AA - 25% off mileage tickets!!!

[luvdiz]

American is having a special promotion tied into their 25th anniversary - basically if you get a mileage ticket, it costs 25% fewer miles - so where it's normally 25,000 miles, it's now 18,500. Travel is from mid-August - mid-November and must be booked by the end of May. The website is www.aadvantage25.com or you can probably get there from the aa website.

We just booked ours for early November for 5 of us, it was a pretty good deal!

 

[NancyIL]

I got the notice from AA in the mail last Tuesday, and made a resevation for Oct 11-16 for 18,750 miles. I was checking my reservation online today, and the schedule for October for flights between Chicago and Orlando had already changed, giving me a longer layover in Chicago on the way down and an earlier morning flight out of Orlando on the return. I got right on the phone to AA and had my flights changed. Unfortunately - because my FF reservation was on hold and I hadn't been ticketed yet - I could no longer get ticketed myself online! I was really PO'd! I called American to complain, and was basically told "too bad"...when THEY make a change to an award reservation before ticketing, THEY will have to issue the ticket at $15 per ticket, plus the usual security fees! I decided to save my AA miles and fly AirTran non-stop instead for just under $200. I'm sure American will be realllly sorry they lost me!

 

[FINFAN]

That's great if you can actually get a flight you need. Or better yet, try combining award travel with purchase tix. We have been trying for no less than 3 years to do this for travel from Chicago to Ft Myers during the summer...everything is a connecting flight, crazy times, or the purchase ticket does not coincide with the award ticket. We are using some expiring AA miles ( earned long ago) to pay for 2 nights at CSR this August. DH says "good riddance" to those miles. Now United...we booked no problem with purchase tix, times, non stops, everything we needed. Ihope AA works out for you...I still ahev 2 tix left over and who knows when I'll ever use them.


Pam

 

[SuzanneSLO]

We usually have great luck booking with AA, but your mileage may vary.

We booked 2 FC tickets for 33,750 miles each with the current promotion, which is a great deal considering that we usually buy coach tickets and use 30,000 miles each to upgrade them. We did have to move our dates a little to get 2 FC seats on the one nonstop of the day in and out of LAX, but some flexibility is always needed when booking award seats.

We also subscribed to the website experflyer for about $10 for a month to get a better picture of available inventory for both awards and for purchase, so that we could compare all of our options. Just being able to do a quick seach every day of inventory without having to re-key all the data made that puchase worth the cost! It as a little scary at how much the inventory changes over the matter of a few weeks.

If you do use your miles for the Fall special, you should note that there may be less flexibility in making changes to your award tickets if the result of those changes takes it outside the dates when flights on the special award are available. So if you book for October, then need to rebook for December, you may have to pay the fee to redeposit the award ($100) and rebook a new award costing more miles.

Best of luck -- Suzanne

 

[luvdiz]

I put a reservation on hold yesterday going out on Wednesday, Nov. 1st and returning Sunday, Nov 5th. There was only one flight available for award travel, but fortunately it was for late afternoon so it works great for us. I went in today to play with the departure times (using a new reservations) and was surprised that all of the returns on Sunday were gone!!! Thankfully mine was still on hold so I booked it quick!!!

It's really a great deal for us!