The Offer
- American Airlines has released their reduced mileage awards for April – July, 2017. The discount you’ll receive varies from 1,000 miles to 7,500 miles depending on the route, the card you have and the class of service (e.g First, Business or Main Cabin).
The Fine Print
- Awards may be booked effective April 1, 2017 – May 31, 2017
- Awards are valid for travel April 1, 2017 – July 31, 2017
- Awards must be claimed by May 31, 2017
- Award travel must originate in the 48 contiguous United States or Canada
Our Verdict
I’m not sure if I’m just tired, stupid or if the information is poorly presented but I found this promotion much more difficult to understand than maybe it should be. I know a lot of people have been having trouble redeeming American Airline miles, so hopefully this helps.
Hat tip to Mile Nerd
I have had good luck with International business flights booked about eleven months in advance. I know that is not for everyone, but it is a great use of miles if you have a lot.
After three years of holding eligible cards, I only recently was finally able to redeem one of these awards. As people have pointed out, the issue is that sAAver space has to be available, and Doug Parker’s boys have pretty much dropped the kibosh on such availability. Nevertheless, I was able to redeem TLH-CLT roundtrip, it’s a sub 500 mile flight so it’s a 2k discount roundtrip. 15k initial price-2k for this promo= 13k-1.3k (10% cardholder rebate)=11,700 miles RT. Not a sexy route, but quite expensive if one were to pay cash.
The key to remember is this: you are eligible for reduced mileage awards regardless whether the listed city is the point of departure or destination. Reading AA’s site makes one think it only applies if your destination is a listed city, but this is not the case.
This is because they constantly sale AA miles with promotions. Old US airways marketing!
These reduced mileage awards are so limited to mostly Podunk destinations I’d wager they’re useless or forgotten by most people. With AA’s limited saaver availability I kind of have to leap for any opportunity to get a decent value out of my miles, even then I’m lucky to hit the 1.4-1.7 cents range.
These “reduced” AA are not usable. No avail.
Most likely, the worst hub of all the airlines is DFW! Horrible availability from there in saver level award. DFW shouldn’t be called a “hub” for AA. It’s a joke!
AA is really working hard tank their AADisadvantage program!
Rarely is there saver availability actually available.
I’m just curious, as I’ve been seeing this comment a lot. I’ve never had an issue with that, even one time I had to have a last minute change and there was still saver available 1 day in. Is it maybe something about the airports concerned, or certain airlines? I just got myself a lot of AA miles so want to keep this in mind. Unfortunately I won’t be able to use them until the fall.
Are you flying to lame places? Try getting a flight out of NYC. Nope.
Yeah, I guess the last flight I flew was into NYC (EWR), there weren’t a ton of flights, but at least couple of options that week for sure. It was coming from MAD in March maybe 1.5-2 months ahead of time.
Certainly not lame places. Earlier that trip I flew from the Maldives to Rome for 20k miles on Etihad, thought that was a good deal (booked this like a month ahead of time).
last minute usually has the most availability.
There are not even saver awards from one hub to another right now….it has been bad for almost a year now. I never used to have much trouble.
I fly out of 3 small/medium airports, so one always seems to be on the extra saver list- not that that means there’s saver availability! I don’t what big city availability is like. For my current trip I feel like I lucked out, I got the return ticket on this extra saver discount by moving my days but I couldn’t get the flight out extra discount because it had Alaska legs but I still got it on saver. I booked the day extra saver awards were released. However, I have a couple more trips I plan on using miles on & I’m seeing very little saver availability for those no matter what dates I put in. I picked another airline for this summer & I’m watching for a couple flights later this year cross country for business/first availability (but have yet to see it offered at saver level, even economy availability is sporadic). Having tons of points available is good because the worst that can happen is you may end up needing to book Anytime awards. Tons of aviability, so you can wait on booking those, but economy will cost 40K RT vs 25K and you won’t get the extra credit card discount since they’re Anytime awards. If saver availability is good at your airport I’d just stay a quiet happy clam and not tell the airline they forgot to cut back saver availability at your airport 😉
Oh snap, this is awesome. I have an award flight that I was putting off booking to SAF!
the problem with redeeming AAdvantage miles is not the award price… it’s the AVAILABILITY… it’s just not there.
they can make the awards free, if they are not available it won’t help us.
Yeah, saver availability isn’t there.
Sometimes I am having more luck with Delta awards, who’d have thought it.
I wish I could trade my AA miles for Delta miles :). I end up having to spend 20k for EVERY flight – a lot of flights only have 30k even when the price is like $300 – it is ridiculous!!!!
Lots of 10k/11k RT flights from DEN to SEA and LAX and probably others too.