bostontraveler

in my experience AA has dramatically reduced Business class availability to and from Europe over the past few years. The only luck I have these days is with Air Berlin or Iberia. I refuse to pay BA's (AA's) ridiculous surcharges. If you want to travel in coach, yes, there is good availability.

Quite honestly I value UA miles more because they have so many partners in Europe (particularly LX and LH) that have so many flights-- and they are superior carriers.

TMM1982

LH F is worthless as they don't release to UA until the last minute. Most humans don't live a nomadic lifestyle.

bosboy73

You mean Business, right? Because AF Economy using miles is generally wide open LAX-PPT both directions using AS or DL miles.

kkjay77

If NYC-LHR is the route I try to redeem miles on, then I think AA is the worst program to have IMHO. JFK-LHR on AA metal is seldom available in J and BA has huge YQ attached to it.

Spock Seat

I think I'll go there tomorrow. Oh, wait a minute, no I don't...

TMM1982

Yes, business or first is what I was referencing. I have no interest in flying economy to Tahiti.

sdsearch

What did you mean by "premium coach" above? Did you simply mean MCE (extra-legroom) seats on AA? Yes, that's possible with AA miles.

But the term "premium coach" typically refers to a separate cabin (with different seats, not different seat spacing, and different service, than the main coach bain), such as BA's World Traveler Plus. And although AA has several partner airlines with Premium Economy as separate cabins, I'm not aware of any way to book those with AA miles.

keitherson

You realize you can book a ticket and then change to LH F when it opens up, right?

CMK10

But if you have No Status/Premier Silver/Premier Gold that will cost you, correct?

s0ssos

UA is much more expensive for biz/first, and as people mentioned, LH first isn't even available (nor SQ either). For premium flights, Star Alliance does have a lot of people, but to book using UA miles is tremendously expensive (Aeroplan is much more reasonable).
AA doesn't allow stopovers, only does one-way flights, but is cheaper for premium flights. The only annoyances is the huge BA surcharges, and the need to use other airlines' websites to find the award availability on their partners (Etihad, Qatar, Cathay, Japan). They also allow changes to dates for free.

TMM1982

Keith, if it opens up. If not, then you're stuck with an economy ticket.

And yes, CMK just nailed it. Drop the mic and walk off the stage sir. ^

sdsearch

You mean not only business (or first), but also longhaul, right?

I had no problems booking a flight 9ish months out (for a flight next month) with UA miles which had AC across the pond but then LH (as well as SK) for some intra-Europe connections. And I kept checking after that, and those were available for some time after.

Obviously, intra-Europe LH only has business, not first. In fact, don't only a handful of longhaul routes have LH first?

benzemalyonnais

This is a pretty simple answer, United miles are much more useful.

The issue is that United's prices are much higher, and are rarely good value compared with AA's chart. Of course, AA will change their chart, block CX and JL, and do some other devaluations in the near future.

I can't realistically think of a region where AA is clearly than UA for miles, quality of product aside other than US domestic flights.

Europe has much better connections with LH/LX/OS and even SAS if going up north.

Asia has Air China, ANA, Thai, SQ, EVA while AA only has CX, MH, and JL which don't cover anything but the big cities.

Australia I guess would be a win for AA with Qantas, although again the availability on TG to Australia is excellent whenever I look and I guess the only win would be domestic flights.

Africa is a win for *A

South America is a toss-up, or maybe a slight edge to AA with their Miami network. One would think that with LAN/TAM AA would be the clear winner, but Copa has excellent availability and Avianca tends to release a whole bunch of space as well. I know no one wants to redeem miles on Copa, but the availability tends to be there most of the time.

The big advantage that United doesn't have is access to QR and EY, although the silly routing rules make them difficult to maximize when departing from the US.

PWMTrav

It depends on where you want to go and the airport(s) you'll start from. For us, our redemptions are primary domestic US and Europe awards. We start from PWM or BOS.

AA off-peak awards to Europe are great. I love 40k RT to Italy and am happy to sit in coach at that price. Otherwise, *A is a better option to Europe ex-BOS. I tend to have more options flying LH BOS-FRA/MUC and connecting on the same award to my destination. With OW, you have to be willing to add a 2nd stop, otherwise you can either pay BA YQ, or limit your destinations to whatever US/AA serve from a domestic hub.

sdsearch

Yes, if you want to go north to/in "true" Scandinavia.

But Finland's the opposite. SAS is weak there, compared to FInnAir, which is part of oneworld and thus an AA partner.

So in mentioning "going up north" in Europe without thinking about Finland, you just found an example that you didn't existed: A place where AA miles can get you better than UA miles can.

Now, having said that: I have much more interest in visiting Norway repeatedly than visiting Finland repeatedly. But the question was whether there's anyplace AA can get you better, and that's one answer.

In South America, it may vary by country. How many places beyond Buenos Aires in Argentina can UA miles get you? The main carriers within Argentina are LAN (in the AA camp) are Aerolinas Argentinas (in the DL camp). Obviously, lots of airlines fly to the big capital cities, but Argentina is a big spread-out country, so just getting to Buenos Aires isn't enough if it's far from that (in one many directions) that you really want to go.

So perhaps (if you spend a lot of time adding them all) there are more airports in the world where UA miles can get you but AA miles can't, then airports in the world where AA miles can get you but UA miles can't. But there are plenty of airports in each camp that are not in the other camp, so I think it's excessive to say that UA miles can get you everywhere that AA miles can (just as it's excessive to say the opposite).

... To put it another way: You can come to one conclusion about availability from US to big capital cities, but you can come to a completely different conclusion about flights in a given alliance existing in the first place to smaller cities. (If you can't get there at all with airline X's miles, what does it matter that airline X has better availability to somewhere else, if "there" is where you want to go?)