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Book discount AA award tickets with Reduced Mileage Awards
American Airlines gives cardholders of their co-branded Citi and Barclay credit cards an exclusive opportunity to book Aadvantage award tickets at reduced rates. Every two months, AA releases a list of airports that qualify and allows you to book discount AA award tickets with reduced mileage awards. Depending on the credit card that you hold and the distance of the flight flown you can earn a roundtrip discount anywhere from 1000 to 7500 AA miles. Valuing AA miles at just a $0.015, using this benefit will save you $100 in value. That’s a great deal.
Which cards qualify?
These cannot be booked online:
You need to call into AA to book these tickets and the normal phone booking fees are waived.
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Call American Airlines Reservations at 1-800-882-8880 (reservation service charge waived)
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Book through a travel center ($35 for travel within the U.S. and $45 for international travel)
These charges will be waived for Executive Platinum elite members using miles from their account.
As long as one city is listed you’re good to go
If you want to fly to LAX or out of LAX and LAX isn’t listed as a city, it doesn’t matter. Just one of your cities has to be listed. I’ve used this exclusively for flights to Indiana when IND is listed as a qualifying city. I’ve had a couple phone reps say that LAX isn’t listed and therefore couldn’t book it, and I’ve had to kindly remind them that as long as one city is listed then the flight should be bookable.
Another issue that comes up is some phone agents will say that these need to be booked to a listed destination rather than just between ( or from ):
Reduced mileage awards offer eligible AAdvantage® cardmembers a discount when redeeming American Airlines AAdvantage® miles for one-way or roundtrip MileSAAver awards to select destinations.
If you run into an rep that insists on this interpretation just say “oh my gosh, I didn’t realize that,” hang up and call again. You’ll find one that will book it.
Here is the list of codes to give the phone rep: One way/Roundtrip
Usually with award ticket there is no need to book roundtrip tickets. I almost always book two one way tickets in case I want to move my trip around, etc. However, it can be advantageous to book these as a roundtrip booking to avoid paying two phone fees.
The list of airports is so long it’s easier to just link to the AA website
When you’re ready, call: 1-800-882-8880
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The extra double dipping here is that if you have some of those cards you will annually get back 10% of the miles you redeemed, effectively getting a round trip flight for 15750 miles. Whenever I book a flight with American I check these awards first.
absolutely! Just need to make sure you haven’t redeemed more than 100k in a calendar year as the 10% is capped at 10,000. but great point! way to stack the deals Mike!
Any luck book first online and try to add the code over the phone with in 24h? This may seems easier to avoid the phone booking fee. Otherwise it makes absolutely no sense to book a reduced fare with less than 4500 mile discount…
Found one more thing on the terms page as you mentioned as the list page. Down below in Terms > Booking section, it says clearly that booking fee over phone SHOULD be waived for booking this award.
good catch – i see this too. I’ll make a note of it. thanks!