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This post is about the best practices to use when searching oneworld availability when you want to use your American Airlines miles.
American Airlines miles can be used on any oneworld airline and on its non-oneworld partners. For a list of oneworld airlines, see Free First Class Next Month: Airlines’ Codes, Hubs, and Alliances.
The best part about using partner award availability is that partner award availability always prices at the sAAver level, so you are always getting the best miles price you can. See the AA partner award chart.
Also partner award availability can be used to take advantage of AA’s off peak awards to Hawaii, South America, Asia, and Europe.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about searching oneworld space on qantas.com, I use three free search engines to search oneworld award space: aa.com, ba.com, and qantas.com.
I’ve talked about how to use aa.com here and ba.com here, but I haven’t said when to use each of the three search engines. My basic strategy is to use aa.com when possible, qantas.com when aa.com doesn’t display the partner, and ba.com as my last choice.
I go to aa.com first because I love its month-long calendar and because you can actually book what you find on aa.com immediately.
The calendar makes it easy to toggle between your options in each cabin, and search for direct flights only by selecting Non-Stop Only from the dropdown box.
AA.com perfectly displays space available with AA miles with no phantom space, which qantas.com and ba.com can occasionally show. And once you select a flight, you can see the total out-of-pocket taxes and fees and book immediately.
For all these reasons, I start my oneworld searches on aa.com when I think I may want to book an award on an airline that has its award space displayed on aa.com. Those airlines are American, Alaska, Hawaiian, British, Qantas, Finnair, and airberlin.
If I want to fly on LAN, Iberia, or Cathay Pacific, I search qantas.com. Qantas is my second choice search engine because it has a much easier to use display for results than ba.com has. Qantas shows a month-long calendar while ba.com shows one day at a time, which is incredibly frustrating.
Sure there are also drawbacks to qantas.com, which I detailed yesterday, like not having all possible cities in the “From” dropdown menu, but those can be overcome. And qantas.com is hands-down my favorite place to search LAN, Iberia, and Cathay Pacific award space.
When you can’t use aa.com or qantas.com, head to ba.com. I search JAL, Royal Jordanian, and S7 on ba.com.
BA.com has a lot of annoying features.
1. If BA has award space between the cities you want on the day you want, only BA space will be displayed. I have to find a date without BA space and search for that date, then click Add Partners, then click back to my original date to do some searches.
2. For partner award space, you can’t see a calendar, you have to search a day at at a time.
3. I find ba.com to be particularly bad at giving me “creative” routings, so I have to search segment-by-segment more often.
But ba.com should perfectly display JAL, S7, and Royal Jordanian space that AA has access to, so ba.com has a place on my search list–specifically the last place after aa.com and qantas.com.
What about non-oneworld partners that don’t display on aa.com?
Air Tahiti Nui: Search Expert Flyer as I explained in Getting to Tahiti with American Airline Miles.
Air Pacific: Search Expert Flyer as I explained in Getting to Australia and New Zealand with American Airlines Miles.
All other non-oneworld partner airlines: Call 800-882-8880 and ask an agent.
Booking
After searching and finding space, book online if possible–that is, if every segment on the itinerary is flown by American, Alaska, Hawaiian, British, Qantas, Finnair, and airberlin.
If you can’t book online, call 800-882-8880 to give the exact details of the flights you want to book. You will incur a $25 per ticket fee, and there is no way around this.
Recap
I search for AA awards on aa.com if I can. Aa.com displays American, Alaska, Hawaiian, British, Qantas, Finnair, and airberlin.
If I can’t, I search on qantas.com for Iberia, Cathay Pacific, and LAN.
If I want to search JAL, Royal Jordanian, or S7, I use ba.com.
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Thank you so much for this post. I actually took notes on yesterday’s and today’s posts, and I’ll make a chart for myself to reference when looking for AA awards. Do you have plans to do a similar post on Delta availability? I’m racking up some Delta miles thanks to the 70K credit card offer, and I’d like to use them. I know that I can see some availability on AirFrance, but it’d be useful to know what I’m missing.
