AA OneWorld award does it again!
 

As many of you know I love the mileage game and AA seems to be the most generous in that department. Here is the itn we were able to book today. It did take 3-4 calls and a slight date adjustment (1 day earlier).

AA OneWorld Business Class award.

130K miles + $208 in taxes and fees x 2.


FEB5 - SRQ-mia-ord (AA economy and first)
FEB5 - ord-mad-CAI (IB business)
FEB12 - CAI-lhr-SOF (BA business)
FEB16 - SOF-bud-OTP (MA business)
FEB20 - OTP-lhr-FCO (BA business)
FEB26 - FCO-mad-mia (IB business)
FEB26 - mia-SRQ (AA economy)

6 days in Cairo, 4 days in Sofia, 4 days in Bucharest and 6 days in Rome.

FEB12 - CAI-lhr-SOF (BA business)...
FEB20 - OTP-lhr-FCO (BA business)

Carryon luggage only? ;)

yeah I know, but maybe/possibly the rule will change by then......

I just got off the phone. I don't know why we were going through Chicago on the outbound, but I was able to eliminate it and now it's SRQ-mia-mad(AA)-CAI(IB).

How did you get that for so low of miles? I am trying to get to India on miles in business and everything is sold out/or 270,000 miles a ticket. Any suggestions on whether to use the phone or online to book this stuff? Thanks!

The above applies only to AA OneWorld award.

You can read all the rules here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=433366

Interesting itinerary. I do appreciate seeing someone squeeze all the juice out of a FF program.

Will you have an opportunity to change if MIA-MAD on IB becomes available, or is it a done deal? Or maybe MIA-MAD is too late to connect to CAI.

SOF-BUD-OTP on Malev? Do you have plans for your 7-hour layover in Budapest?

Oh, I just noticed that you did get MIA-MAD.

I agree: the OW award is just about the best award out there. I was able to get 2 trips from a 130k award (20,000 miles) by taking a cheap flight from BOS-JFK, then going to Amsterdam and South Africa [JFK-(MAD)-AMS-(MAD)-JNB-(LHR)-BOS] for the first trip, and BOS-MIA-(BOS)-JFK for the second.

I just got Florida to Europe in Business Class on AA for 90,000 in high summer. With Continental/Delta/Northwest, it would have been 250,000 miles.

But AAFrequentFlyer, why are you always trying to get your awards with BA and Iberia? Better food, cuter flight attendants, better wine, could it be the fasten seatbelt signs are turned off??!!

With AA OneWorld award it's mandatory that it includes at least 2 OW partners and AA doesn't count nor it's needed. I know it's weird as this is only AA award. The other partners have their own rules for this type of an award.

That said I will be flying AA from SRQ-MIA-MAD and on the return AA will get me home from MIA-SRQ.

The itn is difficult to begin with. The only European based OneWorld partners are BA, FinnAir, Malev and IB.
Also not all of them fly to the cities I want to visit, so it limits the airlines. Also, you are only allowed 2 connections and one stopover in any one city on OneWorld award, so that's why I needed to spread the wealth amongst the European OneWorld partners to satisfy the 2 partner and 2 connections rules.

AA was available from MAD-MIA on the return but it left before IB could get me to MAD. IB only had 1 flight available from Rome and it gives me 2 hour connection to IB's MIA flight. If I had a choice I probably would take AA. The 767 operating on this route has the new business class seats, but beggars can't be chosers.

With awards you take what you can get.

Another reason is the simple fact that AA does not operate intra-European routes, so how do you expect me to use AA exclusively?

90,000 business award is an All Partner award. It will get you to Europe and you can even have a second stopover in a gateway city at either end, but that's it.

There is no way you could do what I have planned with the All Partner award.

First - Cairo, it's not Europe so it would be an extra award from Europe to Middle East. That's another 60K miles in business. So you're up to 150K miles if you wanted to visit Cairo. Then you could only chose one of the 2, Bucharest or Sofia but not both and finally Rome would be the gateway city.

So for 90K AA miles you could get Rome, Bucharest or Sofia, no Cairo,

or

for 150K miles you can throw in Cairo

but stilll only 1 of the 2 mentioned cities

or

you can do what I did and get all 4 cities for 130K miles with AA OneWorld award.

I've still never quite been able to wrap my mind around these OneWorld awards, and I'm not even sure what it is that I don't get about it. :) But I've been looking at using AAdvantage miles for an India trip too, just like dutyfree said above, and seeing nothing but the higher "rate" of miles required for most dates using AA's ORD-DEL-ORD flight.

So, my questions:

1) Making the OW awards work requires some flexibility in dates just like AAdvantage, right? If you're willing to burn a higher number of miles with OW, you can get, basically, any date?

2) To get to India, you could theoretically combine American, Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines, for example, with stopovers in Hong Kong and Tokyo? That would fulfill the two-airlines-other-than-AA requirement, right?

3) In using AAdvantage miles on other airlines, are you lower priority in finding availabilty than passengers with that airline's own FF program? Back to the flexibility question again, I guess.

Thanks.

