Originally Posted by
EkekoBWI
Just when I thought I knew the game well, I find myself stumped.
I have a friend's mother in GRU (Brazilian national who has rarely traveled internationally) who wants to visit SEA in late Jan or early Feb.
Routing can be GRU/SEA and return...or GRU/NYC with SEA/GRU
- I want to exclusively use AA award miles, but can be convinced to use UA
- If the value is better, will consider Business (for example, 57.5k for business seems like a better value than 30k for Economy.)
- She'll have heavy bags returning to GRU (lighter coming in)
- If transiting NYC, needs to be the same NYC airport (no EWR to JFK)
- No long layovers at a single airport--there's routings that have her sitting in the airport for 10+ hours, which she won't do
- She doesn't highly value lounge access
- She would like assistance navigating airports
- Since the trip happens in the dead of the US winter, I assume I'd want to minimize connections and transiting East Coast / ORD
- No preference on day of week for arrival / departure
Huge and complicated list, I know. Hoping for some help soon. TIA.
The best advice I can give -- without actually performing the award searches myself -- is to search for the outbound and return separately on aa.com. (All AAdvantage awards are offered as one-ways these days.)
If an aa.com award search yields nothing acceptable, call AA and ask about award itineraries that include one or more segments on LATAM.