physics

I'm looking to book an award ORD-KTM-ORD late next October or so. Oct 29 is 331 days out and I see domestic AA awards available that day for other routes. But to get me to KTM (or even close), the cut off currently seems to be 313 days. I can see award seats on QR And CX using the BA site. So when will AA start loading them? Is there any rule that AA generally follows for adding partner availability to their calendar?

On a related note, what do you think my odds of getting a ORD-DOH-KTM business seat are if I wait until after Jan. 1? I'm sort of flexible on my dates late Oct to early Nov. If I wait until Jan. 1, my 10000 mile discount for having the Citi card resets.

JJeffrey

There's no set rule for when partner space will appear to AA, sometimes it happens right at 331 and other times not. Just keep an eye on it, it will pop in there at some point.

And you shouldn't have any problem if you want to wait to Jan to book it. Award space on QR is generally pretty good, especially if you're flexible on dates (you are) and can fly midweek.

SJWarrior

flyingeph12

No, you're probably not doing anything wrong. AA is pretty stingy when it comes to releasing Saver award space on its own flights. One way to more quickly filter out the BA options is to (1) search only on AA flights, (2) search with specific nonstop city pairs in mind and then filter on nonstop flights only. The second option works well when you have a particular partner in mind, like MIA-MAD on IB or JFK-HEL on AY.

JJeffrey

Your issue is that you're looking too far in advance unfortunately. AA will release scattered seats when the booking window opens around 11 months out, but when these are gone you're not likely to see a lot of new availability till much closer to the flight date. There's a general "dead zone" for extra TATL sAAver award space between about 10 months out to 1-2 months before.

The good news is that Europe travel tanks in September, if you can be flexible on days and destinations then it's highly likely you'll be able to find something, but again this most likely won't happen till much later next year. But AA does sometimes release chunks of seemingly random sAAver space at random times, best to just keep an eye on it, set up alerts on EF, etc. Good luck!

beltway

I agree with both suggestions, especially the first.

For the record, it is objectively nuts that AA forces you to jump through these hoops instead of, say, letting you refine search results after the fact by including/excluding certain carriers. (They have check-boxes allowing you to deselect airports, but not carriers.)

3Cforme

Where in Europe are you trying to go? Is it served by AA metal? Other carriers searched by AA.com?

rrgg

See attached image. Is that what you mean? AA lets you exclude BA if you want. (It would be better if you could exclude BA transatlantic only, but this is better than nothing.)

flyingeph12

While those filter options appear once you select a date, I'm talking about the calendar view. Arguably the advantage of searching using AA (as opposed to BA, for example) is that you can quickly scan the calendar and see which dates have availability (although annoyingly most of that availability turns out to be BA). If I had to click on each individual date and then filter, I'd rather just search using some other award engine that will show me all the Oneworld availability.

SJWarrior

rrgg

SJWarrior

JJeffrey

That's not nuts at all and is the game you have to play oftentimes now to get the seats/dates you want. No problems whatsoever with flying into MUC then booking a separate ticket on LH, especially if you want to spend a day in MUC on the way there and back in between your LH flights.

Where is your final destination in Europe? You have up to 24 hrs to connect so it may be possible to add on connecting flights for no extra miles even if these options don't easily display at aa.com (as opposed to buying a separate LH ticket).

beltway

Bingo.

SJWarrior