Seniors,

I have 45,000 miles with United and AA. Need to leave from XNA to DEL around Nov 20 and return from DEL to XNA around Dec 19. Called AA they say they are sold out. Any other magic you guys can suggest for my AA miles so I can book award travel

Questions:
1. Do you have 45,000 miles each with United & AA? Or total between the two airlines?

2. How many tickets are you trying to book?

Suggestions:

1. Come back a few days earlier. AA.com is showing availability leaving November 19th & returning December 16th. It's 45K miles each way, so you're apparently planning to book one direction with American Airlines & the other with United?

2. Don't call; use the website to search for availability. The calendar at AA.com is pretty good for finding dates around your preferred travel date that have availability.

3. Consider nearby airports, if possible.

4. In the future, if possible, book award travel further out. I'm actually pretty surprised that the availability that exists.

I have 45k miles in each airline mileage programs. Trip came unexpected, otherwise I would book earlier. I am only seeing BA and AA flights when I search on AA that's why I called to check if I can find ticket on other airline.

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"2. Don't call; use the website to search for availability. The calendar at AA.com is pretty good for finding dates around your preferred travel date that have availability."

That is poor advice, as several of AA's partners that serve India cannot show award availability on aa.com (including 9W, EY, GF, and QR).

OP: note that for the time period during which you wish to travel, if you connect (or stop over) in Europe, you can get the one-way for just 40K miles as two separate awards. Also, for 47.5K miles, you could go via Japan or Korea on two separate awards.

For the Segment using AA miles, you can use the British Airways website to search for Qatar (QR).

Etihad and Jet Airways availability can be found on the Etihad webiste. You're looking for "Guest Seat" not "Open Seat."

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You cannot search for EY or 9W award flights on ba.com, as neither is a oneworld carrier (and neither is a BA partner, either).

Bah, you're right. You can search for QR availability on the BA website. EY and 9W availability on the Etihad Guest Website.

As aa.com does not show a number of airline partners' award seat availability, you will have to call. The telephone service fee is waived for bookings that can not be made online.

Note that using BA for an award will incur significant carrier imposed fees.

Not great availability, but here's the best I found:

11/22 XNA-IAH-FRA-DEL on United/Lufthansa, 42.5k UA miles
12/20 DEL-HEL on Finnair, 20k AA miles
pay for hotel in Helsinki (~23 hours in Helsinki)
12/21 HEL-JFK/LGA-XNA on Finnair/American, 20k AA miles, ~3 hours to get from JFK to LGA at your cost

You could book DEL-HEL-JFK/LGA-XNA all on one award, but it would price at 45k, so you save miles by separating it. I will note that one advantage of paying the extra 5k miles to book it all together is that AA allows free routing changes. So if something better opens up, you could change it (i.e., something much cleaner like DEL-DOH-ORD-XNA). If you book separately, while changes are still allowed, you'd have to keep DEL-HEL and HEL-XNA as start/end points of 2 separate awards.

Are you sure you want to use miles for this? You're looking at using 82.5k miles + ~$125 in taxes. Round trip 11/18-12/17 XNA-DEL is $1,092 on Delta/KLM/Air India (XNA-ATL-DXB-DEL // DEL-AMS-MSP-XNA) or $1,124 on Delta/Air France/KLM (XNA-ATL-CDG-DEL // DEL-AMS-MSP-XNA).

I've read about but never tried to use these AA routing changes. Do they allow co-terminal changes? For example, if I book MUC-LHR-JFK (BA), JFK/LGA-DCA (AA), could I make a free change to MUC-LHR-IAD (BA) if availability opened up?

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"if I book MUC-LHR-JFK (BA), JFK/LGA-DCA (AA), could I make a free change to MUC-LHR-IAD (BA) if availability opened up?"

Not without paying a fee.