American Airlines saver-level award availability has become increasingly difficult to find in the past year or two. Right now, we’re seeing better-than-usual availability on many routes in business class on American Airlines flights (and plenty of availability in economy class as well). We’ve found increased availability to Europe, Asia, and South America. Some examples follow, but there is good availability on many more routes – this is not an exhaustive list. To be clear, the flights to Europe listed below are on American Airlines metal only. None of these are British Airways flights or phantom Finnair space.
Example routes
Europe
First up is Raleigh-Durham to London. Some of these flights route through Philadelphia and others through Dallas — meaning you could also find availability from your local airport to DFW and PHL and on to London. Availability for 1 passenger is quite good for the next several months (with economy class also available on many of those flights):
Raleigh-Durham to London, 1 passenger August into September
Raleigh-Durham to London, 1 passenger, November 2017
Availability for 2 passengers isn’t quite as open, but still not bad over the winter and spring months.
Raleigh-Durham to London, 2 passengers February/March
Plenty of other routes are showing some availability also. Here’s Chicago to Paris:
Chicago to Paris, 2 passengers October to November
Charlotte to Madrid has less availability, but still better than usual.
Charlotte to Madrid, 2 passengers November to December
Asia
Looking at other regions, most of these flights from Chicago to Tokyo connect in either Los Angeles or Dallas — again meaning that availability should be good from other cities as well. This might be a little late for the cherry blossoms, but there was some earlier availability as well.
Chicago to Tokyo, 2 passengers April/May
Some of these flights between Dallas and Beijing connect in Chicago – so once again, you may check on routes and look for availability from different cities to which you can position.
Dallas to Beijing, 2 passengers, April/May
South America
If you’re interested in South America, awards between Miami and Santiago, Chile are wide open next spring.
Miami to Santiago, Chile, 2 passengers April / May
And Miami to Rio de Janeiro isn’t bad, either.
Miami to Rio de Janeiro, 2 passengers in April/May
Bottom line
The near non-existence of American award availability has been well-documented by sources like View from the Wing and One Mile at a Time. We just don’t often see great availability on American Airlines flights. If you’ve signed up for one of the AA cards with the increased offers they recently had available, you might be sitting on a pile of AA miles — in which case, there’s no time like the present to put them to use.