Just called AA to try to book a OW award ticket. Using the Great Circle Mapper the itinerary (HKG-SIN, SIN-CNS, CNS-SYD, SYD-MEL, MEL-AKL, AKL-SIN) was coming out just over 13,000 miles, which would fall under Zone 5 (10k-14K miles) and a 90K redemption rate for Y travel.

When the AAgent entered this info, she said it would cost 140K miles because it was between 25K and 35K miles. I said that there must be a mistake, but she insisted that this was the redemption rate the computer was giving her. After plenty of investigation, I realized it had me flying from Singapore to Tokyo and then down to Australia, along with several other odd routings.

Now I am not interested in going that far out of the way for the trip, but isn't the OW award structured to calculate direct point-to-point mileage between the originating and destination airport, or am I mistaken? The AAgent couldn't answer this...but kept falling back on the "that's what the computer says so I can't do anything about it routine" (very frustrating).

Just curious about this mileage calculation rule...doesn't look as if I'll be able to find any award travel from SIN to Australia in August in any case...but I may try my luck with another agent b/c this one didn't seem to understand much at all about the OW award as I had read it.

Thanks!

I just checked a few dates and didn't see any direct oneworld flights sin-cns. Without a single-flight number you are going to have to route through another city and include that mileage.

Yes, but SIN-BNE-CNS or the even shorter (and infrequently served) SIN-DRW-CNS are far less than SIN-NRT-CNS. I'd call again if you actually cared to try to book. In theory if all flights were available you could do HKG-SIN-DRW-CNS-SYD-MEL-AKL-SYD-SIN, all on QF except the first flight, around 13260 miles. Shouldn't that be OK with AA?

I've never redeemed a OW award but I've read it here quite often that the distance is calculated from A to B, regardless of a required connection at a C point. Apparently it's necessary that the 'system' understand C to be a connection and not a stop-over.

There are FTers that are used to redeem this kind of awards and hopefully will be able to join in with their comments on what's necessary for you to correctly redeem your award from AA.

pb9997 is correct. Mileage is calculated as A-B, provide you do not stay at an intermediate connection-point for more than 24 hours. As yellow77 points out, calling back to another agent should produce the desired result.

Wow. Called back and got a really helpful AAgent. Was able to hold flights to Australia in about 10 minutes. Glad I called back.

And it was good to know I wasn't way off base in my understanding of the OW award...still need to work on the exact itinerary of the OW award and weigh connections vs. cost. But getting to/fro Down Under was my main goal so glad to have that done

Thanks everyone for the support & advice.

Thanks for letting us know the rules haven't changed.