How is Air Berlin availability this year for AA pax?
 

Last year I picked up some great midsummer awards on AB from JFK-DUS/etc. Not seeing any AB availability this year, either ex-NYC or ex-CHI. Has anyone else noticed award tickets, did they pull all availability or did you guys just soak them all up? :)

FWIW, I just got 2 seats in J DUS-JFK in early October. Got lucky... couldn't find much availability otherwise.

Cant seem to find any JFK-DUS or JFK-TXL availability in any class for early May. Was going to purchase a ticket but at 25% mileage credit guess I will have to connect.

Here's a data point - ten to eleven months out, AB SAAver availability from the west coast (YVR, SFO, LAX) for summer 2013 travel was very good, as in up to 4 J seats and 4 Y seats on any given flight.

How is Air Berlin availability this year for AA pax?
 

I suggest you check again, I'm seeing plenty of availability JFK-DUS in Y throughout summer on AA.com. Search using the flexible date option so that it shows you the calendar and then select non-stop so that only AB JFK-DUS availability is returned. Award is available almost daily.

Award is 30K between mid May to mid Oct each way using AA miles. If you are only traveling between JFK-DUS, then you may consider Avios for the AB award since that route is only 20K even during summer.

I had booked two MileSAAver seats JFK-TXL and TXL-ORD in last fall for this upcoming July. I switched my return to AA (AB was being a pain with seat selection for my wife on a split PNR). But in looking for new flights, I've been continuing to search daily for months. There was plenty of AB availability on many days last year. By late January, it had started to disappear. I currently only see BA flights getting me into CPH. I was surprised at how much AB inventory was out there (both Y and J). I assume it must be mostly snatched up now (at least for the days in July I'm searching for).

The OP may find more current observations on AB award availability on the AB forum. There's no category of award availability uniquely held for AAdvantage redemptions.