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I can understand NEXUS taking longer as it is a joint program with Canada. My gut suggest the processing times for anything USCIS-related is being blown out longer and longer due to the craziness on the southern border and the workload that is creating. BTW - SENTRI became a less worthwhile program as it does not automatically include Global Entry benefits and Global Entry users can now register cars for crossing into Mexico. The only time SENTRI works out is if you are applying as a family with kids and then it can be cheaper. Once you get SENTRI, you need to get another appointment to get Global Entry benefits added to your SENTRI card for air travel. Next time I will simply reapply under Global Entry and save money (SENTRI is more expensive) and hassle.

Sometimes it is better to call and have an agent assist you with the booking as was suggested earlier. Tell them what you are trying to accomplish and then see what they can do. They will see things not available on the web at times when it comes to partner awards. If it doesn't work out, call back and speak to another agent. Use the callback option as the hold times can be really, really long on American these days unless you have super high status.

While I am not 100% sure what you are saying, I might buy one round trip ticket with miles and the other with cash. For some reason, most airlines price tickets for international travel much cheaper on a round trip basis than one way from what I have seen. This is not the case for domestic US flights nor is it the same for reward travel which seems to be booked by the leg. I would try and secure the reward ticket and then get the same flights paying cash - just an idea. The "best seats" in coach are either paid for extra or reserved for an airline's frequent flyers who have some elite status. In terms of being "too long" in economy, I flew JFK to EZE (Buenos Aires) both way this past March which is about an 11 hour flight and I am 6'3". I had a "more room" seat, but it still isn't too much different in comfort if you are under 6'. The difference between PE and regular economy is more about seat pitch, width and recline. You also get somewhat - although not much - better service. They are also fewer seats per row and this makes it easier to get in and out of your seat to stretch your legs. I can't really say how much better PE is than economy, but it's probably a better value if one is either big and/or tall. I agree with exit row comment and depending on the particular row, the leg room can be really good at the expense of a narrower seat. I also agree with the aisle seat comment. I like the inside isle in economy class on most wide body aircraft as you won't have to get up as much to let other people out as you would when sitting on the side of the isle where a window exists. The exception here is for some of the bulkhead seats which are better on the window side. Look at seatmaps.com for more information regarding AA aircraft cabin layouts. Just some ideas for you to consider...

Not really, the real QF said the ticket was invalid after the scammer took it over. The ticket doesn't even exist anymore and no service can be delivered. This is true. There charge on my bill says Qantas - probably not the real legal name in the US - and the detailed listing for the transaction on my account includes a website link that takes you to the QF website. The dispute is supposed to be finalized by August 11th and if it does not go in my favor I will definitely shut down my account with Citi.

I think you'll be able to accomplish this. Just book the tickets at the same time and you should be able to work it out. If the website doesn't work, I will bet someone in their call center will help you out if you explain the situation.

To me the time difference between locations is probably the most significant factor - at least for me - in terms of experiencing jet lag. However the # of hours difference between Sydney and Atlanta changes throughout the year because of daylight savings time and the fact that the cities are on different sides of the equator. The time difference can be as much as 10 hours and as few as 8 hours. The shorter time change is during the US winter which coincides with many cruises from Australia to New Zealand. Here is a webpage that helps you determine the time change for your specific travel dates: http://en.timeofdate.com/time/diff/Australia/Sydney/with/United States/Atlanta

AA permits booking up to 331 days in advance. While it is still too early for you to book, flights at the limit of the booking time window are 40k and $109.00 in premium economy right to Barcelona. The return from FCO is 49k and $56.00 per ticket. Personally I think you can find yourself a deal if you are a bit flexible on routing and dates. Since AA also permits you to cancel reward reservation at anytime without penalty, I might consider locking something in early and then see if you can beat your deal over time. As an example, below is a screen print of the "search by calendar" function for reward ticket availability for your proposed outbound leg by for schedulable dates in May. Good luck booking your tickets!

