Use Your American Airlines Miles Before They’re Devalued
My buddy Ben (aka Lucky) from One Mile at a Time recently wrote an informative post about how to get the most from your American Airlines AAdvantage (AA) miles before they’re devalued on March 22. For example, right now you can use 67,500 AA miles to fly first class on Cathay Pacific (one of American’s Oneworld partners) between the US and Asia (one-way). But after March 22, that same award will increase to 110,000 miles. To be able to fly March 22 through February 15, 2017 using the current award chart, you’ll need to book your tickets before March 22. You don’t even have to have your exact dates locked in because AA will let you change your dates as long as there are seats available and you don’t change the routing.
As Lucky says: “If you have a lot of AAdvantage miles to redeem, I’d start thinking about what kind of speculative bookings you want to make. I’d wait until as close to March 22 as possible to make the bookings, though, so you have as long as possible to use the tickets.” He also says, “To keep things simple I’ll be making bookings out of major gateways, so that I won’t have too much trouble finding seats at a later point (ie, Los Angeles to Hong Kong, New York to Abu Dhabi, etc.). I’d rather pay for a positioning flight to a major gateway than being [sic] stuck paying the new award cost in case I can’t find award space to the gateway.”
For more, check out Lucky’s post here.
____________________________________________________________
Tried this tip? Let me know in the comments!
Have your own tip? Email it to whitney@johnnyjet.com!
Want to see more tips? Click here for all 594!
Want even more travel tips? Subscribe to the Daily Travel Tip newsletter! All you have to do is sign up for the weekly newsletter by filling in your email address and checking the Daily Travel Tip box in the top-right corner of the homepage.
If you already subscribe to the newsletter, fill in your email and check the Daily Travel Tip box in the same top-right corner of the homepage and you’ll receive an email with a link to update your JohnnyJet.com preferences. On that page, just click the Daily Travel Tip box and Update Profile and you’ll have Johnny’s best tips, straight to your inbox each day. And don’t worry—it’s easier than it sounds!
