Originally Posted by
nialltom
I’m having trouble finding domestic availability on partner programs of either American or United, to use Amex MR. I can find availability directly using Amex Travel, but at premium point cost. I checked Avianca and a few other partner sites but they are showing very little availability. Travel is from ORD to MIA. Any suggestions on how to use MR for domestic travel on these airlines for this route?
You cannot transfer MR to AA as AAdvantage miles. You can only use points as a cash substitute. (But see post below for an important exception; point well taken.) Flight availability and pricing on Amex is hit-or-miss. If a flight on RoadRunner Air is available for $100 on other sites like Expedia Travelocity or RoadRunnerAir's on site, you may find it on Amex for less than $100, or more than $100, or you might not find it at all.
As noted in another thread, I recently booked a $1170 ticket on AA for $729 on Amex, but they wanted $201 for another ticket that was $174 directly from AA.
Sometimes you get a discount on points; i.e. a $100 ticket might be available for 9000 points rather than the notional 1 cent per point. Note that many Amex cards give a rebate on points so that if you spend 10,000 points you might get back 2500, 3500, or 5000 depending what kind of card you have.
AA has cards that earn points directly, but there are no transfer parnters like you can transfer Amex MR to a dozen or so airlines, and the same with Chase UR points.