Well, I am a long time AA flyer too and my head just wasn't in the right place talking to the people. They were good including fake transfers between QF and AA agents. I have filed a dispute. I cannot receive service as the ticket doesn't exist. I actually had reward tickets issued by AA and then the scammers actually destroyed it trying to convert a reward ticket into a paid ticket as part of their seat assignment ploy. Yes, it would have been incredible showing up at the airport without a real ticket and needing to buy something at the last minute. Yes, that is basically correct. However the dispute has not been adjudicated as far as I know. If it goes against me, I will appeal the decision as I only had 500 characters to write the explanation of what happened. It is impossible for the scammers to deliver service as AA rescinded the original ticket, reinstated my miles and then reissued a completely new ticket.

I also liked Kuranda on a previous visit. We did the gondola up and the train coming back down. It was a very enjoyable excursion.

On the return you will go through immigration at LAX and then pickup your bags to go through customs. After customs you will find a bag recheck area to put your bags onto your flight to Charlotte. After that you'll need to reenter the departure area and go through airport security once again. The time really depends on how crowded the airport is when you arrive. I would think a couple of hours should be sufficient. It also may be airline dependent. My gut suggests you are on American and/or QANTAS and American. Is this correct? Moderators - this should probably be on the "cruise air" board.

Sadly it is one of the few numbers that I remember and it has been with me for a long time. I guess only my SSN and Drivers License numbers are older. True - I'll make that change as well as nothing lasts forever.

I called AA and the only way to protect my miles is to change my FF number to something else. I am deciding whether or not to do that as well.

Thanks to all that have responded with both advice and words of support! I think without this group's support the outcome and financial loss could have been worse. It was really @BOB999's comment about the phone that caused me to go back and look again. I have opened the dispute with my credit card company. I am not optimistic, but you never know. The original reservation certainly doesn't exist now so it is impossible for any service to be delivered. I will consider the suggestion of putting a PIN on my AA account. I am also thinking about changing my credit card number. I looked up the number associated with my credit card charge and here is what I found: https://www.scampulse.com/fly-vault-deals-reviews https://www.bbb.org/us/tx/houston/profile/travel-agency/fly-vault-travels-0915-90065162/customer-reviews The good news is that I now have everything confirmed for my trip. I also decided to change my credit card # just to be sure.

So I just got off the phone first with QF, my credit card company and then finally AA. QF told me that the ticket I had was now invalid and/or awaiting payment as my original reservation was taken over by the scammers. The net effect of this is that I had no flight home from my cruise. That would have been a real shocker to show up at the airport or discover at check-in time that my reservation was garbage. Next in talking with the credit card company I discovered that I didn't have any way of getting my money back as I had provided consent via an email. This was my key error in terms of responding to the fake email and not seeing that the underlying email domain wasn't right. So dumb... Finally I called American and was able to cancel my first reservation that got hijacked and get the miles reinstated along with booking a very similar award ticket. This included getting my seats reserved via the agent at no additional cost. The American representative really went out of their way for me in getting the whole process of cancelling and rebooking handled. In hindsight, I should have recognized that the process was unlike any other airline call center experience I have ever had and that my award tickets are never result in a standby ticket. What was I thinking? Not much obviously... Finally, I want to thank everyone this board for questioning what was going on with my ticket. This led me to finally discovering the fact that I had been duped by scammers. I must confess as to feeling embarrassed by the whole episode but I suppose it could have been worse - like showing up at the airport and not being able to check in. Hopefully at least one person here can learn something from my very hard lesson.

OMG - you are right. I got scammed by looking up the # on the web. I am glad I will have time to fix this. I may be out the money and maybe the miles. Now it is time to start trying to recover... First time something like this has ever happened to me...

This is an interesting question and I have seen it discussed by people sailing their own boats in the Med. Another place you might consider for an extended stay is Turkey which probably checks off at least some of your boxes. You can get a Turkish visa on arrival or online. Another alternative is to simply to stay under the 90 day limit if you can find some cruises that you like. Another idea would be to go at least one way on the Queen Mary 2 which does transatlantic crossings frequently - even though this results in leaving the Schengen zone too.

