AA Just Made It Even Easier to Use Your Miles, Adds Three More Award Partners Online
In mid-August, American Airlines "incorrectly displayed award bookings" for five AAdvantage partners through AA.com. During a short window, members could book Cathay Pacific, Malaysian, Sri Lankan, Qatar, LATAM on AA's website -- before the ability was reverted. The next day an airline spokesperson noted that "making more award partners bookable on aa.com is something that our customers continually ask for, so please rest assured that we are working towards this."
I wasn't optimistic about this pledge, but -- believe it or not -- American Airlines has been delivering. Just over a month ago, AA added Malaysia Airlines and Fiji Airways to AA.com bookings. Then, last week, AA began rolling out the ability to book awards through the American Airlines app.
On Wednesday night, AA added the ability to book three more AAdvantage partner awards through AA.com: Qatar Airways, Air Tahiti Nui and SriLankan Airlines. With these additions, there are now 12 partners that can be booked through AA.com -- and five of those 12 have been added in a little over a month:
- Air Tahiti Nui -- added Oct. 24
- Alaska Airways
- British Airways
- Fiji Airways -- added Sept. 18
- Finnair
- Hawaiian Airlines
- Iberia -- added Jun. 12, 2017
- Malaysia Airlines -- added Sept. 18
- Qantas Airways
- Qatar Airways -- added Oct. 24
- Royal Jordanian Airlines
- SriLankan Airlines -- added Oct. 24
This new batch of partners is especially useful for those looking to search and book Qatar awards -- especially in Qatar's award-winning Qsuite business class product. Rather than having to search one day at a time on British Airways website or using Qantas' website, you can now easily search a month's worth of Qatar availability at a time:
Once you find a date that works, you can book these Qatar awards online just as easily. There's now no need to pick up the phone and call AA to book the "First in Business Class" award. You can do it right on AA's website:
Similarly, if you're interested in checking out Air Tahiti Nui's incredible new Dreamliner using AA miles, you can now search and book these awards online too. And, by utilizing AA's award chart sweet spot, you can score some valuable awards to an incredible destination:
Although I'm able to book AA awards through the app, these three new partners aren't showing up when I search via the app on Wednesday night. But hopefully this ability will be rolled out soon.
And which partners might be next for online booking? Well, there are two partners that were part of the mistaken release in mid-August that weren't part of these recent roll outs: Cathay Pacific and LATAM. Considering award bookings were successfully made with each of these airlines in mid-August, AA can't be too far off technically from adding these partners as well. However, an AA spokesperson can't provide an update at this time on when these partners may be added.
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