Originally Posted by
bigjimbo99
In the sticky it mentions that only miles savers award seats on AA can be booked with Avios. If I read this right, how severely does this limit the availability of seats using Avios for AA travel?
A "MileSAAver" award on AA is a standard redemption at 'normal' rates. Seats made available as "MileSAAver" awards are also opened up to members of other FFPs. "AAnytime" awards are only available to members of AA's AAdvantage programme, who (if they're desperate) can redeem oodles of miles for them.
I'm using Firefox with no-script as my preferred web browser and it doesn't display AA's web site very well at all. It doesn't even show miles savers as a category if I'm on the right screen.
I also use Firefox, with NoScript and ....... Plus, and frequently find and book award flights on both AA and BA. You'll need to be alert for warnings about forbidden scripts, of course.
The AA page showing award flights found has colourful column headings: "Economy MileSAAver", "Economy AAnytime" and so on.
What is the best way to search, looking for a trip from TPA to OGG in August? [...] If I understand the sticky right, the AA website might show me more options than BA if I can use it correctly.
In theory it might, but for a couple of dates I tried on your routing I'm seeing the same availability on britishairways.com as on aa.com. Only BA will show you the Avios pricing.