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Devaluation Day (D-Day ) is approaching rapidly for those of us with American Airlines AAdvantage miles and, with a lot of the better awards increasing in price quite significantly from 22 March, there has been a lot of activity on the award booking front in the past few weeks. While a lot of the attention has been focused on the awards that are going to be costing a lot more from Tuesday onwards, not a lot of time or blog space appears to have been given to the awards that will actually cost less.
Yes, although overall the new American Airlines award charts are nothing to be happy about (especially if you’re partial to Fist Class travel), there are a number of Economy Class and Business Class awards that will cost fewer AAdvantage Miles come 22 March.
American Airlines AAdvantage Regions
American Airlines’ AAdvantage program works using regions of the world to price awards and you’re going to need to know which countries fall into which regions if some of these regions are to make any sense to you.
For Flights On American Airlines:
- Caribbean: includes Bermuda and The Bahamas
- South America Region 1: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Manaus (Brazil)
- South America Region 2: Argentina, Brazil (excluding Manaus), Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela
- Asia Region 1: Japan, Korea
- Asia Region 2: China, Hong Kong
For Flights On Partner Airlines:
Most regions are self-explanatory and you can find the full breakdown of the regions at the bottom of the page linked here, but here’s a list of the regions that may need a bit more explanation:
South America Region 1:
South America Region 2:
Middle East / India:
Asia Region 1:
Japan Korea
Asia Region 2:
American Airlines Awards Decreasing In Price
Economy Class
Three existing Economy Class awards will cost fewer miles in a few days time…
…and while none of those offer a particularly impressive saving they’re still awards that could be of a lot of use to families going on vacation – 5,000 miles saved per person per round-trip soon adds up!
American Airlines has also introduced two new awards which will allow passengers to travel between certain cities/countries for fewer miles than in the past:
Contiguous 48 U.S. states to Canada (flights of 500 miles and under)
In the past all flights to Canada, regardless of distance, cost 12,500 AAdvantage miles. Now, with the introduction of this new award, MileSAAver awards will cost just 7,500 AAdvantage Miles.
Contiguous 48 U.S. states to Asia Region 2 (Off Peak)
The was no off-peak option to Asia Region 2 before the changes that come into effect on 22 March. As such all economy class awards cost 35,000 AAdvantage miles.
Now, after Tuesday, passengers wishing to travel between the contiguous 48 U.S. states and Asia Region 2 between the following dates will be able to do so for 32,500 AAdvantage Miles:
To China/Hong Kong: January 1 – April 30, July 1 – September 30, October 11 – November 30
From China/Hong Kong: February 1 – May 31, September 1 – 19, October 2 – December 31
Business Class
The three Business Class awards that are going down in cost mirror the Economy Class awards:
Once again the savings are anything but spectacular but, if you’re about to book one of these awards, why not wait until after the award chart changes – you can use the miles you save to offset some of the more heinous increases in the cost of other awards.
Partner Airlines Awards Decreasing In Price
Economy Class
Not all of these awards are going to be very useful to a lot of people – awards within Fiji are unlikely to be in high demand – but there are a few large saving s to be had if you’re prepared to wait a few more days before you book your trip:
Business Class
Once again there are a few awards in here that aren’t going to be getting too many people excited (who knew you could book and intra-Jordan Business Class award?!) but the intra-South America Business Class awards could save you up to 20,000 AAdvantage Miles per round trip and that’s almost enough for a US-Europe off-peak Economy Class award.
Bottom Line
The AAdvantage devaluation that’s coming is hiking up the cost of most of the awards out there (some by a considerable amount) but it’s important to remember that there are a few awards that will be becoming a little bit more affordable.
In all honesty it will still probably be better value to pay cash rather than use AAdvantage Miles for Economy travel but, if you’re miles rich, there’s nothing wrong with keeping your cash in the bank and using miles to pay for an Economy Class seat – if that’s your situation maybe one of these awards can save you some miles.
The Business Class awards are more likely to offer good value but be aware that there are some Business Class awards listed above (e.g. intra Spain or intra UK) that are still a very poor use of miles – those are routes you should be booking using Avios.
Hopefully some of these awards demonstrate that the gargantuan grey cloud that is D-Day does actually have a tiny silver lining….even if you have to look very, very closely to find it.
