umaa83

So I need to get 17 people to Paris between Christmas and New Years for our daughters wedding in J. As the wife and I have a ton of miles in our respective accounts from our business credit card and we never use them, we were planning on using anytime awards for six of the J tickets (for friends of my daughter) and purchasing the remaining 11 for our family.We want to get these locked up now as 16 of us will occupy the entire first class cabin on the connection to the AA hub to CDG and then with the one additional person there, we will essentially occupy the entire J cabin over to CDG in each direction because as of now, the flights we are on are operated with the 787-800 with only 20 J seats. Problem is, after 12/31, there doesn't seem to be anytime awards loaded, despite the flights being there for purchase. A few BA flights show up, but not enough for six and even if it did, I don't want to make two stops (and only shows on the domestic segment with U availability which is few). I did a bit of diggning over the weekend and it appears that for most international destinations, whether it's Europe, Mexico, Carribean or even domestic to Hawaii, anytime awards are not showing after 12/31. Mainland US flights show occasionally, but nothing else. I called AA yesterday and was told by two separate agents that it's because they are lauching the new dynamic awards for international and Hawaii first in 2024 and they haven't loaded them yet. I know this is coming because of the December annoucement but it seems odd they would block these since the schedule is just now touching 2024 and I find it suspect that these two agents know anything, but I guess it is possible.

The wife just wants me to stop screwing around with it and just purchase all the tickets but we never use our miles, we probably have enough to get all 17 of us so I figure we would use them atleast on my daughters friends but on the chance even one seat on the domestic connection to the AA hub gets taken in F, it screws up our plan so its not worth dealing with my wife and daughter if that happens lol. I guess my question is this something that usually happens when the calendar rolls to a new year and to give it a few more days or could the agents actully be on to something?

wutlol

Aren’t we not far enough in the year for them to show? I thought availability was 330 days in the future, so 2024 dates should just be starting to roll into view in the coming weeks.

xliioper

Ah nevermind, was checking Google flights. Looks like AA.com lets you go out to 1/3 right now.

umaa83

The schedule is there online through 1/3/2024 and through 1/4/2024 if you call. 1/1/24 was loaded this past Saturday, 1/2/24 yesterday, today 1/3/24 etc and the phone line can see through 1/4/24 as the website is one day behind the phone desks. The flights show up for a cash purchase, but nothing shows for anytime awards and it appears to be limited to internaitonal and Hawaii which might give some credence to what I was told by the agent. Domestic anytime awards outside of Hawaii appear to be showing from 1/1/24-1/3/24 online.

JJeffrey

AA is in fact doing away with the traditional sAAVer and AAnytime awards. If you're seeing the traditional award space open through 12/31 then nothing after that then it could be related. This is uncharted territory, traditionally rolling over into a new year was no different than any other day in terms of award space opening up.

17 people to Paris in business at a peak time, I'm guessing that would run you upwards of 5M miles total for everyone's roundtrip.

umaa83

Correct , split betweeen my wife's account and mine.

enviroian

wutlol

1/3/23 is 331 days (this number per the AAdvantage FAQ) from now. I’d expect (regardless of what’s going on with rev tickets) the award availability to not stretch past this date.

yakel

Listen to your wife and stop screwing around and get the tickets.

umaa83

Probably will end up being what we do and just fly AF direct as they fly to where we live, it's the same price as AA. Figures that the onetime I want to use these miles that have just been sitting there it's an issue for something that should be so simple.

yakel

Simple to use??? I've never ever found it simple to use these miles.

umaa83

From an anytime award perspective it should be easy. I just called one more time and for a third time was told that at this time they are only allowing anytime awards to be booked through 12/31/2023 since they are going away. Kinda of b/s since they haven't gone away yet so we should still be able to use them.

javabytes

It’s simple as long as you don’t care how many miles something costs

wahoo09

Hi all,

I've been checking the past couple of days for AA Award travel from CUN-RIC on 1/1/24. Currently, when I search for the flight I receive a message of "Something went wrong. We didn't find a match." Same thing when searching for 1/2 and 1/3/24 as well.

However, if I search for the same flight for 12/31/23, and I look at the weekly calendar at the top of the results I can see the award pricing for January 1-3, 2024, but when I click on those dates I get the same error message. I called AA customer service three times and each of the representatives I spoke could not explain the issue, experienced the same thing on their end when searching for those dates.

Same issue when searching MEX-RIC, too. But I searched other random international routes (FCO-RIC) and did not receive the error message. I can search the reverse routing perfectly fine (RIC-CUN or RIC-MEX) with lots of affordable flights.

Any idea what award availability might look like if Anytime awards are going away? Or when awards might be available?

LlamaJesus

Looks like there is a problem with international AAnytime awards. I was able to book+ticket a (domestic) web special award yesterday for travel on 1/1, and saw plenty of AAnytime awards. But I'm checking now and while I still see plenty of domestic awards, I am not seeing any international AAnytime awards (or web specials) for travel on 1/1 or beyond. Maybe it's related to AA changing how they handle awards, maybe it's just a random IT glitch.