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 > 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 "happy camper"!!!

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.