Alaska Air has gone back to its old system of letting you book the outgoing leg of your international travel as soon as the seats become available, hold those seats and then book the return seats when they come available.

At this point BA is charging a fuel surcharge of $1,000 per ticket but it still is way cheaper than buying a ticket particularly if you are flying business/first.

I just changed my paid coach ticket for Sept '09 to mileage tickets. This might help some other travelers as I had to pay a cancellation fee but am still getting money back on my coach ticket cancellation but was able to upgrade to bussiness on my mileage.

I have to give credit for this windfall to Frostbit as he kept insisting that you could book the out going seats before the return seats became available. Gracy Travel and I both insisted that we knew better but we did not know the policy was changed in Dec '08.

So anyway redeeming your miles for a long safari just got easier and if youwant to check you may be able to roll your paid tickets into your mileage.

Mark

I glad that you were able to convert to miles and save some bucks. That's great news. Now if you want to buy me a Croc in Zambia it's fine with me.

I hope I get as lucky with miles for upcoming trip.