Oh, I should add that I did read the posts at Flyer Talk. :)

<i>1) Making the OW awards work requires some flexibility in dates just like AAdvantage, right? If you're willing to burn a higher number of miles with OW, you can get, basically, any date?</i>

No, there's no &quot;anytime&quot; provision with OW awards. The number of miles required is based on the net mileage flown and the class of service - if seats aren't available they can't be secured by upping the FF miles consumed.

<i>2) To get to India, you could theoretically combine American, Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines, for example, with stopovers in Hong Kong and Tokyo? That would fulfill the two-airlines-other-than-AA requirement, right?</i>

Right. Or you could use AA to Chicago, Iberia to Madrid, then British to India, and come back via Hong Kong or Tokyo. Or Finnair to Helsinki then Malev to Budapest and New York.

<i>3) In using AAdvantage miles on other airlines, are you lower priority in finding availabilty than passengers with that airline's own FF program? Back to the flexibility question again, I guess.</i>

Each airline has its own priorities for releasing seats for people using other mileage plans. However that's seldom the problem; the bigger problem is some airlines just not releasing seats, period. Qantas across the Pacific in business or first is legendary for not releasing seats to AA (or, really, for their own or anybody else's) flyers.

Thank you, gardyloo and AAFF. Your insight is very helpful.

AAFrequentFlyer, have a great trip.

I have lots of AAdvantage miles and will check out the link you provide for info on AA One World Award.

Made a mistake. It's only 115K AA miles plus taxes and fees.

The itn as it counts for the award:

SRQ-CAI-SOF-OTP-FCO-SRQ = just under 14K miles, so it's 115K AA miles to get it.

For another 15K miles or 130K miles total I could add another 6K miles of2wsx` flying.

It's funny how things work out. I was sure we were spending 130K miles each. Whenj I found out we could 1 more destination for only 15K miles so I called AA and added the following:

The total itn:

SRQ-mia-mad-CAI
CAI-lhr-SOF
SOF-bud-OTP
OTP-lhr-FCO
FCO-mad-ord-TPA

4 months later:

TPA-sju-POS
POS-mia-SRQ

Total = 130K AA miles
~16500K total flying miles
Business int/First dom
16 segments - max allowed

Jeff Costa Rica-did you figure out a &quot;cheaper&quot; way to use our miles to India? I still don't understand why I cannot fly ORD-DEL on AA since its their miles for alot less. Let me know what you come up with. Thanks!

I just looked at award availability in business and first class on ORD-DEL for arbitrary periods during November and February (just for data points) and saw no business availability, but plenty of seats in first class.

Routes like ORD-DEL are flown specifically because of high load factors in paid business class, so it's not surprising that they won't make many award seats available. I wouldn't count on getting an award on that route (in business) without a big struggle.

Using other resources, though, I could see plenty of business class availability to India for routes via London. Not every day, and some routes might not be available to AA mileage plan members (owing to reliance on British Airways for US &gt; London service, ineligible) but overall a more open scene. I'd keep phoning AA.

Thanks for your imput-I am going to fly my own airline to London and transfer to BA to Delhi to use my miles.The days were very limited but are working out for me so if I can find some hotels I will be a &quot;happy camper&quot;!!!

We had to make some changes to our award tickets and here it is.

My best friend and his wife moved to Croatia last month so we adjusted our trip so we can visit with them.

I cancelled the planned trip ($100 fee each to get miles back) and,

I ticketed the following for 130 AA miles plus $163 in taxes, each:

Part 1

FEB18 - SRQ-MIA - AA Econ
FEB18 - MIA-MAD - AA Business
FEB19 - MAD-CAI - IB Business
FEB25 - CAI-LHR - BA Business
FEB26 - LGW-DBV - BA Business
MAR04 - DBV-LGW - BA Business
MAR05 - LGW-MAN - BA Econ
MAR05 - MAN-ORD - AA Business
MAR05 - ORD-TPA - AA First

Part 2 (Honeymoon :-D)

JUN12 - TPA-SJU - AA Business
JUN12 - SJU-POS - AA Econ
JUN17 - POS-MIA - AA Business

Part 3 (just because we were still within the 130K miles award) but we will have to purchase R/T MIA-SRQ-MIA tickets.

OCT09 - MIA-ORD - AA First*
OCT21 - ORD-MIA - AA First*
OCT21 - MIA-SRQ - AA Econ*

*We will adjust the dates to coincide with a Bears game once the schedule comes out.

You're going to Trinidad for your honeymoon???

Actually Tobago.

A good friend will allow us to use his 35 foot yacht for few days so it was a no brainer. :-D

That makes sense. Best wishes!

Topping this because yesterday AA published revised rules for OW awards. As of Sept. 1 2008 (for new tickets) all miles will be counted, not just those between stopovers. Thus an award routing that goes, say, JFK-SYD-JFK but was actually flown JFK-xLAX-xNRT-SYD-xHKG-JFK will now be charged for 25,424 miles rather than 19,900, bumping it from 130K miles in business to 190K.

It's still a powerful award product, but weakened considerably by this change.