American has extremely generous routing rules... as long as you don't want to use them to your advantage

Neat.

Or you can book online and let the computer grant whatever you want.

I recently booked SFO-TYO as SFO-LAX-JFK, layover for a while, then JFK-HND. All done on the website.

@ Mike -- Interestingly the website seems to allow lots of "exceptions." If only Cathay Pacific award showed up on aa.com.

If your dates are flexible, you could also deliberately choose a date where first class availability is only to New York, or something like that. Effectively forcing the "non-intent" up-front.

How about reserving Las Vegas-NY-HKG, putting it on hold, and then calling back and just changing Las Vegas to LA?

I was stuck in similar condition a while back with trying to get SFO-BOS-NRT on JAL. The AA.com obviously did not show up any results and AA rep said not possible. I later booked SFO-JFK-HND (though SFO to JFK through DFW) on AA.com. I have yet to fly on the later part of the trip, but can change JFK-HND to BOS-NRT for only $150 if I want. In the end, $150 is still less than paying for west coast to east coast.

@ gavinmac -- The routing would have to be validated at the time of ticketing, so it wouldn't make a different. Just because something is put on hold doesn't mean an agent would be willing to ticket it.

@lucky. Good to know. So if you want to fly "CMB-HKG" you might not be allowed to route "CMB-KUL-SIN-HKG" if a more direct route is available?

@ Murtuza -- Correct, technically if it's not the most direct routing then they don't have to give it to you. That being said, within reason I find most agents don't care what routings you take.

@Mike you won't be able to do it because AA is only that flexible on it's own metal.my biggest "open -jaw " was hnd-jfk-hnl.you can't even do the NRT flights stopping over in dfw,ord..
As for the lax-JFK-hkg.tried that too with no success a couple of months ago.called back about 5 times but was always priced at 100k on F....

I was able to book FOC-HKG-JFK-LAX in F back in January - and I did push the date out to December for the JFK-LAX flight. It definately can be done.

It'll be unfortunate not to be able to maintain this flexibility - particularly when US miles roll through to AAdvantage later this year or next.

I'm still have lots of problems using Avios for domestic AA flights. Can you point me to the article that covers this please?
Thanks.

Did NRT-JFK (stopover for 9 months) JFK-SFO-OGG last year as a single one-way redemption. Booked it by phone with no problem - the only restriction was that NRT-JFK had to be on AA metal, not JL.

@ Mike -- What problems are you having with that?

@lucky. Can never find any flights on BA website, sorry, I'm kinda new at this. Thought there might be an article that you can link me to.

@Mike. Start at AA.com. Select the redeem miles option and search for the "MileSaver" availability. Anything available can be redeemed using BA avios. Visit BA.com --> Executive Club --> Spending avios --> "search and book a reward flight"

Agree that approaches on talking to the agents make the differences. However many agent are too lazy to deal with it and let the computer price it out. I always said "oh it is during Xmas so it is so hard to find the availability but I found one that may have a crazy routing but still legal"... etc.

I booked 2 CX F via JFK-YVR-HKG and add SFO-JFK later on into one award ticket.
One agent told me need separate tickets, called back and able to book it, not sure which agent is correct but happy to be ticketed.

@ Karung99 -- Impressive, it actually went through ticketing?

@ Mike -- Murtuza's space is spot on. I'd search for space on American's website and once you find the saver space, go to ba.com to book.

Soon AA will only accept flight bookings from customers willing to undergo a brain scan and upload the data to AA, which will read the scan to determine your intentions.

Ben,It did ticketed and done with the flying.

@gavinmac - I don't think CX publishes a non-constructed fare from LAS to HKG.

All I ever get us no availability. I click in date to view partner airlines, nothing. Do I have to call in?