be quite a bargain.  Consider a simple United fare to Kauai around Labor Day weekend:

This particular itinerary is far from ideal:  The JFK-LAX and HNL-EWR flights aren’t eligible for complimentary upgrades (even if I do like p.s.).  The same itinerary in Business or First Class on United runs about $2500 per person.

While American is a bit more expensive, I would almost certainly be assured complimentary upgrades as an Executive Platinum member (albeit at the cost of 20 500-mile stickers to upgrade a companion for the entire trip) or could easily burn 4 of my spare systemwides to upgrade:

In contrast, a first class itinerary on Alaska Airlines for a single traveler runs $1695.  The companion ticket adds $167.50 to this ($110 for the ticket, $57.50 in excise taxes).

While it is not an ideal itinerary, the total all-in cost of airfare per person comes to $931.25 for first class.  The class of service bonus (~5k RDM if crediting to American) and ability to save my RPUs and GPUs with United makes the small price increase very tolerable. (If combined with an easily available Avios award for 4.5k points per person on American for an early morning BOS-JFK segment, the inbound overnight in Seattle can be avoided by taking the SEA-BOS redeye operated by Alaska.)

Today, the companion ticket has been restricted to coach fares effective August 1st.  To make matters worse, Alaska-operated flights in coach out of EWR tend to be expensive…

While $1400 or so ($1275 plus the companion fare and its excise taxes) is a bit cheaper than my sample United itinerary would be for two, the cost of an overnight in Seattle each way (or an overnight on the outbound and a BOS-JFK Avios award on the return) eats up most of the cost savings.

While I do not have nearly as much invested in Alaska as say American or United (I’ve only flown 6 Alaska-operated one-ways on the LAX-SEA route and I have the credit card), I’m still left to grumble about these “changes I’m going to like” that I had thought were confined to Jeff Smisek’s Continental Airlines d.b.a. United Airlines.