How to book an American Airlines AAdvantage Award Ticket on AA.com

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If this article is too advanced for you, why don’t you start with our Frequent Flyer for Beginners page.

Once you have gotten some American Miles by applying for the 50,000 mile Citibank AA Platinum Personal MC or the 50,000 Mile Citibank AA Platinum Personal Visa or by Using Shopping Portals or by, gasp, actually flying, the next step is to book a trip using the miles you received!

American Airlines site has a very easy to use award booking engine, but it only shows a couple of the OneWorld Alliance Airlines (American, British Airways, Finnair, Qantas and Royal Jordanian) and a few that they have shared flights with (called codeshares) but aren’t in OneWorld (Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines).  But when I am looking for a quick way to search for American flights, say to go from Miami to Cancun for the BPM Festival, it works perfectly.  It is also a great way to check domestic award availability on American. Today I am going to show you how to book a flight with American Miles.

  1. Go to AA.com and put in your origin, destination, dates and select the checkbox for Redeem Miles and click Search.AA Award 1
  2. The next screen shows you the dates and miles prices that are available for a week at a time.  You are looking for the green dates which will be the cheapest mile dates.  For a month at a time select the Show Full Calendar option.AA Award 2
  3. Select the dates you want where there is green availability and then select continue.AA Award 3
  4. Then you can see which flights are available for what prices for both the departure and the return.AA Award 4
  5. Select the flights you want and hit continue then it will take you to a payment screen where you can see a summary of how many miles and what taxes you will have to pay.

That’s it! Also did you know that one of the benefits of your American Airlines Credit Cards is they give you discounts on award tickets to certain cities on a quarterly basis? This means you could get a round trip domestic coach ticket for 17,500 miles instead of 25,000!  You do have to call in to book these special rates and pay a $35 phone booking fee which takes away some of the savings.

I hoped this article shows you how easy it is to book flights using American AAdvantage Miles.  I will be doing a future article on a few better ways to book all OneWorld carriers so be on the lookout!

As always if you have any questions, leave a comment and I will answer it for you.

Our BPM Contest Winner is…..

Have you liked TravelWithMiles on Facebook yet or followed us on Twitter?  Make sure to do it today so you don’t miss any of our great deals to travel the world!

TravelWithMiles and UnMute Events is proud to announce the winner of our BPM Plane Ticket giveaway!

Contest WinnerOut of 109 hopefuls, Harold McBean was the lucky winner! He and a guest will be receiving two round trip plane tickets to the BPM Festival in Mexico.

Congratulations Harold!

For those of you who didn’t win, check out this article on how to get enough miles for 10 free tickets to BPM, or this article on how to use your Amex Membership Rewards points to get free tickets to Cancun.

BPM 2013 Plane Ticket Giveaway!

bpm festivalAs some of you know, last year I attended the BPM Festival in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico for $70 in Business Class.  This year I wanted to share the BPM experience with a lucky Travel With Miles reader and music fan.  While you are here check out our Frequent Flyer for Beginners page!  I have partnered up with UN_MUTE Events to promote and give away two round trip plane tickets from Miami to Cancun during the BPM Festival.  The dates of the tickets are subject to award availability but as of right now both January 9-13 and January 10-13 are available so the tickets will probably be for one of those dates. This will get you the second weekend of BPM

Here is how to enter:

  1. You must “Like” the Facebook page of both Travel With Miles and UN_MUTE Events
  2. You must “Share” this contest picture from our Facebook page as a public post on your timeline so we can verify the share.

P.S. Did you know that the current 40,000 bonus for the Chase Sapphire Preferred could be used to get 4 of these tickets!

Terms and Conditions.

  • To prevent multiple Facebook account fraud, one of the plane tickets will be issued to the name on your Facebook account, so if you have some funny name or nickname make sure to change it before the contest draw on December 2nd. If this isn’t possible after you have entered but before the contest draw send Travel With Miles a message on Facebook telling us your real name. The second ticket can be in any name that you want.
  • Everyone who has met the entry requirements will be put in an ordered list and then the winner will be chosen by the random number generator at random.org.
  • This is for two round trip plane tickets from Miami to Cancun and doesn’t include hotel, festival tickets, transfers or anything else.  Just air travel on a date that is available for an award booking on December 2.
  • The winner will be selected at noon on December 2, 2013 and only entries who have “liked” both Facebook pages and shared the contest page before that time will be considered.
  • You will need a valid passport since the festival is in Mexico and we will need your passport information to book the tickets.  There won’t be enough time to apply for a passport after winning so only apply if you have a current passport.
  • Any disputes will be decided by Travel With Miles management and their decision is final.

How I am going to the BPM Festival in Mexico in business class for $70

bpm festival

One of the best music festivals in the world each year is the BPM Festival in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.  The Sacbe party in the jungle was regarded by many as one of the best parties of the year. I just booked my flight there for $70 in business class.  Here is how:

I took advantage of the 100,000 Mile British Airways offer last year and used some of those miles to go to Machu Picchu, Easter Island, and Santiago, Chile back in April. Since British Airways uses a distance based chart for their awards, short distances can be a huge value when redeeming miles. Here is their Avios redemption chart:

Avios Award ChartSince Cancun is only 531 miles in the air from Miami, that means that it is only 9000 miles round trip in economy or 18000 round trip in business class!  I went onto the British Airways site and searched availability during the festival dates and found that seats were available in business class. Score!

BPMAviosThis meant for 18,000 Avios miles and $70, I could go to BPM! I wanted to see what the value of these miles were so I priced out the exact same ticket on Kayak and came up with $739.

BPMCashThis gave me a redemption value of $739 / 18000 = $0.04 per Avios point, which I thought was a good value.  Since it is only a 2 hour flight, I actually probably would have booked the economy for 9000 if it was available, but it wasn’t on the dates I needed.

Avios can be some of the best values for short haul flights around the world because many times the airlines gouge you on pricing. If you want to check how many Avios it requires to get to different city pairs, check out this nice “How Many Avios do I Need” page on BA’s site. Another useful tool is the GCMap.com where you can find out the distance between two cities or view a map of everything within a certain distance of a city. Here is a map of 650 miles from Miami.

Miami 650 Mile MapSo anywhere within that circle would be only 9000 Avios round trip in Economy! Since British Airways is a transfer partner of both Membership Rewards and Ultimate Rewards, that means you can also get Avios from your Chase Ink Bold or Chase Sapphire Preferred cards or your American Express Business Gold Rewards we have written about in the past.

British Airways miles can be very valuable if used correctly and if you don’t have some, you should get some so you can come travel with me! As always feel free to comment with any questions.