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There’s a mantra amongst miles & points bloggers that you’ll hear a lot – “you don’t get good value out of international economy/coach awards” – and it’s a mantra that often gets parroted out without much thought.
Yes, it’s true that on the whole business/first class redemptions will get you a higher cent per mile ratio, but that doesn’t mean that you should dismiss economy awards out of hand. There are some economy awards that you should always keep in mind when planning a trip.
One such award comes courtesy of American Airlines.
Something which a lot of travelers forget is that American Airlines has an off-peak season for award travel on it’s own planes (this doesn’t apply to flights on partners such as British Airways) – as illustrated by this handy table buried deep inside AA.com:
The awards I’m going to focus on in this article are the European off-peak awards that are available between 15 October and 15 May every year.
(UK specific paragraphs are towards the bottom of this article)
Regular economy/coach awards, on American airlines, between the US and Europe, cost 30,000 miles each way. Because American has a zone-based award chart (as opposed to a mileage based award chart like that used by British Airways) it doesn’t matter where in the US you start from or which European country you’re going to – the cost is the same.
During off-peak season the same awards come down to 20,000 miles each way – and this is when they suddenly become interesting.
Let’s take the LAX-MAD route as an example (one of the longer US-Europe routes that American flies). From the screenshots below you can see that, even though I’m checking for flights that are only a few weeks away there’s still a reasonable amount of availability for 2 passengers who have a bit of flexibility with their dates:
Outbound – LAX-MAD
Inbound – MAD-LAX
If you decided you wanted a week-long break in Europe you could fly 21-28 October and it would cost you 80,000 miles and $118.60 in taxes (for two people) – that’s it. There would be nothing more to pay.
Compare that to the cheapest cash tickets currently available (at the same time of year) for the same route:
By choosing to fly with miles rather than paying by cash you’d be getting a return of around 2.2c/mile – which isn’t too bad for an economy award. In reality you can get considerably better returns than this depending on the season and depending on when you book – I showed an example where the return was 3.4c/mile in this article.
I’m pretty sure someone will now say “yes, but with a cash ticket you also earn miles and status so that should be taken into account too“.
Fair enough, that’s valid, but the point of this exercise is to show how you can save money and get a decent rate of return on your miles at the same time – status and extra miles don’t mean that much to someone looking to save cold, hard, cash while getting a decent rate of return on their miles.
The availability of these awards isn’t limited to close-in ticketing either. Looking into next spring (when Europe can be a great place to visit) there’s quite reasonable availability too:
March – LAX-MAD
April – MAD-LAX
I’m not trying to say that availability is stunning or that it’s easy to get – far from it. Being flexible with your travel dates will definitely help. But it’s important to remember that Spring 2016 award availability has been loaded into the airlines reservations system since May so a lot of people have already had their pick of dates and yet availability is still not terrible.
Why You Shouldn’t Fly Out Of The UK
You may have noticed that I chose to use Madrid as an example of a European city rather than London – which is where the majority of American’s trans-Atlantic flights go. There’s a very good reason for this – UK taxes.
The UK has some of the highest departure taxes out of any of the European countries that American flies to and that can have a very big impact on the value you get from your miles.
If you were to fly the LAX-LHR-LAX route, for which there’s some pretty decent availability right now, the cost in miles would be the same but the taxes would be substantially higher:
$273.20 more, to be precise.
Compare that to the cheapest cash tickets currently available (at the same time of year) for the same route:
By choosing to fly with miles rather than paying by cash you’d be getting a return of around 1.75c/mile – not a good return when you consider that I value my American Airlines miles at around 1.9c/mile.
For more information on how I value my miles & points take a look at my “Valuing Airline Miles & Points (And Why You Need To)” article from earlier in the year.
Why The UK Isn’t All Bad News
It’s important to remember that it’s the departure taxes that make travel from the UK so expensive – flying into the UK is perfectly economical.
This is good news for anyone prepared to be a little bit creative with their itinerary.
Because American Airlines has more flights into the UK than any other European country these are the routes on which it’s easier to find awards. So, to avoid the horrendous UK departure taxes (which are mainly levied on long-haul flights) this is what you can do:
- Book a one way award from the US to London
- Book your return tickets out of any other European city that doesn’t penalise you with heavy taxes.
Now, completely separately from your award ticket, you can purchase the cheapest one way ticket from London to whatever European city your return flight departs from – not only can this save you money but you can also choose to see two cities in one trip.
What Happens If You Live In the UK?
If you live in the UK you really only have two options:
- Take a positioning flight to Europe (as describe in the paragraph above) and start your award ticket from there.
- Suck up the taxes.
Point (1) may be acceptable to a lot of single people and couples but there will be families out there for whom it’s just not practical. But that doesn’t mean it’s all gloom and doom.
It’s still possible (just about!) to get a good value redemption if you’re forced to depart from a UK airport – one such redemption is a trip to Hawaii.
As it happens I used this exact redemption for a trip to Hawaii a few years ago and it still works as well today as it did then.
Once again it’s important to remember that, unlike British Airways, American Airlines will charge you the same number of miles for a flight between London and New York as they will for a flight between London and Hawaii – and that’s despite the fact that Hawaii is over 4,500 miles further away.
You can fly from London to Hawaii for just 20,000 miles one way (40,000 miles return).
Even now availability for next year isn’t too bad – If you want to visit Hawaii during Humpback Whale season (a great time to visit) you have quite a few dates open to you. Taking Feb/Mar as an example:
London to Honolulu
Honolulu to London
A return flight for two people would cost 80,000 miles & $403 in taxes and fees
A cash ticket for the same time of year would cost a little over $1,000 per person (which is surprisingly low).
The return you’d be getting on your miles may only be 2.0c/mile (just about acceptable based on my 1.9c valuation) but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Firstly, for anyone who’s miles “rich” and cash “poor” this is a great deal – it leave you with $1,600 more in your pocket to spend while on vacation.
Secondly, even if you’re not particularly cash “poor” and if you’re taking a family of 4 out on vacation, this type of award would give you a saving of $3,200 – and that’s a lot of money no matter which way you look at it.
As it happens, in my case, prices were nowhere near this low when I wanted to fly to Maui – they were just under $2,200 – so the American Airlines off-peak award saved me around $1,800 and netted me a return of 4.5c/mile.
Summary
- Always do the math when pricing up awards – just because long-haul economy awards don’t get much page space on miles & points blogs doesn’t mean they’re not worth looking into. There are some good saving to be had if you know where to look.
- Avoid flying out of the UK if at all possible – the taxes the UK charges can make economy awards extremely uneconomical.
- If you’re a UK captive it’s not all bad news – there are awards out there that will net you a good return. You just need to keep an eye out and, as I said in point 1, do the math to make sure you understand what sort of return you’re getting for your miles.
REMEMBER: These awards can only be booked on flights operated by American Airlines – they cannot be booked on any of American’s partners. So don’t call up British Airways and expect to get a 40,000 mile award to Hawaii any time soon!
