Deluge of American Airlines Award Space Worldwide

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Award space on American Airlines flights has been terrible for months if not years. However, in the last 24 hours, international Business and First Class award space has increased by at least 10 times on routes to all parts of the world.

Act now!

Search the routes that interest you and either book the award space or put it on a free five day hold.

Why now?

I don’t expect award space this good to stick around, although I am hopeful that it won’t go back to the lack of award space we saw before yesterday.

Some credit card offers in this post have expired, but they might come back. If they do they will appear –> Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

If you don’t have any American Airlines miles, right now the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® MasterCard® and CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World MasterCard® are each offering 50,000 bonus American Airlines miles after $3,000 in purchases made with your card in the first 3 months the account is open. Don’t be thrown off by the word “Platinum.” Both cards have no annual fee the first 12 months, and then $95.

Get both cards and meet the $6,000 total spending requirement in the first month to have over 106,000 American Airlines miles before the March 22 devaluation. On March 21, 2016, you can book travel through February 15, 2017 that is “locked in” at current prices and will not be affected by the subsequent devaluation.

Selected Charts

These are just to give you a sampling of the award space, which is greatly improved on every chart I checked.

Los Angeles <-> Sydney

This route used to have no Business or First Class space, then just space in the last few days. Now it has available space. It is flown by American’s best plane (the 777-300ER.)

Hong Kong <-> Dallas

Also flown by the 777-300ER, also used to have little space. Now there is space nearly every day in Business and First Class over some months. Miami <-> Buenos Aires

This route used to have no space until the last month before departure. Now space is wide open, and this route also gets the 777-300ER starting in April. Los Angeles <-> London

Another route with the 777-300ER showing great award space in flat bed Business Class.

Bottom Line

There is a deluge of award space on American Airlines’ international flights in premium cabins. This started yesterday, and no one knows whether it is permanent or temporary. Hedge against it being a glitch by putting award space on hold right now.

The timing couldn’t be better, since we have only 52 days left to book awards at current awesome prices for travel through February 2017. On March 22, awards go way up in price.

Some credit card offers in this post have expired, but they might come back. If they do they will appear –> Click here for the top current credit card sign up bonuses.

• Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® MasterCard® with 50,000 bonus American Airlines miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months, plus 10% rebate on miles redeemed up to 100,000 redeemed each calendar year
• CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World MasterCard® with 50,000 bonus American Airlines miles after spending $3,000 in the first three months