Not sure if this is the right place to post or not but feel free to push to AA forum if you think that's better:

I just put on hold a OW130 award for travel in J from LAX to BOM (Mumbai, India) this Nov. This involves travel from LAX-JFK-LHR-HEL-BOM on the outbound via AA, BA, & AY and travel BOM-LHR-BOS-LAX (BA & AA) on the return. This started as a standard all-partners award at 135K miles per ticket. Thanks to all of you on this forum however, I asked if it qualified as a OneWorld Award since my start-finish destinations were LAX and BOM. It did.

Here's the question. What are the cons, if any, of a OW130 award vs a standard all-partners award. Routing flexibility, date flexibility? For example, will I still be able to change my return from LHR-LAX to the non-stop if award availability in J opens up on my desired dates? Or does this only work for the all-partners award type, which costs 5K miles more? I have until 3/21 to ticket this. THanks in advance for your help.

Bingo, you got it in 1. The Oneworld award has zero routing flexibility after being issued -- no change in routing, stopover or carrier allowed, ever (date changes are allowed). So on the OW130 you cannot change to the LHR-LAX non-stop, while on the partners award you can.

Oh...... Thanks for that quick response. Looks like it might be worth the extra 5K miles for a standard award to preserve that flexibility for me.

Another con of a OW award is that the All Partner award allows for a lot more airlines.

Edited to add, you can go through Asia to get to Bombay on JAL (or any other carrier) for 140k.

Does JAL fly to BOM? When I checked JAL's site earlier, they only showed flights to DEL. Also, the all-partners award chart on aa.com says however that travel to India must be via europe.


That's too bad for travelers though. About 6 years ago, I redeemed a J award on CX to BOM but it looks like that's no longer an option because you can't find J awards on CX! (It was nice at the time because it was only 100K miles each too!).

Yeh, I forgot JL only flew to Delhi. You could do JAL to Delhi and Air Sahara to Bombay. Personally, I would stick with what he had, but there are other options.

A ticket through Asia is just booked as two tickets and comes to 5k more miles.

Edited to correct myself, it's actually 15k more miles. For inexplicable reasons, 60 + 90 came to 140 earlier.