I booked an Alaska flight with AA miles but I can't seem to get the reservation to pull up on the Alaska website. Tried entering the AA confirmation # and ticket #. Do you need to call in to get the Alaska ticket #?

There will be a record locator for AS that is different than your PNR for AA. If it isn't listed on your confirmation email or online, call AA to get it or try twitter.

James

Thanks. I just sent them a DM on twitter since I couldn't find the AS record locator anywhere.

Do you just call the regular AAdvantage line and ask them to adjust the mileage?

Yes, exactly

I see from the General Routing Rules for North America to/from Other Regions:

Travel to Asia 1, Asia 2 and the South Pacific must be via the Pacific.

When I called the agent about it, he mentioned that it's because that's the shorter route. Makes sense if you're flying from the West Coast cities but for East Coast cities, isn't the Atlantic route usually shorter? Anyone able to have an agent re-consider?

Agents follow the rules, not make them up on the run. Or make up lame reasons. "Shorter" or "longer" is irrelevant to the rules
Great Circle Mapper

I get they don't just make it up on the fly, just thought it was weird.

Appreciate you showing me GCM, helped me figure out how to draw it the way you did, was always wondering how it was created. Only thing with the example you shared is that it assumes, the person is flying from SFO or NYC direct to HKG. Shouldn't the person from NYC go to SFO first then to HKG which would add another ~2,500 miles? Or do airlines not count the distance flew but rather direct distance per your image? New to all this and appreciate the guidance!

Given that travel via a 3rd region is not possible for South Pacific or Asia 1 and that travel to Asia 2 has to be direct or via Asia , the issue is moot anyway

Airlines will define permitted routings; some may be based on mileage and others based on specific routes allowed

AA uses a geographic zone system for awards, with limits on the route.
Other airlines, like BA, use a more distance based system.
But for any award need to understand the rules

I posted in another thread. The world is divided into three zones.
Zone 1 - Americas
Zone 2 - Europe/Africa/ME
Zone 3 - Asia/Oceanic

You usually (main exception being ME airlines) must go directly from Zone to Zone, not transiting the one inbetween.

This is why I can get one 90k J award from DL going Australia to Africa, going SYD-TPE-AMS/CDG-JNB (CI/KL/AF combo) but not SYD-LAX-ATL-JNB without need for 2 awards despite being shorter and all on one airline. There's exceptions, but it's the general rule.

Another notable exception: United will price US to Asia via Europe as one award quite readily, e.g. BOS-(LH)-MUC-(NH)-TYO. There are often saver awards from North America to Asia readily available on TK for 88k UA miles.

Since this is an AA thread: AA divides the world up into more than 3 regions, and has a list of exceptions (mostly involving QR and EY). They do publish the regions and exceptions on their oneworld award chart web page, but I find that it's more scannable to read someone's blog post that has a chart of the exceptions. Here is a View From the Wing post on the exceptions.

IATA defines the world into 3 Areas
AA does not use these for award routings
AA uses the 11 regions as defined on its website at https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-p...ward-chart.jsp

Where exceptions exist, they are not airline dependent I believe; there used to be specific QR exceptions for Middle East, but iirc these are now no longer airline specific

Just wanted to say on here that in late 2019 I was able to redeem 60K AA miles for LHR-AUH-COK (Cochin, India) for Etihad First Class apartment on the A380. Absolutely the best service I've ever had! LHR Etihad lounge was good, AUH First Class Lounge was excellent. AUH-COK was in Business Class, a short 3-hour redeye on a narrow body. Occasionally they run flat bed seats to India (BOM, DEL) but not much.
Not sure if they are still running A380s on the route, or if awards are available, but if they are I'd recommend it for sure. Just checked on aa.com and I see zero EY long haul flights at all.....
Awards were showing available on AA.com in the months prior to me booking it.

Regions are simply further subdividing of zones. Regions for awards became prevalent in part because people were booking awards with crazy routings as zones are so big.

Regardless, the main point was that there's a long established reason that generally (there's plenty of exceptions) you can't go US-EU-ASIA on one award, even if that's a shorter/better routing option.