Originally Posted by
pschafer
There is one more consideration from my perspective when considering the AA vs QF programs. The QF booking window opens about one month earlier than AA (ie 355 days vs 330 days) and during that time QF members grab all of the rare premium award seats to/from international destinations (particularly LAX and DFW). (There are many more OW options when flying to Europe).
As a member of both QF and AA with a ton of points in AA and not many in QF - I often watch (via Expert Flyer alerts) award seats which I would like to book disappear before I can book them with AA points. Using AA (or QF) you can of course route via Asia to the USA using JL or CX but with AA this is considered 2 awards making the redemption rate much closer to QF's. Nevertheless I abandoned QF many years ago due to their poor earn/burn rates.
To go via Asia to USA, If you book a OneWorld award on AA, round trip to USA ( max 26,000 miles travel ) is 150k points in business class; this is more than the 125k for a standard partner award but still significantly less than a Qantas RT award of 192k-224k to USA . This award also allows for stopovers during the trip too. 1st class at 230k is better than the 228-336k that Qantas would charge
Even paying the extra 25k AA miles still saves 42-74k miles plus saves $710 in "fuel surcharges". Also, with USA, Qantas business class awards will only book into economy on 2 class AA services within the USA when connecting beyond LAX/DFW whereas AA business awards will book into 1st class domestically
You are of course correct that AA restricts bookings to 330 days before departure rather than 355; that had slipped my mind ( mainly because I have never tried booking an award that far out ). Another thing in AA's favour is that date/time changes chan be made free of charge to award bookings
A negative that I forgot is that AA's cancellation penalty on awards is USD150