Cheaper Fares on AAdvantage.com
 

My husband is going to Helsinki for a conference in late August and the fares this past couple of weeks have all been in the $1500 range on the airline websites as well as orbitz, etc. Today, I thought I'd just check for fun to see if we could use any of our frequent flyer miles to get him a ticket. On the American Advantage website, they said, no seats available for those dates, but gave me a button to click on to search for ticket fares for paid tickets. I clicked on it, and a $750 fare came up, even though on the regular AA.com site, the fares were all close to $1500. This fare involves a change of airlines, but for 1/2 the price, he's willing to change from American Eagle to United to FinnAir. That option was not available on the AA.com website, and all the standard websites like expedia, orbitz, and travelocity were showing $1500 fares. We bought the ticket, but I'm still not sure why it's so much cheaper. If anyone understands what's going on, I'd love to know!

Interesting. I just now found a similar result, though it actually took me quite a while to find a city pair that met the criteria:

1. I am actually interested in going there, and on some specific dates.

2. AAdvantage said no seats available on the dates I chose, and offered the button to "click here" for "search by fare". Paris was available for any date I actually wanted, at the regular 40,000 mile award level (Nov-Dec).

3. AAdvantage did NOT return the message, see "Where we Fly". This came back for multiple cities in Italy and Spain.

While not as dramatic as the example you cite, I did find some real savings for SDF (Louisville)-Lisbon, that could not be duplicated with a "regular" AA search, nor were the results as good on:

1. Expedia - - could not find <u>any</u> for SDF-LIS on the dates I want.

2. Travelocity - - could not find any fare within a hundred dollars, using Dream Maps

3. Orbitz - could not find any fare within a jhundred dolalrs, using simple date search.

The fare found on AA was $783 plus taxes; as an alternative offering from trying an AAdvantage award, the best fare was $618 (plus $96 taxes). The better priced fare was part AA, part IB, but the routing was not bad at all. The higher fare on the &quot;regular&quot; AA search engine was AA to LHR, and then BA to LIS.

A worthwhile trick to know.

Best wishes,

Rex

Interesting. Just one question; do you have to choose the &quot;check all airlines&quot; option on AAdvantage?

I don't see this choice for &quot;check all airlines&quot;, esm... where do you see it?

Sorry, my question was not posed right.

What I meant to say was when I tried your method, I got the same message that award seats were not available and to try for best available fare.

Using that option sent me back to the regular reservation page where I could choose all carriers (question 6) so I didn't get better fares.

Basically, I'm trying to figure out how you achieved your results.

What website are you starting on? I am starting on www.aa.com as the OP indicates. I try to locate flights as AAdvantage award travel for SDF-LIS for the dates I want, and I do NOT click the button for &quot;dates flexible&quot;.

I get &quot;no seats available&quot; and &quot;search by fare&quot;, as an offering. It doesn't offer me the best fare right away, but it does show a little table that lists $618 for &quot;AA&quot; (even though the resulting routing is not all AA), and a slightly higher fare for &quot;oneWorld&quot;. It indicates that the fare is based on two stops (essentially a requirement to get from SDF to LIS).

Does this help?

By the way, I am beginning to wonder if this is representative of fares, as low I can expect to find for Thanksgiving week (the dates I am currently checking).

Any interest in a Fodorites' trip to Portugal at the end of November? Anyone?

Anyone care to share experiences traveling to Portugal that late in the fall?

Thanks for the clarification.

I'm also using aa.com trying to find good fares for Paris in the fall. So far, fares are around $850 so I need to plug in more dates.

esm,

With what is happening to air fares, $850 would be acceptable from the West Coast, where I am, but you must be in the East, correct?

We are members of Aadvantage and have used award miles, business class, on trips to Peru, three years ago, and an upcoming trip to Costa Rica in August.

For this purpose, I do not even bother going online, I simply call the Aadvantage Desk and speak to an agent. If I book, they charge an extra $30/ticket to use the telephone, I think, but it is well worth it, because you have a human being right there in front of you trying to get the best time and route for you. It does help if you can bracket some dates. I said we wanted to leave around the first half of August and stay for three weeks. We got August 10 to August 31, and the agent could not have been more friendly or helpful. I had the same experience last time.

In my priliminary search, when I checked out trying to cash in these award miles on the AA site, it, too, told me no flights were available.

I am not convinced that airline websites are the best way to go....FWIW

Ireynold1 - Thanks, I didn't know that feature. Just tried it and can get a ticket saving $135.00 if I fly AA St. Louis to Dallas and then British Airways on to Gatwick.

Does anyone know if you accumulate FF miles for the British Airways part of the flight?

