AA FF Miles to Europe and Asia

Old Apr 10th, 2014, 04:40 AM
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AA FF Miles to Europe and Asia

After the merger between US Air and AA is complete we will have enough ff miles to fly to Asia or Europe. Now for a few questions:
1) Is there a way to fly to Europe on AA ff miles without going thru London and having to pay those outrageous fuel charges? (we only fly economy as we prefer not to use our miles for upgrades).
2) For trips to Asia what I find on the website is pretty lousy as we are located in Houston and the few flights that show have bad connections. Does one get much better results by calling AA?
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Old Apr 10th, 2014, 05:35 AM
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Where do you want to go in Asia? If it's to one of AA's destinations (Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, or [as of this summer] Hong Kong), and on an AA flight, then what you see on the website is what you get.

Calling AA would be necessary to book FF flights on AA's partner airlines JAL or Cathay Pacific. That might present you with more options.
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Old Apr 10th, 2014, 05:46 AM
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Is there a way to fly to Europe on AA ff miles without going thru London and having to pay those outrageous fuel charges? (we only fly economy as we prefer not to use our miles for upgrades).

Yes, of course. Some alternatives are shown on AA's website, including all of AA's (and US Airways) own flights - to Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Frankfurt, Rome, Venice, Milan, Helsinki, Dusseldorf, London, Manchester, Dublin...

Flights on some partners are displayed on the website, such as British Airways, airBerlin and Finnair; other such as Iberia aren't, but can be booked over the phone. To avoid BA's fuel surcharges, just don't book any flights on BA "metal" or that connect through London. To avoid UK Air Passenger Duty (a real tax as opposed to BA's fuel charges, which are pure profit) don't originate any travel in the UK. If you need to change planes in London, make sure it's just a connection with less than 24h on the ground.

As for Asia, Jeff_Costa_Rica has it right - some but not all partners are shown on the AA site; but knowing where you want to go will help with options. As you know Houston is a United hub, so AA's presence isn't great - you'll be flying through DFW pretty much wherever you want to go.
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Old Apr 10th, 2014, 07:27 AM
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You might first search available routes on www.kayak.com. On the left hand column where you can select or unselect individual airlines after you run a search you can choose "one world" (the name of AA's group of airlines it shares miles awards with) so it limits flights just to those airlines you could use.

Of course your kayak search won't tell you whether award seats are still available for your dates or for how many miles but you will have at least the starting information to search on aa.com (which now includes AA, USAir, British Airways, and Air Berlin flights but not others I think)).

To Asia and Europe you may need to connect through another US city from Houston (like Dallas or Chicago) but kayak can at least show you the possibilities.

If you don't find what you want online then call AA.
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Old Apr 10th, 2014, 10:21 AM
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Don't use kayak for award searches. It will frustrate you to no end.

OP, lots of good info here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/oneworld-411/
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Old Apr 12th, 2014, 09:18 AM
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Use the OneWorld map. If it's on OneWorld you should be able to use AA miles for it (I think, but don't quote me on that). I'm headed to SE Asia this fall using American, Cathay and DragonAir, all using one set of AA miles. For that trip I did have to buy my ticket to/from my local airport to Chicago as that wasn't released at the time for award miles and it wasn't worth waiting for. You might run into the same thing getting out of Houston.

http://onw.innosked.com/?show=MAP


Houston to DFW to Hong Kong/Seoul/Tokyo gets you pretty much anywhere in Asia.

Or Houston to LAX to Tokyo/Shanghai/Hong Kong/Kuala Lumpur.


Figure out where you want to go, and then use the OneWorld site to figure out the best way to get there. I lucked into using AA miles for a business ticket both ways, but I booked as soon as the tickets were available at 330 days out.



For Europe... where do you want to go in Europe? Same as with Asia, use the OneWorld site to find the routing you might want to aim for and go from there. AirBerlin works fairly well and I don't remember any crazy fees for going through Berlin.
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Old Apr 12th, 2014, 11:46 AM
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Despite its name, AirBerlin's largest hub is Dusseldorf.
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Old Apr 16th, 2014, 03:54 AM
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I too would emphasize to check out OneWorld. You CAN use AA miles for tickets there and frankly you can get a lot more for your miles on a One World ticket compared to an AA ticket.
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Old Apr 16th, 2014, 05:54 AM
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There are no "Oneworld" miles or awards, only individual airline programs such as AAdvantage, BAEC, QFF, AsiaMiles, etc. Each member airline has partnerships and redemption alternatives with each other, and also with non-Oneworld partners, such as American with Alaska Airlines or Air Fiji, or Qantas with Emirates.

American used to offer a "Oneworld" award, a mileage based redemption scheme that required the use of two Oneworld members in addition to AA in any award. This was renamed the "Explorer" award (thereby causing confusion with the "Oneworld Explorer" paid round-the-world ticket product) but last week AA summarily eliminated that award category altogether.

Using the map on Oneworld.com will actually give you fewer routing options than you'll get with AA miles, because it doesn't show the non-alliance partners' routes.
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Old Apr 16th, 2014, 06:13 AM
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Oh wow, Gardyloo. What horrible news. I was just starting work on two of us doing a OneWorld Asia trip, probably around the world in 2016 with 130,000 miles each as I did a few years ago. Nothing was indicating that would no longer be possible!
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Old Apr 16th, 2014, 07:39 AM
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Nothing was indicating that would no longer be possible!

No, and the manner in which AA announced its removal was terrible - red-letter notice on the website, and a smarmy email talking about "enhancements" to the AAdvantage program. As if. Other "enhancements" were the institution of tiered availability (a la Delta) and giant price increases for "AAnytime" awards, and the elimination of the free stopover at N. American gateway cities on redemptions to Europe or the Middle East.

Although it could have been worse (Stockholm syndrome I guess) it's sad to watch AA join the race to the bottom for FF programs. It used to be the Cadillac of FFPs, now looking more like another Chevy.
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Old Apr 16th, 2014, 10:12 AM
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>>

Not necessarily. If I plug in on AA for ORD-HKG, I get options for American, US Airways and 'American operated by Cathay'. For the same date on the OneWorld site I get options for those, but also for Cathay, Iberia, Japan Airlines and British. You can pull some of those up using the Qantas or BA sites, but what a pain in the butt.


I've really liked using the map to find what flights I want to look for. How many flights go from DFW to Asia or Europe? Not very many. That really helps narrow down the options for what you want to go looking for or what airlines you want to look at more in depth. It also works well if you're flying into a smaller airport, such as Hanoi. With only a few options to get into that airport, it's easy to search for routes to go from the US to one of those hubs and work backwards from there.
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Old May 4th, 2014, 03:22 AM
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Oh no! I loved the one world award! I am so disappointed!
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