Availability of AA domestic award ticket while booking Etihad using AA miles
 

We (2 adults/2 kids) are planning to use our AA miles to fly from IAH- <any Ethidad US destination> - AUH- COK (India). Preferably, IAH-DFW-AUH-COK

Our dates are flexible (in coming spring) and I can see many dates with available award seats on Etihad website (Guest Economy). My issue is with connection from IAH-DFW which, I believe, AA will add for 'free'. In the AA website, award seats are NOT available on the minimum 12.5K miles but are available on 20K/25K/30K miles.

Can someone educate me whether AA will add those expensive award tickets for free for our domestic connection from IAH to DFW ? OR, is it like, they will do it only if the lowest expensive award seats are available ?

Appreciate advise. Thanks.

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When you want to redeem AA miles for one or more segments on a partner carrier, all segments on the award routing (including the AA segments) must be available at the SAAver level, or you will be unable to use a single award for the desired routing.

As correctly answered by guv1976, the domestic connection must be available at the milesaver level. And, that can and has been a difficult issue in recent months/years-- getting the AA domestic connection on successfully found international partner awards-- it can be a real challenge.

If you can't find IAH-DFW (or other US gateway) SAAver seats on your preferred dates, just book from DFW or the gateway with EY seats. You can either change when seats open or buy a cheap IAH-DFW (or gateway) ticket.

In addition, there are some maximum mileage rules that may require separate domestic ticket depending on your origin and destination. Don't know about IAH, but I've always had to buy a separate DEN-IAD ticket to connect to IAD-AUH-XXX.

Qatar flys from IAH-DOH direct. You could try going via DOH instead of DFW/AUH. One less stop for you.

Edit: As sample dates, I checked the outbound March 9th to March 18th, and the return March 25th to April 7th.

On the outbound, 4+ seats are available in economy from the 9th to the 16th (nothing the 17th/18th). The 9th has 3 seats in business, the 10, 11th, 16th each have 4 seats in business. Outbound Flights are:

QR0714, IAH-DOH, 19:16-17:45(+1) (overnight flight, arrives next day)
QR0514, DOH-COK, 19:45-02:30(+1) (arrives next day)
Total Travel Time: 20h44m


For the inbound, 4+ seats are available in economy on the 25th, 27th, and 28th, with 4 seats in business available the 25th, 30th, 31st, and 1st. Inbound Flight details are:

QR0515, COK-DOH, 04:00-06:10 (arrives same day)
QR0713, DOH-IAH, 08:30-17:00 (arrives same day)
Total Travel Time: 23h30m

Personally, I think it is worth it for business on this route for 67.5k miles each way vs 45k miles each way in economy (135k vs 90k R/T). An economy ticket on Qatar can be purchased for ~$1,000 for this same route. I am not sure it is the best use of miles at this price for economy, but that is ultimately your decision.

Can't figure out why OP wants to go by AUH since DOH is Qatar's hub (and only domestic airport). Likely a misreading of geography, not uncommon these days. Agree, just concentrate on the QR flights on the dates wanted, then pick up cheap revenue tickets to the appropriate NAmerican hub if its not IAH.

I just booked YYZ-ORD-DOH-CPT-DOH-PHL-YYZ in business on AA/QR. Had to juggle QR NAmerican gateways since no business awards available from/to YYZ in late February.

BTW was able to check QR space using the BA Avios|ExecClub website.

Yes, I agree. I checked availability for OP for a big chunk of March too, if you look at my post you quoted.

Thanks a lot for the information guys. Much appreciated. I may have to dig deeper and try different routes.

We really wanted to fly IAH-DOH-COK on QR using AA miles. But when I check thru BA (I don’t have any real QR miles) I don’t see any availability on QR on my dates ( Early to Mid June). Phasers, thank you for checking availability in March but I’m afraid I’ve misguided you when I said ‘spring’ as spring goes until late June.

Phasers/Shareholder, I completely agree with you guys the best ‘value’ is in business but I have barely enough miles to cover economy for 4 of us. No intention to buy additional miles. I just did pricing on QR on revenue and it would cost us about $7500 (RT/Economy). Thats about 2.2 cents a mile, not the best value but fair enough.