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Let’s be completely honest. The new AA award search function is downright terrible. Up until a couple weeks ago, I’d been accessing the old AA award calendar by setting my country to Canada ( Thanks Matthew ). Then that stopped working for me. Sometimes it would still populate, but most often it did not. I then gathered some more recon and discovered that 2 other methods had been blogged about. I thought it could be useful to consolidate to aid in your calendar search functions.
Let’s use the example of LAX to LHR in December. Here’s what you’re probably seeing when you search:
And then when you actually want to see what the space looks like on the 30th…it looks like this.
I find it incredibly difficult to sort and extract information that aids in booking. Is it purposeful? Who knows… but it certainly diminishes the chances you’ll find higher value redemptions for your points.
Let’s look at how you can work around this.
3 ways to access the Old AA Award Calendar
Setting AA to another country
This has been my go-to method for the last several months, but as I said in my intro – it doesn’t always work. But, here’s what you’d do. It’s very simple. Go to the top, click on the calendar, and voila – everything converts to what you’d see searching in Canada.
The same search now yields this:
Which when you dig into a date, you can easily sort and find what’s actually populating at those levels:
Using the Plan Travel tab at the top
This was a method that I read about on VFTW and it seems to work consistently as well.
Once you drop down the Plan Travel menu, simply click flights and you’ll get this page. Click redeem miles and you’re off and running
Running the same search, you’ll get this:
The final way I’ve seen to populate the Old AA Award calendar is via Advanced Search
Milevalue had a great tip here. Super easy, but simply click advance search on the home page.
You’ll actually populate the same page as via Plan Travel with one less move.
You’ll then get these results
Overall
While I’m not about to accuse AA of deliberately making their engine worse, they certainly haven’t made it better. Trying to sift through inventory with the new system is exhausting, and hopefully this eases things up for you. In fact, this is how I found space to upgrade my upcoming BA flight from business to first class. I’ll be flying the 747 again later this month and am certainly looking forward to it! You can read my prior review here
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
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