I have been lurking for weeks now trying to decide when to buy our tickets or perhaps use some FF miles that I can find flights for mid October but really prefer to go in September. I am just not seeing what I consider reasonable fares or at least what I have been able to book in the past.

Sandy

This thread - - from the OP, and my subsequent posts - - is really not about trying to actually find seats for award travel. It's about trying to find &quot;hidden&quot; (lower) fares on routes and dates, when the airline website does NOT find you award seats. One angle - - I have not even tried to see if this phenomenon exists on other airline websites.

I am generally in agreement with going to the phone to search for award seats when that is what I actually want.

I could get award seats for this Lisbon travel at 40,000 each, and I have the miles. But if I can buy the same seat for $716, and _accumulate_ FF miles, then it's a better deal in my mind, and save the FF miles for a rainy day.

The real question is: will sub-$700 fares show their faces for autumn travel (anytime soon) - - I'm sure they will, eventually, but my wife may not be keen on going (at least not at the wrong time of the year - - certain weekends from Labor Day to Thanksgiving will not work for us), and I am still trying to find the &quot;right&quot; deal to motivate us to commit. And I may need some lead time to &quot;sell&quot; her on any idea I propose. I do not get the idea that this $716 fare SDF-LIS is a sale fare that will vanish in the next day, or several (of course, ANY fare can disappear with no notice!)

Good fares from the Ohio River Valley are not easy to come by, almost any time of the year - - you assume that if $850 fares are available from the west coast, then we ought to be able to find $200, $300 or more cheaper fares &quot;from the east&quot;... maybe from NYC, WAS, BOS or PHL - - but almost never from the midwest. Often just a few dollars cheaper than from Los Angeles, San Francisco or Seattle.

Follow-up example - - I tried the same srtategy for NYC-LIS, and in contrast to the &quot;bargain&quot; fare from Louisville ($716, all in), the same fare from JFK is $444 (also all in). It came up in the &quot;table&quot; as a &quot;oneWorld&quot; fare, &quot;1-stop&quot;, and the actual routing is all Iberia, connect in Madrid. Perhaps this fare can be found on any search engine (didn't check) - - the surprise is that it is offered, as a &quot;buy-it&quot; alternative, when searching for AAdvantage _award_ travel (and not finding any seats). For all I know, an actual telephone agent _might_ find award seats, somehow, perhaps by going directly to the partner desk.

Thanks jrandolph. As Rex said, I don't really want award tickets. Just trying to see how the system works as OP and Rex found out.

I played around with dates and now see that using OneWorld option brings the price down by about $160.

I'm looking for prices out of O'Hare.

Yes, thanks to all previous posters for their research and sharing it with us.

Most helpful.

Would you get ff miles using OneWorld partners?

I'm looking at ORD-CDG and I think if I fly BA I won't get the miles &quot;going over the pond&quot;.

I don't know anything about the whole AA thing, but BA doesn't award FF miles for flights to/from US, in my experince. I couldn't get any when I flew BA from US to London a couple years ago, for a partner airline. BA blocks all FF miles awards for routes between the US and England (and vice versa, I think). It's some arcane BA rule.

I think you have to fly via Canada (if using BA) to get AA mileage on transatlantic flights.

I had not thought about not being able to collect FF miles for the Iberia flights. Perhaps a catch.

Wonder what answer one would get (fare, and also this question) from a live Aadvantage telephone agent.

Hopefully, the favorable one, even if not the correct one - - wink...

You can get AA miles for BA flights to anywhere EXCEPT the UK. Check their website for more details.

Thanks to Rex for making my original post clearer. Since we booked the flight, I've tried the same technique for some other upcoming travel, but haven't found anything nearly as dramatic as the differences in price for the Helsinki trip. So maybe this was just a fluke.
Some of the other posts on this thread have asked about FF miles, and that is my question now, too. I booked the flight on the American website, but the transatlantic travel (Chicago to Amsterday) is on United, then to Helsinki on FinnAir. Only FinnAir is an AA partner, so I wonder what will happen with the United miles. Will my husband get AA miles since American booked the flight, or will he have to take United miles? I will call AA directly, but thought I'd see what others' experiences might have been first. Thanks!

I am an avid travel researcher. I don't go anywhere or do anything without searchin all known sites, call the hotels, read my Travel and Leisure, etc. and I have consistantly found that AAVacations have the best rates for hotels and sometimes hotels and flights. Sometimes it's cheaper to book the flight seperate. But for hotels, I have yet to find better.

I have used them often and have never been displeased. I have booked them for a London hotel this summer. My only concern/complaint is that some hotels have multiple room categories (i.e. ocean view, corner room, deluxe, etc.) and the AA website doesn't all have that selection sometimes they offer just one type of room and sometimes they offer several.