Originally Posted by
xliioper
Looks like just a temporary website glitch as aa.com is showing fares again. AA tends to load schedule changes on weekends which may be part of it. Note that shifting trip from 8/6 - 8/15 to 8/5 - 8/14 will potentially save $130 per ticket as there are cheaper fares valid for Sun-Wed outbound flights and Tue-Fri return flights. For these midweek flights in August, roundtrip fares start at $1420 Basic/$1620 Main (for AA/BA flights through LHR). Suggest you also check on ba.com as British Airways can have availability in cheaper fare classes on same flights.
He was searching for award tickets
Originally Posted by
guv1976
AA does not serve VIE on its own metal, so you're at the mercy of the partner carriers who do releasing their award seats to AA.
You can certainly find award space on AA for ORD-LHR.
This is the reason. However, don't just search for ORD-VIE as a one-way. That will only return results for which both AA AND partners have partner award inventory available, because those are the only flights that can be priced under a single US-EU fare at the still-unchanged award chart price of 30k each way (for Y) or 57.5k (for J).
You should also search one-ways to find flights, and stitch it together into a multi-city when booking, such as ORD-LHR and LHR-VIE. This will force a fare break. It enables you to take advantage of any award availability AA has for the ORD-LHR segment, and then you only need to find partner award space for the LHR-VIE segment. This will price additively, at whatever AA's dynamic award price is for ORD-LHR, plus the partner intra-Europe award price of 12.5k (Y) or 22.5k (J). Sometimes it's astronomical, sometimes it's not.
I was searching this earlier today for a similar itinerary. There was a very small handful of 30k partner award options when I searched the entire thing one-way. When I searched the segments individually, US-LHR had tons of availability at 19k on AA metal, and then LHR to my destination was 12.5k on BA metal. So only 31.5k all-in, just slightly more expensive than the 30k that a single one-way partner award would have priced at, but a LOT more options become available. Then I booked it as a multi-city.