Originally Posted by
futtfy
Do you mean instead of $2700 (including the $69 tax) instead of $3300? That is $600 savings for business class? Am i missing anything or is there a catch? I attached below what I see.
Option 1 is you just buy the ticket for $3300.
Option 2 is you buy 140k miles for $2700 and book it as an award ticket.
With Option 2, you are saving $600 per ticket. The "catch" is that when trying to book an award ticket, award availability in general is tough to find. Booking a paid ticket allows much more flexibility, as you're not restrained by award availability. But if you've already found availability on your desired flights, this is negated.
Most of us here would still book the paid ticket for $3300, as you will not earn any miles on the award ticket (for status, award miles, etc.). However if you don't fly often and don't care about accumulating miles for other trips or miles for status then this doesn't matter either.
So no, there's really no catch to buying the miles for $2700 and booking the award ticket. If you do this,
make sure you go online at aa.com and put the flights you want on hold first (free hold for 5 days), then go buy the miles. This is critical. Otherwise you risk spending all that money on the miles then going back to book and the flights are no longer available.