Zeromus-X

Lots of award travel sites give great suggestions for things like trips to Hawaii (for example, using BA to fly from west coast US to Hawaii for 13,000 Avios), I'm wondering if there's any place that aggregates this information to make recommendations for other less-fun destinations? For example, I need to travel PHX-DFW in about a month and I've got a few hundred thousand points on all the major programs, but I'd obviously rather spend 13,000 Avios transferred from Chase than the 56k AA wants to charge if that's an option.

guv1976

When AA is asking 56,000 AAdvantage miles for a particular PHX-DFW nonstop, you should not be able to obtain that flight with any amount of Avios. Although there have been a few scattered exceptions reported, typically only seats that show as available for "MileSAAver" redemption on aa.com are made available for redemption by partner FFPs.

Zeromus-X

Well that makes things pretty easy then. Definitely no MileSAAver fares showing (May 26-30).

Even still; outside of this example, is there a general guide for these? Like, “Check BA if flying domestic US less than 1,500 miles”, “Check Qantas if you want a free layover”, “Check United for flat rate business class transcon”, etc? (None of those are likely true, just using examples.)

guv1976

Well, you can certainly pull up BA's redemption table for travel on AA, recognizing that BA charges extra for each flight flown (i.e., connections are not free). There are some distance bands where a BA redemption on an AA nonstop will cost less than an AA MileSAAver redemption on the same flight. The problem these days is that AA sometimes offers "Web Special" awards that cost substantially less than a MileSAAver award. Here's an example of trans-continental travel on AA for just 6,000 AA miles in Economy:




By contrast, redeeming BA Avios for a "Reward Flight Saver" nonstop between the U.K. and the rest of Europe can offer far better value than redeeming AA miles for the same flight.

Each frequent-flyer "currency" has its own pluses and minuses, so it's probably best just to ask here whenever you are contemplating a particular redemption. (There are award-booking services which will, for a fee, try to maximize the value you get from your miles on a particular trip.)

Zeromus-X

Got it. Thanks for the info!

dbuckho

Many of the points blogs have articles on topics like how to maximize Avios or when to use Avios vs. AA (will not link them - but easy to search - often they include examples like a route booked with one airline currency vs. others in that alliance). But no decision tree/calculator that I know of.

MSPeconomist

This is a long holiday weekend in the USA (Monday May 30 is Memorial Day). Planes will be packed, fares will be high, and award availability will be low..

VegasGambler

There are plenty of 27k - 30k options in the last few days of May. But there are also plenty of flights that you can buy for under $300. It's not exactly cheap but I would not redeem miles for under a penny.

As others have mentioned, only saver space is made available to partners. There is no point checking entry single one; if there's no saver space there's no saver space.

I think that this is a poor time to try to use your miles. Either pay up to fly AA or consider other, cheaper options. Frontier can get you there for $72 on the 28th (Saturday). This is an unbundled fare; you will have to pay extra to even take a carry on, but even after the fees you are still going to be paying less than half the price of AA. It may not be the best flying experience (I've never flown them so I can't say, but I'm guessing that you get what you pay for) but it will get you there cheaply.

Personally I am not a fan of ULCCs but if you are going to try one, the time to do it is when the fare is 1/4 as much.