Maybe on Delta. I search delta.com, airfrance.us, and ExpertFlyer, which covers almost all of SkyTeam by itself.
Overall good information, but one note: Qantas’s search engine is widely known to show phantom Cathay availability.
For CX awards, the best way to search availability using AA miles is through JAL’s website.
[…] Home › Awards Booking › How to Book OneWorld Award Flights […]
I think you’re underrating JAL’s site. It is fast for specific dates, and much more efficient than BA’s site. I think it’s quite effective in finding CX seats.
Quantas has shown me El Al availability before. You can also join El Al Matmid to see availability there .
[…] Best practices for searching Oneworld award ticket availability via MileValue. Excellet instruction here on how to search for award seats with the Oneworld partners. […]
[…] search for oneworld space in three places: aa.com, ba.com, and qantas.com.au. (Here’s where I specifically search for each oneworld partner’s space.) For Malaysia Airlines, the choice of search engine is easy. Of the airline sites I use to search […]
Any tips on best way to include searches on Malaysian Airlines?
ba.com –> https://milevalu.wpengine.com/how-to-redeem-miles-on-malaysia-airlines/
I’m trying to fly on LAN from Lima to Machu Picchu but AA doesn’t show LAN, and BA and Qantas don’t let you search for airport CUZ. Any other options available, as prices for the 1.5 hour flights are $400+?
Call AA or BA to book. Or once in Peru, book a competitor to LAN.
StarPeru is an excellent Peruvian airline with flights from Lima to Cuzco (you need to take an overpriced train to Machu Picchu unless you hike, which is also overpriced). 4 engine jets, felt quite safe, and much cheaper than international airlines. Their website is tough to use from abroad, but it is still possible to book with them. You can also call them with Skype if you have problems.
That’s an interesting tip I did not know regarding Skype.
What about those instances where specific airports are not listed…. for example, I am trying to book a flight from GYE (Guayaquil) or UIO (Quito) to either one of the Galapagos Airports (GPS, SCY) using AVIOS… American won’t display LAN availability… British doesn’t list the Galapagos airports on its site… and Qantas doesn’t list Quito or Guayaquil… do you have any suggestions for this case?
https://milevalu.wpengine.com/the-big-trick-for-searching-ba-com/
or call in
[…] Qantas did not avail any economy seats to their OneWorld partners on the days we wanted to fly, so we ended up splurging for business class. These same seats could be booked with American or British Airways miles, but they ended up being cheaper with American miles (17.5K each way versus 20K). Qantas awards are bookable directly through AA.com (some OneWorld alliance partners are not shown on aa.com, in which case you need to search for OneWorld availability through Qantas or British Airways). […]
[…] • Finding Oneworld Availability (note, Aurelien will be doing a more specific post about this soon, as he used all the tools in setting up his amazing award ticket) […]
is it possible to use iberia avios to book the same non-iberia flights as shown on ba.com but with lesser YQ please?
thanks
Excellent post! I have a lot of AA miles that I am starting to burn and this is helpful. I think Qatar Airways falls under the “Call AA” bucket, but I saw something that made me think award availability is on the KVS tool. I have not tried that tool…I use Expert Flyer which I do not think shows Qatar availability and am just starting to learn Award Nexus which pulls the same as BA/Qantas. Is “Call AA” the only way?
Search ba.com
Trying to book BKK back to BOS and I can’t find any search engine that shows it. Nothing on AA.com, Quantas or BA. I know that AA flies out of Boston and there are no shortage of partners that fly from BKK so what’s the problem? Help!
AA doesn’t show many partners. BA and Qantas are bad at finding connections. Search segment-by-segment or hire my award booking service –> https://milevalu.wpengine.com/free-first-class-2014-segment-by-segment-searching/