Avoid LHR using AA award possible?
 

I'd like to book award tickets NA-EU using AA miles for the fall '22 & winter '23. After two really unpleasant transits through LHR this past spring, including missing a flight due to their TSA mishaps and holding me up on both legs, plus the BA surcharges, I'd like to avoid it completely like I have typically done in past years when I flew more.

My ideal route is JFK - Faro (PT), OW. I'm willing to be creative in the routing to use up my miles. Both Royal Air Maroc & Iberia are Oneworld partners and I'm okay transiting through Casablanca/Madrid/Malaga/Seville/etc or even just booking any of those as my final destination from NYC & staying a few days. But no matter what destination I choose on the AA award flight booking page for these off season trips all the results transit through LHR, a few LGW.

I'm trying to understand why NYC - MAD (etc) searches aren't giving me direct IB choices for example, same with the rest. What has changed & how do I avoid LHR?

are you searching on EF for jfk-mad? I would look at other cities too like dfw and ord to mad. Be warned you will not find any availability this fall but possibly in January. Good luck!

If it's far enough in the future, wait for a schedule change and look to rebook on a better route. It might need to be aa operated, but they have been pretty flexible in my experience

Yesterday, I booked two tickets from LAX to CDG for next April. One ticket was cash and the other ticket I paid for with miles. I was able to avoid LHR on both the outbound and on the return. The outbound is LAX to DFW to CDG and the return is CDG to JFK to LAX. There were many itineraries through LHR using BA from London to Paris but also many itineraries that avoided LHR altogether. I avoided connecting through ORD or PHL because I really don't like the J seating on the 788. Using DFW on the outbound gave me the 789 from DFW to CDG. Connecting through JFK on the return gave me the 772. I chose seats 2D and 2H on this flight so that we will have forward facing seats whether we end up with the Super Diamond or the Zodiac seats.

I just booked ABQ-DFW-JFK-BCN-MAD-FNC (with a stop over in BCN) using AS miles, so something like this should be possible using AA miles.