I just bought my first infant ticket
Finally, I booked 3 business class from LAX-PEK using AA miles on Japan airline, but this time is diff, baby is going to travel with us, so I need to find the best infant fare for her.
Before that, I need to say something about using AA miles on JL flight to China. If you call AA and tell them you want to go from US to China on Japan Airline, you probably never gonna find anything in business class, don’t ask me why, I don’t know, there must be something wrong with either airlines’ system. What you need to do is to find a agent who is willing to search for you segment by segment, seats will show up then put together. Trust me, there are some agents don’t want to search segment by segment, so ask them before even start it, hang up and call again if they say NO. JL award availability can be found using British airways website.
Now, let me talk about infant ticket, there are actually three ways to buy a infant ticket with adult miles ticket,
1 from ticketing airline
After you redeemed your ticket, you can ask them to price an infant ticket, in my case, AA priced out for me $425 including all taxes, that’s actually 10% of the lowest business fare on my travel day, actually, JL only selling C class ticket on that day, so 10% of C class.
2 from operating airline
Also, I did call JL to check too, as I mentioned above, C and J only on that day, so same thing here, 10% of C, but for some reason, the price is slightly higher than AA price, about $20 or $30, so I went ahead with AA.However, I did asked them how JL price the infant ticket, they told me, they use 10% of the LOWEST business fare, which means, if I class is availability on the day I fly, the infant ticket would be only $300+
3 breakdown to diff operating airline if more than one airline involved or no published fare.
Although, it doesn’t apply in this case, but I have another ticket involves three diff airlines and 4 continents, there is no way for ticketing carrier or any single operating carrier to price entire trip for infant, in this case, I have to contact each operating carrier to price infant ticket.
There is really no set rule for infant fare with adult ticket using miles, some charges 10% of lowest available fare, some charges 10% of full fare, some charges 25% of lowest available fare. The best example of 25% is Cathay, I was trying to use CX for our trip back, but the infant ticket priced out more than $900 for I class, adult business I class is 4000+ one way. I asked them why, they checked fare rule and told me it’s 25%. So always check with diff carriers to find lowest price.
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