Originally Posted by Ambraciot

For full details consult this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...er-awards.html

As other posts have mentioned this option is a distance based award that allows you to stop for as long as you want in any city as long as you follow the distance/routing/carrier rules and all travel is completed within one year of when you book the ticket. You can travel up to 9,000 miles in business for 80k redeemable miles per person or travel up to 10,000 miles for 90k redeemable miles.

This means you can do trips to northern Europe like JFK-LHR-BER-CDG-JFK for 80k miles or slightly larger trips like JFK-LHR-CDG-BER-VCE-MAD-JFK for 90k miles per person in business class. The catch is you need low level availability for all the segments to book the award, you can't book half of it and then hope to add the other half later when inventory gets released. I've never had trouble booking a business class award like this for one person, but finding 2 seats on all of the flights may be more challenging.

You may also be able to book the award involving Venice and Madrid for 80k by leaving the Paris to Berlin segment out of the award and either booking it with avios or cash, but that's a step further than I usually go. Realistically you should figure out roughly what you want then call AA, explain you want to book an explorer award and find out what's available. Someone here may also be able to recommend a good third party or partner website to check AA low tier availability across AA, BA, AB and IB.