Doing a late spring clean I found a AA voucher for $827.81 (having used part of the original $1000 voucher) which expires on Aug 5th.
My question to the community is how can I use this essentially free money (yes I know TINSTAAFL) on AA to maximise my BA mileage?

I used the dream maps feature on travelocity and found a nice $98RT mileage run from STL-DFW-FLL which I am doing late August. I was planning on just doing 6 or 7 of these after finding the voucher but it is now gone. Not only has the cost gone from $98 to $238 on American but the fair class has gone from N (on which I can get BAS miles on an AA flight) to L (which gives no miles at all). Other option that I saw was a RT for $849 STL-DFW-HNL for about 8500 miles. Or STL-LAX-TPE for $995RT that will deliver a nice 16400 miles.

Any creative ideas out there? Prize of 4 UA 500 mile domestic upgrades to the first reasonable(as you can imagine for someone willing to travel half way around the world simply to get some FF miles, reasonable is a very relative term ) 25K idea that works.

I had an email from travelocity with dirt cheap fares from USA-Aust in August on Qantas. Most r/t from most points in USA run 20,000 miles.

Half the Qantas flights ex USa are code shared with AA. Does that help? As I recall, price was about $Us800 round trip to Australia.

Weather SUPERB here today just for your advice despite it being mid Winter. Was in shorts and T Shirts all weekend, I swear!

Here's that deal $US1190 WITH 5 nites Hotel in Sydney.
http://leisure.travelocity.com/RealD...WS_345,00.html

Could use some UA 500 milers for another trip I am taking here to DUS with some other FT'ers:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum95/HTML/000474.html

Hope AA comes up with a price match or better on the SYD flight!

beware of the that lax-tpe flight. it propbably is a code share with eva, and they aren't a ba partner, so it probably won't count in your ba account. try the same itinerary routing yourself through nrt on an aa operated flight. i sometimes found that the pricing held regardless of the routing.

Mvic,

If you are trying to maximize your BA mileage on any of the 1w airlines, beware that not all fares qualify for miles, and even fewer fares qualify for tier points (for status).

[This message has been edited by bagold (edited 07-24-2000).]

Well, if you are going STL-FLL on AA you could add the following:

STL-FLL

MIA-PHX
PHX-BOS
BOS-PHX
PHX-MIA

FLL-STL

From there... ???
Currently, AA has a fare published with limited availability of $148 r/t for the MIA-PHX and the PHX-BOS runs.

[This message has been edited by TransWorldOne (edited 07-24-2000).]

Good suggestions and heads up from all. My understanding of the way miles are transferred is that as long as the ticket shows an AA flight number and a eligible fare class miles(unfortunately rarely tier points) will be awarded (as long as the flight is not a transatlantic).

Unfortunately the Boston Phoenix RT for $138 will not work as it is carries an L fare basis which does not earn any miles otherwise it would be the way to go.




[This message has been edited by Mvic (edited 07-25-2000).]