AA is strongly in last place when it comes to award booking technology.
Their online app is the only 1st world airline app that has absolutely no way to book an award inside of it. You *can* book via the AA mobile site, but, inexplicably, not on the app.
AA also has the fewest partner airlines bookable online as a percentage of partners compared to the other airlines that make up the US “Big 3.” UA shows almost all of their partners, as does Delta (although Delta sometimes either plays games or fails to show some of them).
In any event, it’s welcome news that you can now find availability for and book Fiji Airways and Malaysia Airlines on the aa.com website. We still await four other partners that were very briefly available last month, such as Qatar. I assume more are coming soon. Remember that for the time being, the British Airways website and Qantas remain your best bets for checking Oneworld availability. If you find availability for a flight you want (on Cathay Pacific, for instance) just call AA to book using your AA miles.
(H/T to Gary Leff / VFTW)
Additionally, Air France (Flying Blue) has added Air Tahiti Nui as an online redemption partner. You can already book Air Tahiti Nui with Delta miles (phone only), Alaska, and with American Airlines AAdvantage miles, though finding availability has been limited to ExpertFlyer and AA phone reps. With this addition, finding awards to French Polynesia (Papeete) just got a lot easier to search for. As well, if you don’t collect AA miles and since you can’t transfer anything but Marriott to AA, this is a nice second option.
I’d probably choose to burn my Delta miles first on Air Tahiti Nui, but I’d be grateful to be able to use Flying Blue to find the space.
Thoughts? Let me know here, on Twitter, or in the private MilesTalk Facebook group.
New to all of this? My new “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available now.
