Originally Posted by
MAH4546
The fact remains that the miles are the hardest are earn and there is no program like Chase UR that allows one to freely transfer into AAdvantage.
Sure there is - Starwood Preferred Guest. Although it doesn't earn as much as the Chase cards do, it does give some bonus spend if you always transfer 20,000 points at a time.
And Citi (unlike Chase) still allows their cards to be freely churned, although the bonuses for opening a "new" card have dropped at bit.
Originally Posted by
MAH4546
Exactly. AAdvantage SAAver awards are easy to find and redeem with a little patience. Just booked LAXHKG First/NRTLAX Business for a mere 127,500 miles on the exact dates I wanted, and it only took about a week of smart searches.
I've had decent luck to date as well. Although ironically I just booked a one-way award to Europe using MileagePlus yesterday instead of AADvantage, because while I could get the AA Saver ORD-FCO segment I needed, I couldn't snag a Saver award for OMA-ORD! Still, if I hadn't been lucky enough to stumble on a perfect *A award ticket on the very first day I began to look, I'm sure I would have managed to get the award on AA eventually. Air Berlin was showing lots of availability, so I don't think I would have been shut out if I'd waited for the domestic leg to open something up.
(I envy those of you who actually live close to an international gateway city. No non-stop flights for me ever, and always at least one leg on a teeny CRJ.)