Originally Posted by
xliioper
It's not just NAS that continues to have lower awards levels (starting at 75K miles for TATL business), it's anything to/from Mexico and Caribbean destinations. You can even get them out of TIJ, but you'll likely need to backtrack through MEX. MTY via DTW might make more sense and have less backtracking. Anything to/from the US/Canada will require a roundtrip booking to get the cheapest levels (just as revenue fares generally all have a roundtrip booking requirement for cheapest fares on TATL routes). The roundtrip booking requirements have been added in recent years so that award mileage amounts more closely correlate to the revenue fare prices.
The cheapest TATL D1 levels out of TUS right now look to be to Germany. You can get TUS to MUC, FRA, and BER for slightly less than 150K miles each way (148,700) with the 15% AMEX discount, but a roundtrip booking with 7 day minimum stay is required. You could book D1 in one direction and a lower class in the other to reduce total mileage requirements.
Thank you for that information. We often fly to Europe one way and take a transatlantic cruise home. We have a couple of big trips coming up next year, one West and one East. Unfortunately, as you stated, round trips overseas are less expensive than one-ways so maximizing my mileage and spend is always what I'm watching.