Thanks. I looked up class Z (classic premium economy reward ticket) and found the following information that may "dovetail" with the statement of QF that this is a standby ticket. Still it just doesn't make sense to me. I probably never should have called and everything would have been fine. 14.1 Classic Flight Rewards - general 14.1.1 Classic Flight Rewards are subject to airline inventory management and availability is limited. Qantas, oneworld Member Airlines and Airline Partners (including Jetstar Airlines) limit the number of Classic Flight Reward seats available to Members at their absolute discretion. The number of Classic Flight Reward seats available will depend on the flight, date, season, destination and commercial demand. Some flights may not have any Classic Flight Reward seats available. Once Classic Flight Reward seats on a flight have been filled there may be no more Classic Flight Reward seats available on that flight. Classic Flight Reward seats are booked in special classes of travel. If Classic Flight Reward seats are not available on a flight, Members may choose another flight, date or destination that has Classic Flight Reward seats available, or another Reward.

So I want to be clear on something. I booked a premium economy seat for 65k as business at the time was unavailable at "reasonable" cost for my required date range. The amazing thing is that I just went back and checked my original reservation confirmation from American for the ticket and it lists booking class Z for my MEL-LAX fight. It even says first class on the email print out! Crazy? Just to prove I am not crazy, I have looked up another 65k premium economy flight on November 6th and it returns booking class Z even though the class of service on the web site says it's a premium economy ticket. Strange things are definitely afoot inside the AA reward system...

BTW - I just saw a video yesterday for a website called seats.aero which helps people find reward space on airlines. I played around with the free version which looks out 60 days. A paid version allows you to search out to one year or however far out airlines publish flight availability. It looked interesting and really shows the value being able to transfer miles/points between loyalty programs.

It wasn't presented as such when I made the original reservation on the American website. I actually would have been OK with that if it had been presented in a clear manner. The QF agent told me specially that I had a standby ticket. The AA agent told me they "bought" the cheapest available ticket.

Thanks to all for their input! This has been definitely a learning experience for me. My thinking and selection of these tickets was really based in "old school" thinking and doesn't seem to reflect the "way things are now" coupled with my new status of being "retired." I definitely didn't want to sit in economy from Australia to the US for 16 hours. If this was the case, I could have booked a 40k economy ticket on American metal and received an extra leg room seat. My goal was to find a business class seat or at worst a premium economy seat. I will fly on discount carriers/economy in the US and Mexico but not for long haul. I did look on Google Flights for a seat but not on the underlying ITA Matrix software. I just looked a few minutes ago on ITA Matrix and found a reasonable flight on Asiana in business that would have worked at a decent price. These flights might have shown up on Google Flights as well, I think, but I made a fundamental error in my original search- being too loyal to a specific airline alliance. I flew mostly on American during my work career and always looked there first. All of my recent searching of late suggests that OneWorld rarely delivers the best price and the miles redemption #'s on AA are typically ridiculous for anything other than economy - more on this later I have never tried the cruise airline program. This was probably my error #2 in making this reservation - not even checking to see what the cruise line ticket price would be. Trust me AA didn't impress me on this one either. This was a first to me as well. I have been a member of the AAdvantage program for many years and this is a first for me. What is different now than in the past is that the award pricing was not dynamic as it is today. Also, the the miles I paid for my SYD-LAX tickets were substantially less than what was shown on other days. It seems that "cheap" reward tickets for anything other than coach are really difficult to find via American these days again showing the diminished value of the program today. I spent over an hour on the phone being passed back between QF and AA. I started with QF and they told me that my ticket was standby and if I wanted to confirm it I would need to spend more money. AA basically told me that they booked the cheapest available fare and that they could do nothing more. Finally, a QF supervisor told me they would discount the ticket based on the situation but still charged me $600 US to reissue the two tickets as confirmed space. I was then able to select seats normally based on my Sapphire status. Whether an error was made or not or there was some confusion was made regarding seat allocation or not, I was told by the QF customer service agent that I had a standby ticket. Again, it was a super strange experience that has never happened to me in many years of travel using award tickets. Could be. Even though I called into QF twice on the same day to resolve the issue, I probably should have simply let it sit for a while rather than going along in the moment. Not taking a "time out" in this situation where months remain until my actual flight date reflects a 3rd error that I made in booking this system. There really was no time crunch and I could have simply waited and searched again for a suitable flight. $600.00 for two people. The price actually started at $1200.00 for the two tickets after some additional discounts were applied. Again, it was all such a crazy experience.

