Recent Comments Padawan on Fly More Places for Fewer Miles: American s Little-Known Distance-Based Frequent Flyer Awards United offering bonus miles for hotel points transfers through November 30, 2012 - One Mile at a Time on Opportunity to Buy Miles at $0.008 in Your Choice of Airline Programs Thanks to Wyndham Rewards lets be honest on American Relaunching Itself as a Premium Airline and the Challenges of Frontline Service Delivery Biggie T on Let Each of Your Kids Give You 2500 Free British Airways Points cloudybw on Fly More Places for Fewer Miles: American s Little-Known Distance-Based male escorts los angeles Frequent Flyer Awards Archives Select Month October 2012
Last week I wrote about the best value awards that each US frequent flyer program has to offer , and I noted American s distance-based awards, frequent flyer tickets male escorts los angeles that are priced based on the number of miles flown rather than by where you start and where you re flying male escorts los angeles to.
That chart has some real values, male escorts los angeles such as the ability to fly business class between the US and Europe for 90,000 miles roundtrip instead of the usual 100,000, the ability to pop around Europe with several extra flights thrown in for 115,000 miles in business class instead of 100,000 miles roundtrip plus another 20,000 miles for each and every additional intra-European flight, and the ability male escorts los angeles to fly to Australia in business class via Asia (not normally allowed on a single award ticket) for an extra 25,000 miles and make stopovers in Asia, and throw in Australian male escorts los angeles domestic flights at the same time.
This piece of my post was probably the most confusing male escorts los angeles for folks, since it s not a widely male escorts los angeles discussed part of American s frequent male escorts los angeles flyer program and I was offering these as examples in a much longer post covering awards in several different frequent flyer programs.
The downsides of these distance-based oneworld awards are that they are roundtrip only, no opportunity to do just one-way based on distance flown, and also that you can only fly oneworld airlines with the award and not American s other partners that are not alliance members.
The upsides of these awards are that you can route however you wish, you get to opt out of American s sometimes-difficult award routing rules like that you can t connect in the Middle East enroute to Africa and that you cannot connect in Hong Kong on the way to Tokyo, or that there must be a published fare between two cities in order to fly between them on a single award. male escorts los angeles You also get to have stopovers as many as you want as long as the whole ticket doesn t have more than 16 flight segments.
male escorts los angeles Explorer Awards allow you to travel to multiple regions or multiple cities within a region on a single award. These awards are valid on all of the airlines in the one world Alliance airberlin, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, male escorts los angeles Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN, Qantas, Royal Jordanian and S7, as well as more than 20 of their affiliate airlines. The mileage required to claim these awards is based on the total mileage of the trip. All flights, including connections, are included in the mileage calculation.
Most American Airlines awards are one-way and do not allow stopovers (visiting a city other than your destination along the way), except male escorts los angeles that stopovers are only permitted at the North American gateway city .
With American s regular one-way awards if you were flying Dallas San Francisco Hong Kong Bangkok, you could stopover male escorts los angeles in San Francisco (the North American gateway city, the city you depart North America from or arrive back on the continent at when traveling from abroad). But you could not get a free stopover male escorts los angeles in Hong Kong, if you wanted to visit Hong Kong you would have to book one award to Hong Kong and then another additional award from Hong Kong to Bangkok (which is an extra 30,000 miles in business class!).
You can use a distance-based oneworld award, officially called an Explorer Award if your itinerary includes 2 or more oneworld airlines other than American in it. And you are not permitted to include any of American s partners which are not members of oneworld , meaning the ticket can t include airlines like Eithad or Air Tahiti Nui.
You are permitted male escorts los angeles one open jaw (fly into one city, out of a different city, traveling between the two on your own) and that counts as one of your segments. Transferring between co-terminal airports in the same city (such as arriving at New York s LaGuardia and departing from JFK) counts as a segment, but does not use up your open jaw.
You can visit the same airport (other than the one your trip originates at) up to three times twice as a connection and once as a stopover. A stopover occurs when your connection is more than 4 hours when traveling domestically or more than 6 hours internationally, unless there are no scheduled flights within the timeframe in which case you would have to take the next scheduled flight that s less than 24 hours from arrival in order for the connection not to count as a stopover. but since you can have unlimited stopovers that only matters for this rule on the number of times you can fly through one city.
