ARCHIVE: HELP DESK: 2019 MileSAAver / SAAver award questions, assistance
 

Hello All. Happy new year : )

After looking at some flight options, I started to get frustrated with the change in logic for award availability. In short, I am looking for a connection GVA-LHR-PHL-MHT. The only option that comes up as Milesaaver is with 6 hrs in PHL.

However, if checking by segment, GVA-LHR-PHL and PHL-MHT are both available on a good itinerary with 2.5hr connection time in PHL. Earlier this week, this same more convenient option showed up as a connection as well on a direct GVA-MHT search.

Is there any tricks to help me get what I want? Would you advise that I just book them as a separate award tickets on the same PNR by paying the extra miles for PHL-MHT? I am aware I can do a stand by, but don't want to risk it

Thank you!

That's the truth -- It's driven me nuts more than once!!

Feels like a lot of the DFW/ORD -> NRT U rewards are requiring 13+ hour layovers that drag the outgoing next flight into the following day making the entire trip +24 hours. I'm trying to get a feel for what's out there from CLT and some of these U ticket routes are a complete joke. 3 stop minimum + 13-14 hour layovers. If I try and route myself out of DFW or ORD directly award availability basically disappears for U.

Wasn't like this last year :(

It might not work, but you could try using the multi-city award-booking engine to put GVA-PHL on hold, and the specific PHL-MHT flight you want on hold. Then, call AA and see if the agent is able to reprice the entire itinerary as a single award.

Of course, if you purchase GVA-PHL now with the long connection, and the earlier PHL-MHT flight becomes available for a married-segment award, you should be able to switch to the earlier flight at no charge.

Thank you - this is something I did not know. Seems like the smartest option.

To follow-up on my prior message, the PHL-MHT flight with the good 2.5 hr connection in PHL was actually phantom availability, with an error message showing up before the final confirmation.

This question is not meant to be tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic, complaining, or anything like that. It's an honest question from someone who doesn't know.

Does sAAver first award availability on AA (not BA) actually exist to LHR? I checked literally every day from every gateway for 3 months in summer and found nothing.

I booked J. I'm happy with it but I'd be happier in F -- I'd gladly pay the extra miles at the sAAver rate. Is it worth it for me to keep checking or is there basically zero chance of it ever popping up?

Oh sorry. I think it was married logic (out of SFO). I didnt check to see if the individual segments had their own availability though.

I don't think I did anything special here. I searched for SFO-LHR with the "AA only" option, looked at the full calendar, and kept moving it forward 2 weeks at a time, and wrote down all the days that had availability. Then I did the same in the reverse direction, and found 2 that were a little more than a week apart (which was how long I wanted my trip to be). Then I did a search for that date allowing "all partners" and using MLA as the destination instead of LHR (which is where I actually want to go), picked the option that routed on AA for TATL, held it, and booked it a few hours later.

For the outbound, there were a several scattered days of availability in July and August. For the return there was a lot more.

I'm flying SFO-LAX-LHR / LGW-MLA there, and MLA-LGW / LHR-JFK-SFO back, all in J. The stops in London are overnight but less than 24hr. BA for the LGW-MLA-LGW legs; AA on everything else.

Obviously I was extremely flexible with dates (this is a vacation to visit family -- I can go whenever I want) so I was willing to take anything in June, July, or August.

I'm not sure which month you are searching but I found nothing in June (I didn't check earlier)

The utility of EF award alerts is certainly lessened in a world of married segment availability awards. That's not unique to AA - DL and UA practice it, too.

That there isn't award space today doesn't mean there won't be award space some time later. If you're willing to go 'anywhere' in Europe, prioritize destinations served by AA metal, then AY and IB.

No, EF will show married segments.

Do an end-to-end search and it will show entire routings, with either all segments showing a seat or not.

I find it easier to search on AA rather than EF (due to the calendar view). Be sure to go to the advanced search and search "American only" to exclude the BA results.

By the way, I don't see anything in the 2nd week of September either. I do see SFO-JFK-LHR (all AA J) on Aug 27th though.

The search on AA.com is actually quite good. At first I found the calendar a bit clunky to use but once I got used to it I found it to be MUCH easier than EF (where you can only search one week at a time and you have to constantly filter for routes where there's availability)

Edit: I see 17 days of availability for SFO-LHR in J in the range of July 5 - Aug 27. This really isn't that rare (at least for those months)

Outside of that date range, though, it's a lot more scarce.