Originally Posted by brie
I fully understand why the airlines do it this way, but I sure wish that an award flight halfway around the world could be booked equally easily in either direction. I ran into this issue when booking BOS-ICN last year....*much* better routing through Europe than what I wound up with (long domestic legs plus US-Japan plus an Asian hop), but Europe was a no-no at the award level I was booking. It's not like I was stopping on the way in any case, so from my perspective there wasn't much difference between the inside of a US/Asian airport and the inside of one in Europe...
[Not complaining, just idle wishful thinking....]
Thing is, it often is not 1/2 way round the world. With the zonal system that AA uses for awards, allowing US-AU via Europe would allow someone ( that way inclined ) to do LAX-LHR-SYD ( 16029 miles) vs the direct 7488 miles, or even more extreme, HNL-SYD via ORD and LHR at 18769 miles vs 5066 direct
On partner awards, AA does have to pay another airline for the tickets
Dave