Once ticketed, you can make free changes to the dates of travel and the specific flights but cannot make any changes at all to the airlines or routing (your only option would be to cancel the award and start over prior to departure of first flight).
A few flights are ineligible for booking with this award, such as Royal Jordanian s Iraq flights and their US and UK flights on certain blackout dates; Finnair Leisure flight numbers 1001 3000. There are standard Japan Airlines blackout dates that apply, and other restrictions that would apply on any award such as it s impermissable to fly between 2 US cities with a connection in Canada, that only a US airline may legally be used to fly between the US and Guam, and that travel to Cuba isn t permitted (complain to the US government, not to AAdvantage on these!).
But with the distance-based award you could fly New York to Rome, Rome to Madrid, Madrid to Barcelona, Barcelona to London, London to Paris, and Paris back to New York visiting 5 cities and have it cost 10,000 fewer miles than just a roundtrip.
East Cost Europe can fairly male escorts los angeles easily be kept under 10,000 miles flown, so if you travel on two different oneworld airlines such as British Airways and Iberia then you can fly for fewer miles. (Of course the fuel surcharges on BA are hefty, male escorts los angeles and those are charged when booking AAdvantage awards male escorts los angeles on that airline.)
For 15,000 miles more than a straight roundtrip, you could do something male escorts los angeles like Phoenix to London (stopover) – Paris (stopover) – Madrid (stopover) – Lisbon (stopover) – Barcelona male escorts los angeles (stopover) – Rome (stopover) – back home.
It's easier flying via Asia, but that's a lot of extra flying. But American s one-way partner awards from the US to Australia do not permit routing via Asia, you would normally be charged one award US to Asia and a second award Asia to Australia, which is much more expensive.
But if you have the time and want to make a world tour out of it, whereas male escorts los angeles that normal roundtrip Australia award is 125,000 miles in business class (if you can get it!), for 150,000 miles you can fly a combination of oneworld airlines up to 25,000 male escorts los angeles flown miles and do something like:
San Francisco to Los Angeles (stop) to Shanghai (stop) to Hong Kong (stop) to Sydney (stop) to Melbourne (stop) back to Hong Kong (and stop if you wish again, maybe visit Macau this time) then to Tokyo and stop for a visit before flying home to San Francisco.
They won t think to suggest it. And when you call you ll often need to let them know that s what you re trying to book, or else they will tell you that you have too many awards in a single reservation or want to price each part of the trip separately using the award chart they re most familiar with.
Finding award seats . Because these awards are complicated, it s even more imperative than with most award tickets to do the research to find flights that have award seats available before you call American, and plot out the whole itinerary.
I mostly use the Qantas Frequent Flyer website. Remember that in almost all cases, award seats offered by oneworld airlines are the same regardless of which oneworld frequent male escorts los angeles flyer program s miles you are using to make the booking. American male escorts los angeles s website has British Airways, air berlin, Finnair, and Qantas award seats searchable. The Qantas website includes Cathay Pacific, Iberia, and LAN flights. It doesn t include Japan Airlines flights, though, so to search awards that Japan Airlines is making available to its partners i use the Japan Airlines website.
Figuring out your routing . To make the most of the awards you ll often want to do as much flying as possible within a mileage band for instance, male escorts los angeles on a 14,000 mile award you might want to get as close to 14,000 miles as possible, rather than stop at 10,800 miles. That way you don t leave 3200 miles of free travel on the table.
I use the Great Circle Mapper to plot out my routes and see how much travel each one would be. The mileage that American male escorts los angeles uses officially is its own, and it may vary by a few miles here or there, but overall a trip will usually be calculated by Great Circle Mapper to be within 50 miles or so one way or the other from American s calculations.
On this award you state that a person must fly 2 OW airlines beside AA but could I do this without flying AA at all. As in for example male escorts los angeles Iberia to Madrid, fly around Europe a little and then fly home on British Airways or do I have to use at least one AA flight in conjunction with the award?
Is there any way to finagle this if you live on the east coast so you get a Europe male escorts los angeles trip and a domestic trip (separate things) on one award? For example, BOS-MAD-CDG-LHR-BOS (six months pass) BDL (hartford)-ORD-BDL comes in at 9296 miles. If the Europe legs are on BA and Iberia, and the US legs are on American, is that a legal trip?
@William you do not need to fly AA at all, for instance i have done it with Cathay an
