Using AAdvantage Miles for Qantas flights within Australia
 

Is it possible to book AAdvantage award miles on flights within Australia on Qantas? For example, Sydney to Melbourne, or Sydney to Carins? If so, is the requirement 20k? Are seats difficult to obtain? Is there a routing of cities within Australia that would use the minimum mileage? Or, would using the OW award work better for this? Thanks.

Look here.

You can't do a Oneworld Award purely in Australia because of the requirement that you fly two carriers other than the ticketing carrier.

IIRC, transcontinental and midcontinental flights are pricy, but east coast flights can be reasonably cheap due to the LCCs. All depends on where you want to go.

In my experience, flights aren't very expensive in Australia, other than if you want to do an Aussie transcon. I don't think it'd be worth 20k. Although you can go from NZ to Oz for the same 20k, which might be worth it.

What's the difference between a One World award and an AA award?

I'm sorry, don't seem to understand that, can you give an example of an itenary?

Oneworld awards have different rules than the "all airlines" awards on Aadvantage. This thread was asking about an "all airlines" AA award. One of the rules of the Oneworld award is that 2 carriers other than AA must be flown on the routing for the award. QF would be one of the carriers, but within Australia there are no other OW airlines operating flights. The closest is LA which flies SYD-AKL 4 times a week. To qualify for a OW award would require including 1 or more QF flights and that rare LA flight SYD-AKL. For awards that are between countries it is usually pretty easy to find more than one OW carrier. The full rules are on the aa.com website.

Let me see if I understand right: For a 1W award this would be a possible routing SYD-AKL (LA) and AKL-SYD (QF) for 20,000 AA miles. OTOH an AAdvantage award for between SYD-AKL-SYD can be all on QF for 20,000 miles? Is this true and if so then what is the advantage/disadvantage between the two types of awards? Thanks.

Read the award rules and it becomes obvious. However the awards are priced differently, the OW award is 35K in Y and 75K in J (not 20K as you seem to be assuming). I'm sorry to keep repeating this, but the aa website is quite clear about the award cost and rules, you simply have to spend 2 minutes to read all of the rules ... I can't type 2 pages of rules and tables into an FT posting.

One key difference is in the number of stopovers allowed (OW awards are mileage based and allow a large number of stopovers, at the expense of flexibility as per the rules, thus well suited to "circle" type of trips or other convoluted routings; the regular AA awards are intended to be for point-to-point round trip but have some provision for stopover and/or open-jaw but with limitations). For your example SYD-AKL-SYD is better done with the regular AA award while something like SYD-AKL-CHC-MEL-SYD would suit a Oneworld award. But getting that LA flight booked is very hard (only 4 services per week, or 20 F seats per week for sale, maybe 1 or 2 available for awards and those are taken for SYD-AKL-SCL and not often available for SYD-AKL. In practice Oneworld awards are irrlevant for Australia/NZ travel, you have to also go to HKG/BKK/SIN etc.

Award routing on Qantas flights within Australia using AAdvantage miles
 

I noticed an award routing on Qantas website from Sydney to Cairns via Ayers Rock. With such a routing, would a stopover at Ayers Rock be permitted. Assuming it were possible, does that mean you can travel from Sydney to Cairns, via stopover at Ayers Rock, and return to Sydney from Cairns for 20k. This seems to be a bit much to hope for. Does anyone know what is permitted and the mileage cost? Thanks.

First off, there is a sticky in the AA forum which will explain the rules for award travel. As noted before, OW awards have different rules from AA's all partner awards. Then there is the special benefits of flying AA within North America that permits stopovers. On awards that originate outside of North America, one can have an open jaw, but not a stopover.

I beg to differ. Stopovers are allowed on awards originating outside NA.

Maybe if the award goes to/through N. America, but otherwise see post no. 1 here - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=440733

I was caught on this one a month or two ago. The EXP desk actually booked a Europe-originating award (to Africa) that had a stopover for me; they called back to undo it. Openjaws are okay, stopovers are not.

Quite a surprise, can you post a link?

Yes, I found this to very surprising and odd too. I had gone to the Qantas website, entered my frequent flyer account information, and selected the award flight option. I entered my departure as Sydney, and arrival as Cairns, and to my surprise, in addition to direct flight, there was a connection via Cairns. See Below:

09:45 Sydney 12:40 Ayers Rock (Uluru) QF728 737-800
14:50 Ayers Rock (Uluru) 17:55 Cairns QF1924 717
OPERATED BY QANTASLINK - NATIONAL JET SYSTEMS

Even more surprising, I checked flights from Sydney to Ayers Rock, and a connection via Perth was an option. See below:

16 April 06:10 Sydney 16 April 09:05
Perth QF565 737-800 0 16 April 10:20
Perth 16 April 14:10 Ayers Rock (Uluru) QF1922 717 0
OPERATED BY QANTASLINK - NATIONAL JET SYSTEMS

I don't have Qantas mileage, I only signed up for their frequent flyer program to see what awards might be available and hope that I could use AAdvantage miles for such awards. (I am not planning a trip in the near future, I am just trying to plan ahead and learn what options are available for using AAdvantage miles.) For these flights, via Ayres to Cairns, there was a little higher mileage requirement for such a connection vs. flying to Cairns directly.