American Airlines Economy Class Fares Los Angeles – Australia/New Zealand From $799 RT

American Airlines Fares To Sydney And Auckland

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American Airlines has filed some pretty good Economy Class fares for travel between Los Angeles and their new South Pacific destinations of Sydney and Auckland. Good fare availability is sporadic, which isn’t ideal, but the better prices are available in Summer and Winter so, if you can be a little flexible with your dates, you should be able to find something which works for you.

All of the fares below must be booked by 26 June 2016

Flights From Los Angeles

Los Angeles – Sydney

The best fare I’ve found is for $837 roundtrip which, when you consider that prices are usually in the $1,100 – $1,300 range, is pretty good.

There’s only a little bit of availability in August….

LAX-SYD-AUG

…it gets better in September….

LAX-SYD-SEPT

…before dying back down in November…

LAX-SYD-NOV

…and good fares disappear completely for the December – March period before resurfacing in April and May:

LAX-SYD-APR

There’s a little bit of flexibility when it comes to choosing which airline’s aircraft you fly in as you can choose to fly the long return flight on a Qantas A380….

fly-qantas-a380

….or the American Airlines 777-300ER

fly-american-airlines-777-300

Los Angeles – Auckland

The availability and choice of dates on this route is probably slightly better than on the Sydney route with good availability at just $799 roundtrip in August/September….

LAX-AKL-AUG

LAX_AKL_SEPT

No noticeably good fares available October – December but the $799 fare reappears at the end of January 2017….

LAX-AKL-JAN

…and becoming easy to find from February through May 2017:

american-airlines-auckland

No great choice of aircraft here and, just like with the Sydney fares, one stop in one direction appears to be required to keep the price down:

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 13.29.14

Mileage Earning

Unfortunately most of the good fares are for travel after 1 August 2016 which is when American moves over to a revenue based system for the purposes of mileage accrual so don’t expect to earn a bundle of AAdvantage miles on these flights.

For both destinations the Base Fare + Carrier Fees come to $686 so the AAdvantage Miles will be the same for both routes:

AAdvantage Miles Earned:

  • No status – 3,430 miles
  • Gold Status – 4,802 miles
  • Platinum Status – 5,488 miles
  • Executive Platinum Status – 7,546 miles

The Painful Truth Of The Devaluation

It’s with fares like these that the real depth of the devaluation to AAdvantage can be seen.

Under the system that remains in place until 1 August, AAdvantage Miles would be earned based on the distance travelled (in this case both distances are the same)

  • Sydney Fare (LAX-AKL-SYD-LAX) = 15,337 miles
  • Auckland Fare (LAX-AKL-SYD-LAX) = 15,337 miles

This is what the AAdvantage earnings would have looked like:

  • No status – 15,337 miles – 450% more miles
  • Gold Status – 19,171 miles –  400% more miles
  • Platinum Status – 30,674 miles – 560% more miles
  • Executive Platinum Status – 30,674 miles – 306% more miles

And that’s why so many people are unhappy.

Bottom Line

These are some pretty good fares for travel to Australia and New Zealand…especially when you consider the fact that its possible to use them to fly in the Northern Winter/Southern Summer.

There may be similar fares available from other cities by, while I was looking for the fares, ITA Matrix refused to cooperate and was returning a lot of error messages so it’s worth checking to see if American has any deal from cities closer to you (New York, Chicago and Miami may well have deals).