pinniped

I still believe in the value of TYP at 1.6 cpm. I fly enough cheap coach AA tickets over the course of a year that I know I can redeem at a pace that doesn't leave any given point in my account for more than a few months.

You may have just run into the special case some of us have run into (and what mia is referring to): TYP's blind spot is discounted premium fares (at least some of them...). While annoying, it's not bad enough to cause me to throw out the card.

Posting this from the KLM lounge at IAH...I'm in here via the Priority Pass that comes with the Prestige card. Even though I'm flying UA F and have access to their clubs, it was *totally* worth it to take the train down here to D terminal and the peace and quiet of this lounge. The United Clubs in Houston are an absolute circus - anybody here who uses AAdmiral's Clubs should be thankful that even the big AA hub clubs are nowhere near as loud and messy as these UC's.

Ttrevi88

Thanks for the heads up on the requirement of booking through Citi. The premium fare is available through them too.

The redemptions with Prestige would cost 36k for economy and 60k for premium. I compare this to United charging 45k and 90k for their fares on those dates. AA now wants 50k miles for their economy or 90k for first. Seems like the airlines are doing their best to squeeze the value out of these programs.

I've heard there can be workarounds - like using krisflyer to book united awards cheaper? I also have about 50k UA miles and 70k UR points. Would using a transfer partner make this cheaper?

pinniped

It's somewhat apples-and-oranges. With TYP, those amounts you quote are simply driven by the airfare on the flights you've chosen. With United or Krisflyer, it's driven by your ability to find award seats available.

There are good reasons to be excited about moving UR to SQ - namely you'll get access to native inventory that Star Alliance partners will never see. We all want to fly SQ F at some point in our lives, and I'm guessing that having an actual Krisflyer account (with enough miles in it) is the best way to make this happen.

But I'm not sure that's much help with this DFW-HNL itin.

Antipode

Update: About one week after the refund was processed by AA, the ThankYou points were back in my account.

ukengineer

Has anyone been able to successfully redeem for a Qantas domestic (Australia) flight at a rate similar to what is shown on travel aggregator sites or on qantas.com? The prices I am seeing on the TYP portal are severely inflated (~2.5x more expensive). I called in and got nowhere with the phone agents.

iahphx

I recently got this card, primarily because my reciprocal oneworld sapphire status was expiring and I need AA lounge access.

But the 1.6 point redemption on AA flights is quite interesting. It helped me out today when I need to book a family member on a last minute 600-mile domestic flight this weekend. Although the flight was wide open, there were no standard award seats -- not that I would have booked it on AA because of the close-in ticketing fee and the bad award value, but I was thinking of Avios. But some of these "walk-up" fares are pretty reasonable these days, and this one cost me only about 7300 points. That IS Avios cost -- and it's a revenue ticket with plausible availability.

So the Prestige 1.6 cent AA redemption is a very useful tool. I'm sure I'll use it again. Indeed, unless you're transferring a ton of points to some airline program to redeem an int'l premium class award, I don't think you're likely to do much better than this. It's too bad you'll earn fewer award miles on the redeemed Citi AA tickets later this year, but it's still a very good deal.

Debonaire

Does anyone have experience booking mixed carrier itineraries? For example, I am trying to book ORD-PEK via NRT, but all of my results were strictly either AA or JL, and the mixed itinerary was not found (codeshares do appear, but that's not what I need here). The agent over the phone couldn't see it either.

voodoogirl

Datapoint - Booked refundable business class tix on Copa Airlines and needed to cancel. Paid $125 per ticket re-deposit fee, got all my TYP and cash back in about a week.

aau

Trying to book a complicated itn on all AA discounted biz (some codeshares) and I cannot get the flights I want on the Travel Center website. I can get on aa.com, so I know its legit. Will I have better luck calling in?

pinniped

If you call in, do report back here what you find. Discounted biz seems to be the achilles heel of this program.

aau

Successfully booked my trip in discounted biz. Fed the agent all my flights one by one, and specified the fare code for each segment. Took over an hour.

mia

If I understand correctly the problem is "YUP" fares, which are Economy class with an automatic upgrade to the next cabin. Other discounted business class fare should be OK.

pinniped

Not sure whether that's good news or bad news!! I'll take it as "It's possible, but they make you work very hard for it." I suppose a better result that "it's not possible."

I couldn't get it to work with I or A. I wonder if AA converts those to some kind of -UP fare behind the scenes? (QUP? MUP? They were too cheap to be YUP's or BUP's.)

infinite97

Question:

I booked an AA flight through the TY portal using points. Once booked, I called AA to apply a SWU to the flight (I'm AA EXP). The agent told me that the ticket is a "bulk ticket" and I have to wait 24-48 hours for the ticket pricing and details to show up in the AA system before they can apply a SWU.

The flight is in ~6 days and I'm worried that the SWU availability will disappear. Is there anything I can do, or do I just sit on my hands and wait?

Otherwise, the TY portal was pretty awesome and straightforward. I found the flight I wanted on AA.com, switched over to the TY portal, and found the same flight at the same price.

Thanks!

Jimgotkp

HUCA. Didn't have any issues applying a SWU around an hour after ticketing it on the TYP website.