While September is a slower travel period, it's probably getting too close-in to find availability at the lower redemption levels. October is showing considerably better availability at 25K or less each-way awards.


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You have to be flexible. There are still 115K RT J flights available even bypassing the fraudulent BA $1000 "fee" to book on them. ORD seems to have the most availability but you have to be flexible. IB has a few MAD flights when availability too.

I took advantage of the low mileage pricing and booked very cheap speculative trips for the rest of 2021 in March. As a no status member I am really appreciating the lack of basic economy on awards and free cancel/redeposit.

I feel like this is the case on all airlines.

I use my AS miles to book domestically on AA (generally cheaper than AS flights)
My BA miles to book on AS, and pretty much anyone but BA because of the Taxes
DL I generally use on Delta, but I never really have a lot.
UA seems to have better partner value too.

You are surprised that you found low mileage fares on the tails of some of the worst months of the pandemic and can't replicate that now that the whole country wants to travel? Besides the supply and demand aspects, you also need to be vigilant and continue to check for options. I'm flying ORD-LAS on a 787 in first class this week. It had been $750 or 75k miles in first. No way I was paying either of those rates. 10 days out they released C and U space. I cancelled my Southwest flight and booked using BA points at 22k one way (AA was 25k).

I'm not saying AA is not above charging egregious rates for some/many flights. But compared to UA and DL, they have by far the best dynamic FC rates domestically. You just have to be somewhat flexible and vigilant in your search. Hope the OP finds something at a reasonable rate!

I still get good value out of AA miles for shorthaul domestic awards. Of course I tend to book these very close in to departure. Planning ahead is a good way to spend more money or miles... There are a lot of DFW domestic markets out there that still have very high cash fares, especially for F. Redeeming miles for confirmed domestic F can sometimes provide great value.


Doesn't seem a horrible deal. I've seen DFW-LAS approach $450 OW in Y on certain flights around high demand weekends. $750 for lie-flat 787 first? If you are talking RT, that's practically a steal. And based on how far out DFW-LAS tends to sell out in F on the best flights around those peak weekends, I would assume AA can often sell out CHI-LAS F cabins too on peak weekends...

So....one failed attempt to find a good flight and that's it...you're writing off the program?

If you're a 3 million miler, you've been through a lot of ebbs and flows with AAdvantage. I remember years when AA was *the* leader - by far - in terms of availability and ease of booking. I also remember that you couldn't do one-way awards and you had very little flexibility once an award was ticketed, even as a Platinum.

As a regular user of AA, UA, AS, and BA miles, AA still has some really good sweet spots, along with areas where it's a poor value.

These days F/J travel is often *very* expensive as an AA award - although on occasionally, comparatively cheap as a revenue ticket. But at the same time, booking 4+ tickets in Y for family trips is actually a bit easier that it has been for most of my flying life. I just booked 4x MCI-ATH for next year's Spring Break at 22,500 miles one-way per person. In some past years, even finding the simple MCI-ORD portion was impossible on the peak Spring Break dates. Long-haul is on AA, so no bogus BA fees.

It's been better...it's been worse. The game evolves. You just have to be willing to evolve with it.

I have found that last minute reservations are easier to come. I booked JFK-SNA for 25k one way two days prior to flight. The return is at 30k for now, which is rather reasonable as well, particularly for the lie-flat business class.

I found a lot of availability at "Web-saver" level from JFK to LAX via MIA on the 777 flagship service routes for 25k or close to it.

I feel like fee-waived cancellation on award tickets is a huge enhancement in the program.

I scored J Q suites LAX-DOH-IKA for 70k points this morning. still a win for me.

Domestically, I find AA to be ok sometimes. UA seems to be horrible every time I check.

I have been planning a trip to Ireland next year (SNN preferred but looks like it will be DUB). A week ago I saw plenty of 57.5k or 70k business class seats in May / late May. I'm looking 330 days out. Luckily I held a reservation. A few days ago there will still plenty of seats - I want to move the reservation into early June. Today I looked (hold ends tomorrow). I can't even get an economy seat to Dublin (TUS-DUB if you are wondering) for under 70k now. Not one seat. On any day in May or the week of June that is now open. That is very very unusual for 330 days out. Right now I'm wondering if I will be able to afford return travel. My hope is they are updating schedules or something and took all the saver inventory out.

In any case I went ahead and locked in my held seats. Not like there are any change or cancellation fees anymore.

Edit: this has to be some kind of system update. Only over the water saver awards I'm seeing are BA. I'm seeing domestic saver, but for some reason those won't combine with BA tickets. Not that I want BA and $800 fee per ticket.

MileSAAver is generally only open on flights that are not predicted to sell out with cash pax. Otherwise, its going to spit out a Web Special, or for very full flights, full AAnytime asks.

Domestic First Class is J, not F. Sorry to be a stickler but to those reading you wont see any awards or tickets for F class of service.

Completely agree. It's not like the other programs haven't been devalued over the last few years and, if anything, a strong argument can be made that AA has been far slower to devalue AAdvantage relative to DL and UA.

-FlyerBeek

Those seats were plentiful just a week ago for all of May and up to 330 days in June. I can't believe overnight they were all booked by customers. Someone / something took the inventory back. I guess I got lucky to hold the seats I have. Traditionally inventory is always available at saver levels through June - July / August not so much.