Originally Posted by
Happy
Before you set your heart on the new A321, I would break the bad news to you that, it would be a miracle to just find award seat on either SFO-MIA or LAX-MIA direct flight, despite AA flies 3 times and 8 times a day respectively.
You should even consider yourself lucky to find a SFO-DFW-MIA or SFO-ORD-MIA.
These days, having 2 connections to go Transcon is the COMMON occurrence and often the only options available.
Trust me, I have been thru this often enough to just accept that if I can find SFO-DFW-MIA, I call it a success.
In my book, AA has been the new DL since 2 years ago. DL actually now is a lot better than AA when it comes to award availability, especially if you live in PDX or SEA - so much so, a friend based at PDX now is concentrating his focus in earning DL miles because it is just soooo much easier for him to find award seats to Europe/Asia and grasp, Australia...
And here we are, struggle to just want to find a lousy Transcon with one connection only...
I did have a SFO-ORD-MIA return previously, but discarded it as this only worked with an overnight at Chicago. I didn't fancy myself picking cabs at 1am to anywhere, solo young female here. All the options through DFW or ORD wanted an overnight. I'm very glad i changed the SFO-ORD-MIA to SFO-DFW-IND-MIA because despite i get more flying time i would avoid the overnight,arrive the same day and not expose myself to unnecessary stuff.
I didn't know that things have changed drastically since my last set of redemptions in 2011. I'm so very sad to hear AA miles are resembling Skypesos. It's just a miserable transcon!! I can't believe it's so hard to some AAdvantage mortal to redeem a pair of Y tickets somewhere on their own country with months in advance.
For your peace of mind i have already emptied up to 0 all my AA acct. In a very well manner, all expensive tickets out of CCS with multiple stopovers throughout the years.
I will not lose my hopes, will try to call whenever i can or remember to. This i think is my last set in the medium term. As the aviation industry has ....ed up in the country i don't know when I'll redeem again.
To put things into perspective the BBC reported almost a month ago that an AA plane departed Venezuela to Miami with just 1 passenger on board.