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One of the really annoying elements of booking award flights is having to call to book certain partner awards. What is this? 1999? Luckily British Airways Executive Club is pretty good. Almost all partner airlines can be booked online, except most notably for Alaska Airlines and Aer Lingus…
But other programmes, such as American Airlines AAdvantage or Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan have a limited number of partners that can be booked online. Aadvantage is one of the worst, but has recently been adding partner capability. The latest airlines to be added are Qatar Airways and Sri Lankan.
Why Does That Matter For an Avios Collector?
Well, it doesn’t really… But InsideFlyer UK tries to share tips that make your “award life” easier. How many times have you run an award search on ba.com and ended up with this…
For partner awards, there’s no calendar view option, so you need to check for availability on a day-by-day basis. (and that’s assuming that ba.com is even bothering to check for complex connecting itineraries)
Wouldn’t you rather see this? It certainly makes my life easier, since I can easily see which dates have award availability in my chosen cabin.
The Bottom Line
If you like to visualise award space on partner airlines, you might want to run a search on the American Airlines website first. You don’t need to be a member or even log in. And once you have found a date that works for you, it’s a simple matter to pop back over to ba.com and run your specific search there.
Partner award space provided to AA is highly likely to also be available to BA. So if ba.com is acting up, you also retain the option of calling Executive Club and booking over the phone, confident that the partner award space is indeed there…
Nice tip Craig. Thanks.
I have 11,950 Alaska miles sitting doing nothing and expiring in two months. Any ideas what I can cash them out on, no use for flights or hotels?
This will cause Joe to go into some sort of a meltdown.
LOL.
Just do something to remain active and keep the miles alive. Transferring a handful of hotel points would do it.
I can’t really think of something useful to spend 12K miles on, unless you are going to be in the US.
What’s the min amount of hotel miles I can transfer over to extend the life of the points?
Depends on the hotel chain, but as long as 1 mile arrives to Alaska you remain active.
The Qantas site is pretty good for searching oneworld availability too.
Any news yet about whose taking up the slack after MBNA Credit Card’s discontinued being associated to American Airlines ?
I don’t think I’ve seen any rumours about another AA card. With the interchange fee cap, you’d need to get really creative with annual fees, cross-selling, etc. to make it work – I’m not sure if AA would see the need like a Lufthansa, Virgin Atlantic or Middle East airline might…