Originally Posted by
London Dude
Incidentally, this may or may not be relevant. I needed a J award on AA from PHL to PHX a couple of weeks ago. BA only showed availability on AA1956 on 23 March, and no other flights were available that week on ba.com. Now all availability is gone on BA.com. AA.com still shows availability for PHL-PHX on most days, and specifically on all nonstop flights on 23 March. A J seat on AA1956 is currently available for 34.5K AA miles, which AA calls a "Web Special", with no changes once ticketed. All the other flights have J seats for 55K AA miles on that day. So clearly AA is offering some cheap award seats it calls web specials that are not being made available to oneworld partners. Could it be that the same is happening in the opposite direction?
34.5K AAdvantage miles for PHL-PHX in J is not a "cheap" award seat on AA. The MileSAAver rate for such a redemption is 25K AA miles.
Sometimes, when MileSAAver redemptions are not available, AA will offer a Web Special costing
fewer miles than a MileSAAver. There are conflicting accounts as to whether a Web Special priced at least than the MileSAAver rate is available for redemption by partner FFPs.