FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Business Extra ("ExtrAA") Program (master thread)
Old Sep 1, 2023 | 3:23 pm
  #1944  
PHL
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Originally Posted by SkyTeam777
Im so glad to hear this as I haven't been able to find a Plan Ahead award after checking 100 dates on different routes in the past few months. So the search engine has been broken? How do they expect us to book awards since agents are not going to sit there and check dozens of dates and routes? Anyone else able to pull up an award search? I still can't as of just now.
Remember there aren't any PlanAAhead rewards any more. I know the BE shows that redemption option on their page, which is a hold out from the former AA redemption fixed point charts. I'm guessing the way to get those BE PlanAhead rewards is to find "U" inventory with the EF Award search for business, or T for coach. That's what I did for AMS-PHL on a March trip. When I found "U" on a date, I looked at aa.com and saw it at 67000 points, which is basically what the 57500 point sAAver business redemption used to be. I would suspect a flight with "U" inventory would also be eligible for the BE PlanAhead reward category. To do a more flexible search on aa.com, just enter your trip in the award search for any day of the month you want to travel. Then when the rates come up, click the calendar option at the top of the search results to see the full month. Be sure to click the nonstop an American Airlines to avoid clutter of connection options and other airlines codesharing.

That way you can see if any dates have the lower redemptions on AA metal. It's effectively the same as searching a full month at a time. When you find dates with the lower redemptions (25K coach to Europe, 67K business to Europe), that will likely qualify for a BE PlanAhead award. At least that's the logic I'm thinking. Those are the same seats that are probably available to partners for redemption.

Example: AMS-PHL in March shows a ton of 25K one way coach redemptions. When I cross reference those dates with EF award search, there is "T" available on the same dates that the calendar shows 25K.
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