So AI's just launched redemption booking of *A flights through their website. It's still quite buggy but a step in right direction. I think now AI should finally get around to delivering on the family pooling (apart from fixing the *A bookings).
Here's what I'm seeing so far...
- On some routes AI is showing both AI and *A redemption availability eg: BOM-SIN even if you select to see just *A availability
- On some IND-EU routes it's only showing AI flights only like BOM-FRA or BOM-CDG etc. Both via DEL. On others only *A eg: BOM-IST
- It's only showing a handful of partners right now - LH (for intra EU only), SQ, TK, AV for a limited number of direct routes
- It's not able to do any slightly complex routing eg: BOM-LAX as yet
- Intra US availability not showing
I don't think setting up a *A redemption website is easy (technically, logistically etc) so it will take a little bit of time to iron out their bugs. SQ's *A redemption launch was a complete disaster a few months ago and they still haven't got it working with AI and others.
So kudos to AI to getting started... hopefully it will improve over the next few months and be a easily usable site.
My gripe apart from everything not working just so is that they only show miles required when searching for availability. It would have been better for them to show Miles+Cash requirements for the searched route. For getting the cash info you have to go to the next page which you can do only if you have the requisite miles in your acccount. That is silly. If I'm going to transfer miles to the account and I'm checking flight availability I can only get half the information I need!