mooreva

We are considering a SA/Antarctica cruise, sailing on 12/18/2019; disembarking in Santiago on 1/9/2020. This far ahead the only award seats are Economy 75K going to Buenos Aires and only 150K seat returning from Santiago in January. What gives? Nor does Aadvantage show any partner schedules for those dates. At the moment, it doesn't seem worthwhile trying to get a reward seat. What am I doing wrong?

ajeleonard

Often1

What are you doing wrong?

Nothing. There simply is likely a lack of seats because those are only released when demand is low.

Mwenenzi

And any that were released 330 days out are taken
Wednesday 18 Dec 2019 & Thursday 9 Jan 2020 will be in a peak time for travel.

Yoshi212

Do a positioning flight/drive to MIA and you can fly at low level to and from on 12/16 & 1/8. When doing award travel you have to flexible. It's peak time down in that hemisphere.

LondonElite

chgoeditor

Moving to our AA forum.

chgoeditor
co-mod, Info Desk

3Cforme

LATAM isn't a carrier searched by aa.com for award inventory.

Redeem miles on aa.com

• Air Tahiti Nui
• Alaska Airlines
• American Airlines
• British Airways

• Cape Air
• Fiji Airways
• Finnair
• Hawaiian Airlines

• Iberia
• Malaysia Airlines
• Qantas Airways
• Qatar Airways

• Royal Jordanian Airlines
• S7 Airlines
• SriLankan Airlines

I don't know that you'll actually find any LATAM-operated awards by calling AA. That peak season thing everybody's talking about.

SpammersAreScum

At this point it looks like the latest MIA saaver is 12-14, arriving 12-15. But there are worse fates than spending 3 days in Santiago before the cruise. And return now would have to be the 9th, or 12th or later. And, again, a few days in Buenos Aires would not be a hardship.

Also, saaver MIA-TPA is available on the 10th and beyond so you could include that. Once you've booked those (act quickly!), you can keep your eyes peeled to see whether saaver space opens up later for TPA-MIA, in which case you can call AA and get it tacked on.

Since you apparently haven't booked the cruise yet, would your schedule allow other dates which have better flight availability?

It's a great cruise, by the way. I took it starting late Dec 2016.

sdsearch

AA's main partner for South America is LATAM, and you can't look up LATAM award flights on aa.com.

I suggest you go to www.awardnexus.com, click on "more signup options" under the green Purchase button, and sign up for free as a FlyerTalk member (look for "I am an active member of flyertalk.com" on that second page). Award Nexus lets you search using either BA and/or QF (Qantas) sites's for oneworld alliance award inventory (which is bookable on AA only over the phone in LATAM's case). Sometimes QF gives better LATAM results for me than BA does. With Award Nexus, you use the same user interface whether searching via QF or via BA. You could alternately sign up for BA and QF directly, but then you 'd have a totally different user interface at each.

If that fails, the other thing you may want to look at is looking up business class flights for your trip on Kayak. You might be surprised at how inexpensive some business class flights to/from South America (with changes of planes in Central America or northern South America) can be. Those business class seats may not be sleeper seats, but you can get daytime flights often. Though just as in the case of award flights, you might want check other USA airports (like MCO and MIA) in case those lower business class fares are only to/from those cities and not TPA.

platbrownguy

OP if this is still available and you want Saver seats, grab these. It is not realistic to expect Saver awards on your preferred dates to AND from your preferred cities let alone in peak season.