Thus far, I've avoided ever having a single American Airlines mile. Despite what you might think, I don't have a strong desire to know the ins- and outs of every system out there. Plus, they're legendary for having
terrible award availability. The trip itself, not the way I get there, is still where the bulk of my energy is spent. Thus far, Alaska and British Airways partner redemptions have been "good enough" for my OneWorld/American Airlines needs and I've been able to avoid dealing directly with them. Neither Chase UR nor Amex MR points can be transferred to them, so the only option is to start accruing them, or do a SPG/Marriott transfer which can take multiple days (or weeks if their newly-combined IT department is having another flareup of digital heartburn).
Yesterday in trying to help my husband find a flight home from a family emergency in Montana, my Alaska/British strategy finally hit a wall. I knew exactly which flight he wanted to be on, yet neither of them were showing it as available in any class of service.
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| Searching on Alaskaair.com, the BA website was similarly empty |
I know that partners often only see seats when there's Saver availability so I decided to log in to American Airlines site to search there. I poked around the results and encountered that wonderful unicorn we all love –
the First Class itinerary cost fewer points than the Economy itinerary! I was super excited and then realized that I had no American points and no way to transfer them in. Gah! Given that this flight was currently pricing out at $1300, that would have been an amazingly good deal. Sadly it was not to be. I guess I'll have to think about maybe churning one of the American Airlines cards from Citibank to just have 50k sitting there for cases like this...
Paying for overpriced, last-minute domestic flights can often net you a better cents-per-point ratio than even international First Class.
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| 30k for Economy AAnytime (No SAAver seats available)… |
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| but only 25k for Business! |
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