Redeem AAdvantage Awards Using China Southern Airlines / CZ
 

As of 20 March 2019, AAdvantage members may use AAdvantage miles to secure MileSAAver awards on non-oneworld airline partner China Southern Airlines.

Just got off the phone with an agent and they didn't even know about it :) Not a lot of dates available, according to them.

What we have to learn (and add to the Wiki) is what the award fare classes are and where we can find the award seat availability reported. CZ awards can be seen on ExpertFlyer, but as with all awards we will get the information. Kind of like for Etihad calling Fiji, etc.

And with this rolling out today, I expect some AAgents may not be aware, not know how to search, or even to care and just feed us stuff like “you can’t, they’re not part of oneworld” and the like.

It looks like CZ uses the following buckets for awards X- eco, O-biz and F-first.
When I collected DL miles a while back I had some good luck finding multiple (sometimes as many as 5) biz seats on the A380 LAX-CAN flight. But I did some quick searches now and dont see that to be the case any longer.

It is Business Class awards not available for the rest of the year from the USA?

And, irony of ironies, CZ awards are still available with Delta miles. LAX-CAN in coach comes with a $104 carried-imposed surcharge with DL miles at the moment.

If you're thinking of trying to use delta.com to find awards that may be available with AA miles... just poke a stick in your eye. It will be more satisfying. (Just kidding.)

My random check of J award availability from SFO, LAX and JFK also returned a bunch of donuts.

I don't know if AAdvantage will implement CZ blackout dates the same way Delta has but one might consider it when checking for award availability.

Delta's CZ blackout chart:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...89f2ecfc3d.png
https://www.delta.com/content/www/en...rules.html/#um

No business available
 

F available after Jun 1
 

For what it's worth, I've failed to book F using Aadvantage in the USA (will be available after Jun 1, agents can see it now but not 'grab' it, this was confirmed to be in the notes by more than one agent) and one agent found X for economy, got ready to pull the trigger, agent hung (accidentally) up on me, and then the next agent couldn't find it (also not using direct method). I don't know where it went wrong. Calling AUS they failed to find availability in X but saw F, however also couldn't ticket it. Agent found X availability on the other daily LAX - CAN flight, but agent couldn't complete the booking or hold it because it won't price. Agent tried manually pricing it, still no go.

So CZ is a huge cluster right now. I seriously doubt things will majically get better Jun 1.

Delta shows CAN-LAX available but AA doesn't show it (I've tried 5 calls). Not sure if its an agent issue (lack of training) or AA genuinely doesn't see the space. Called Australia and the agent was adamant that CZ is not a partner, so had to hang up.

6 more call today and no luck. The space on DL/AF does not match up to what AA sees.

Just searched random 7 day periods on Expert Flyer every month between now and EOS (LAX-CAN route) and couldn't find any CZ business (O) award space. Seems to be plenty of X and some F, but not a single J to be found.

I don't understand why, though that doesn't mean there isn't a reason.