What is MileSAAver?
 

I'm sure this is a dumb question to you hardcore American Airlines patrons, but I don't usually fly AA so I have a newbie question for you.

I looked through the AAdvantage website and did a search here, but I'm still having trouble understanding what exactly MileSAAver is. Could someone please explain the difference between the regular level and MileSAAver (which takes far fewer miles)?

Here's a link to the chart on AA.com, you'll see the different amounts for Milesaver v. Anytime awards.

That's an off peak award. For travel to London, for instance, it would be 40,000 miles from mid-Oct to mid-May. Outside of that it would be 60,000 miles.

Off-peak dates: The Caribbean and Mexico: Sep.7-Nov.14; Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela: Jan.16-Jun.14; Sep.7-Nov.14; Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay: Mar.1-May 31; Aug.16-Nov.30; Europe:Oct.15-May 15; Japan: Oct.1-Apr.30.
http://www.aa.com/aa/i18nForward.do?...jsp#awardchart

Not necessarily...

Well, it's what AA calls it. The wording is right from their web site.

But there are "MilesAAver - Peak" levels too.

Good point. I don't normally go looking for those.

I have been scanning those tables now and then and for some reason there is never an off-peak time for the US-India trips...

MileSAAver awards can be had for fewer miles and are capacity controlled. AAnytime awards are generally available for any available seat on a flight.

To some destinations, there are subcategories for MilesSAAver economy awards based on time of year. I do agree that the chart is a little confusing for India since it lists a row for off-peak awards, but none are offered (it would be more appropriate to just list "MilesSAAver" and "AAnytime" rows like they do for U.S. domestic awards).

That might be true, but BOTH of these are milesaaver awards.
One is a peak milesaaver, and the other is the off peak milesaaver rate.

And to answer a question I think you might have been asking -- besides the points they're basically the same thing. It's a different price for an award ticket on the same plane, same seat, etc.

EXCEPT - That saaver awards have a different kind of inventory, as mentioned above. So you might have fewer options if you wanted to change the dates or flights, since you'd have to find another flight that also had that inventory.

But for the purposes of booking a trip and then flying it as planned, they're the same thing. One's a cheaper version, but with harder to find availability. The other means you can generally get on any AA flight with open seats, but costs substantially more miles.