Business Award JFK to EZE, return from SCL - why so high?
 

i have been looking at flights in January 2019 using miles. Don’t understand why single tickets are costing 150,000 miles each.

is this a normal situation.. I will be returning from SCL after a cruise, does it make sense to just pay $2500 for the round trip fare instead of burning so many miles.?

thanks

You'll find a few different mileage pricing levels for this trip. If you find Saver availability, you might be able to price a 115k r/t in business. Alternatively, if no Saver seats are available, you could be looking at 2x that, or even more (caps out at 150k each way on select days).

If it were me, I'd spend the $2,500 versus shelling out 150k miles (and you'd earn a bunch of miles from this trip). That redemption rate versus buying the ticket is poor.
But if you have more miles than cash, you'll need to take that into consideration.

AA has variable miles Awards in two types: MileSAAver Awards for fewer miles, restricted in availability and not offered at all until 330 day’s from departure. Their availability is established by revenue management, and the more demand there is for a flight the less the availability.

The other award type is Anytime / AAnytime, meaning as long as there is a seat for sale you can secure an award seat. This comes at a higher miles cost, and in fact can increase in miles needed according to demand and sales.

Read more about each (read the basic information and rules in the Wikiposts at the top of the page) at

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...ssistance.html

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...iscussion.html

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...er-thread.html

The awards I have been looking at (330 days out ) are saver awards. Main cabin is 30,000 but business is 150,000. This is a one way flight.

150k for a one-way JFK-EZE award in business is most definitely a full price AAnytime award, not sAAver. The sAAver rate is 57.5k each way.

If you can get a front cabin RT for $2500, that is quite a good price. If it makes you feel any better (and it won't), DL wants 225K for the same - I've got an upcoming trip where I've got an AA outbound (using AS miles, where we can only get saver AA availability) and can't get a flight home, and I also checked DL.

The aa.com website is incapable of displaying award-seat availability on LATAM. Call AA to inquire about LATAM availability, or check it on some third-party website, like ba.com (if you have a BAEC account).

At about 1 cent per mile (all they're worth now,) the award is about the same value, especially if you can get saver. I got 2 business savers in Aug, but Jan is just recently opening thru the 15th so maybe wait and see. And, right now AA is more like $3400 RT though AV is at $2100 lowest and $2200 one-stop, so might come down, especially on LA.

January is the highest month for summer holidays in Argentina/Chile.
South to North is time for family vacations to US. North to South is cruise season (as you well know).
Every flight is guaranteed to have a very high number of seats paid for, regardless of the class.
You will be VERY lucky to find any Saaver Awards in J around that time.
I wouldn't count on space opening up later (though anything can happen, right?).
You may have better chances on Mondays/Tuesdays, as long as they are not mid or late in the month (14th/15th or 30th/31st).
As a regular on ARG/USA flights, if you can get a return for <$3000 in J, then you got yourself a good deal.
Yet, if you still want to look into awars, you may try Latam (as suggested). They offer daily services SCL/JFK either non-stop or via LIM (quite a convenient connection).
Happy hunting!

AA doesn't typically offer saver or its best air fares this far out. They can't really assess demand so they seek full price. Once they get closer, they'll start to open up savers although it will be for specific flights. If you're picking a heavy travel day, you won't get a saver fare.

Another option is a LATAM ticket from SCL to MEX ticket in J which can be very reasonable. It's a new 787 with excellent seats and great service. The only problem is you'll have to clear customs to change planes in MEX.

Except in those cases where you connect in South America 1 (most obviously in LIM on LATAM), where it's only 25k+30k=55k. See here:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...wer-miles.html

In my experience, BA sometimes doesn't show some AA-LA connnections that QF does.

I would suggest using Award Nexus (www.awardnexus.com), which is free to sign up for (and free to use to a certain degree) for FlyerTalk members (click "more signup options" under the green Purchase button).

Award Nexus can search OW using either BA and/or QF, using the exact same user interface (which I find way easier to use than BA's site).

The other day I was seeing LAX-LIM nonstop which I wanted to book, so to try to confirm that AA would see it, I did a search both with BA and QF (on Award Nexus). BA and QF both saw that nonstop, but QF also saw an AA-LA connection in MEX which BA didn't see.