Meanwhile I had to get hold of a suitable roll-aboard for my clothes for this trip. I already had an STM backpack for my laptop, but I was a bit lacking in the suitcase department. As QF seem to enforce the carry-on luggage requirement more than AA, I wanted to make sure I kept to the 45” total linear dimension. The High Sierra case that I settled on is actually 42”, but can be expanded for those times when extra space is required and I am happy to check my luggage. As I would later find out, this is small by comparison to the most of the cases that people in the US will carry on.
My commitment in LA was then confirmed for the morning of Saturday 22nd, so I would spend Friday 21st getting from PIT to LAX. This time I settled on PIT-LGA-ORD-LAX as I had to make sure I got to LAX in enough time to pick up a hire car and drive down to SNA to collect them. This would also be my first time to NYC (albeit only at LGA) but again, this routing was cheaper than PIT-ORD-LAX
I must confess though that for this booking I screwed up a bit. The original booking was a 14 day advance purchase KUPP fare, and was put on hold just inside that 14 day window. When I rang IndiAA the next day, the 14 day fare no longer applied so would need to be a more expensive 7 day fare. I originally thought that I was being screwed on the exchange rate, so decided to wait and call AA in the US. What I didn’t realise at the time was that this additional delay caused the original booking to expire, so the new fare was priced as the 7 day fare anyway. So IndiAA may have quoted the fare correctly after all. I am still not sure why the fare was repriced at 7 days when the booking was put on hold at 14 days?
So, back on aa.com, enter bookings and then try the payment on-line method. Initially the AMEX # wasn’t accepted, but a tip from Dave Noble got around this, so payment made in GBP via the website.