Originally Posted by
remyjette
One trick I've found for international business award travel is to use the Award calendar. Because AS is "First Class", not "Business", if the international segment is not available in Business this will not show an itinerary that's only "availabe" as a mixed cabin award with an AS segment in first and the international segment in Coach. It will show me mixed cabin itineraries with an AS flight in Main to get me from SEA to SFO or LAX with the long haul flight in Business, but I'm okay with that as opposed to the alternative. Plus, with that sort of itinerary I can always set an ExpertFlyer alert for E space and call if any shows up.
This of course won't work for searching for true F awards as you'll get those AS itineraries as well as AA itineraries with a domestic segment in First and the long-haul international segment in Coach, but it works great for finding available Business class travel
FWIW, I see this on nearly every AA award. What I end up doing is figuring out where the connection is, then do a multi-city search. I was recently looking for BOG-BNA and consistently getting mixed cabin for 30k while connecting through MIA. Doing a multi-city search BOG-MIA and MIA-BNA produced the magical all Y award for 20k. For SEA-HAM, search for SEA-PDX, then PDX-HAM. It doesn't always work, sometimes there really isn't Y space available. I find it to be successful much more often than not.