So with the help of this board I picked a flight home from Sydney back to the US on QANTAS via Melbourne. This flight follows a transpacific cruise so I only needed a one way ticket. For whatever reason/airline the one way tickets are really expensive so I decided to use miles. I found a good points deal on American's website so I booked it. I went back about a week ago and tried to pick out seats via the web. All was fine until I tried to complete the final confirmation step and I received a cryptic error message from the web site. I tried a couple of times and then called QANTAS to see what was up. The end result was that I discovered that American had only booked me a standby ticket and I had no confirmed space on my flights. I asked to be transferred to American and the customer service agent told me they do this all the time. They said talk to QANTAS if I wanted a confirmed space. The end result was that I needed to pay an additional $300/ticket to get confirmed and this was after spending almost an hour on the phone with QANTAS reservations and getting a "discount" on the fare change. I don't know if this was always the case or if it's simply a new feature of the AAdvantage program in 2023. Needless to say I was shocked and couldn't image if I had been denied boarding because my wife and I were on standby tickets. I guess I am "happy" that I called in advance rather than being surprised at the airport. I guess my advice to anyone travelling on AAdvantage awards at a discount level to check and see what they are really getting. Maybe for other airlines too. BTW - I anyone has good ideas for buying reasonable one way international flights to or from the US let me know. This would be above and beyond buying the roundtrip ticket and throwing away the return.

Nope - you are conflating general performance of a particular service route with what happens in the event of a problem. The fundamental reason BA'a and AA's respective 777 performance in PHX works is because the aircraft itself and the underlying MRO practices for both carriers are good resulting in very high flight dispatch rates in excess of 99%. These high dispatch rates allow both of these carriers to successfully serve airports that have limited on-site MRO resouces. However when a problem occurs, it is easier for any carrier to fix that problem in an airport with significant type operations and support facilities than one that doesn't have as much. Again, it's just not economic to store people and parts everywhere for the airlines or any other industry. The attached link covers a disturbing instance where a plane needed to be pulled from service for a crazy reason yet demonstrates the point I am making. In this case BA was able to swap aircraft. I am pretty sure BA would have had a lot more difficulty in responding to this event if it had happened in Lagos rather than in London: https://liveandletsfly.com/passenger-defecates-british-airways/ Here's another one where BA decided to return to London rather than having a broken aircraft on the ground in the Mauritius: https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/08/passengers-on-flight-to-mauritius-returned-after-technical-issue-17898824/ BA knows it was much better to return home than have an airplane requiring service many thousand miles from home. Finally, it doesn't even have to be long haul as this flight from Europe to the UK suggests where maintaince issues and prudence can lead to much longer delays: https://liveandletsfly.com/29-hour-delay-british-airways/ I could see BA swapping aircraft if this had happened at one of their main UK operating bases.

You still seem confused by my oriiginal post and 747's have nothing to do with anything. A better line of inquiry related to my post would be to think about dispatch rates for aircraft. Dispatch rates for modern aircraft are very high with 777's being close to the top in terms of dispatch reliability. I know that the 777 fleet dispatch rate is over 99%. However in the unlikely event that there is an issue, the time required to fix the problem would likely be higher in PHX than in an airport like LHR or LAX. Certainly I waswilling to play those dispatch odds as I recently took the PHX to LHR flight on BA myself without incident. However if you turn out to be really unlucky, you might find yourself waiting longer than in some other places to get underway.

Regardless of contracts, I do have a very good idea of flight operations at PHX which was the basis of my comment. PHX is completely dominated by A320 and 737 aircraft from AA and WN with a small smattering of other types - mostly regional jets. I can't see it as being economic to store too many parts and people with deep 777 experience in PHX. BA and AA would be similarly challenged with maintenance issues on there once a day 777 service from PHX. This is the key point. Even at my home airport of SAN, I have needed to wait on parts being shipped down from LA to get a plane fixed. BTW - JNB is a completely different aiport with different operations when compared to PHX and isn't a useful comparison. JNB is served by many airlines with long haul flights and a large mix of wide body aircraft on a dialy basis. It also totally makes sense for SAA to sell maintenance services there for other airlines. I seriously doubt very few carriers could make the business case to set up a maintenance shop in South Africa as an in house excercise.