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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.

Maybe being in Phoenix helps somewhat and I didn't assume that the flight wouldn't go, only that a mechanical delay could take a while. All bases/stations aren't created equal and while AA has significant operations in PHX only one flight is with the 777 as far as I know. The resolution of a mechanical problem could require shipping in parts and/or staff from LAX or maybe DFW. It really depends on BA's contracts.

@azgrandmax3 dependable is a relative term, but I think BA is dependable as any carrier. I assume you would be flying out of Phoenix to London. As long as your plane doesn't have a mechnical issue, you should be good. If a mechanical issue occurs it would probably take BA a while to respond as they only have one flight a day to and from Phoenix. I actually just flew from PHX on BA a couple of weeks ago to Germany. I flew from there because I got a cheap deal on business class rather than flying from my home airport of San Diego which is always expensive. If you are in Business, you while access to the "Escape Lounge" near the actual boarding gate. This lounge is OK - although small - and is a welcome respite from the absolute madness of the international boarding area at PHX. It can be an absolute "zoo" there as the space is way too small for the number of passengers that can crowd around for flights there. My own recommendation would be to buy seats if you are in coach and can't pick them out for free via some kind of status. It's a long flight and I personnally wouldn't want to get jammed in the middle of mutliple passengers. Enjoy your trip.

That's the kind of problem that I like to have!

The subject of involuntary downgrades is an interesting one. This one link suggests the airlines downgrade those on point before those paying cash. The rules regarding downgrade compensation also vary by jurisdiction. https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/reviews-and-advice/getting-downgraded-on-a-flight-why-it-happens-and-what-you-can-do-about-it-20220911-h26cgo.html yes, I saw that as well.in terms of the alternating aircraft types. Space for award travel outside of coach was more limited on the 787 vs the A380 which makes sense to me given the size difference of the aircraft. My final solution was to actually call AA and get them to help adjust my reservation. I decided to fly to MEL the day before as you perviously suggested and avoid early trips to the airport altogether. This approach also gives me an afternoon and evening to spend in Melbourne prior to heading home without worrying about a connection. I first thought about extending my vacation and spending more time in Melbourne, but the award availability just didn't work out well for me given my scheduled commitments at home. Thanks again to all for their ideas. I am happy with my plan.

I agree that Melbourne is a fine place to visit with much to see and do. Since I haven't been there since well before the pandamic, maybe I will extend the trip a bit more to keep things simpler. I very much agree with this perspective. From the passenger perspective, flying is about managing downside risk and any connection introduces another "failure point" in a journey. I just took a trip where I combined 2 tickets - one award and one paid. In this case I flew in more that 5 hours early and I also had 2 backups that I could use to get to my long haul flight on time which was on a separate ticket. I noticed in your post that you have done similar things as well. Coach seats are reasonably plentiful. It's hard to get anything else at a reasonable point level - at least using AAdvantage miles. One other option I found was a Fijian Airways flight that sells one way tickets without a markup. Thanks to all for their feedback!

It would be a single award ticket with flight 2 segments and we would be checking bags in at Sydney. Your point about early morning weather is a good one. Were I live early morning fog can be an issue at our local airport at certain times of year. My trip is in November which would be in mid Spring I guess. Your are correct that the flight to the US is QF 93 which leaves at 11:00. I wish I could simply fly home directly from SYD, but the award ticket prices are rediculous for anything more that basic economy...

I don't really think the prices are all that bad with respect to Vueling. If you book an Optima ticket and add a bag of 20kg you'll get 45kg (~100 lbs) of checked in baggage per person. I looked at some prices and the all in cost was about $110/person when booking BCN-FCO well in advance. Of course things can always change with respect to prices.

In order to get a cheap award ticket home I need to fly from SYD to MEL and then make the connection to my international flight home on Qantas. I have many options for arriving into MEL based on the plethora of flights on QF between the 2 cities. The earliest flight shown on the web page leaves at 6:00AM with 3:25 of connection time and the latest is at 7:30AM with only 1:35 available to connect. Several more options are available in between. My normal gut is to have more connecting time in case of flight issues, but 6:00AM is pretty early given the need to arrive at the airport and pass security. What do the experts here suggest is sufficient time to connect? I guess a follow on question would be how much time to allocate at the Sydney airport. I expect to have some sort of "fast track" access to security.