This is exciting. American & China Southern have just announced the next step of their partnership, which includes reciprocal elite mileage earning as well as mileage redemptions. In 2017 American Airlines invested about $200 million in China Southern, which is China’s largest airline. This partnership surprised many, given that the airlines hadn't previously cooperated. However,…
Continue reading: You Can Now Earn & Redeem American Miles On All China Southern Flights
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Enjoyed China Southern / Guangzhou CAN via Delta SkyMiles. Nice business class product.
You can't earn AA EQMs on CZ codes flights yet. AA explicitly says that on their site. Would suggest correcting your post to reflect this.
Where do you see that these flights earn EQM? The linked chart only mentions redeemable miles. It would be a strange exception for CZ coded flights to earn EQM, I don’t believe any non-AA marketed and non-oneworld airline marketed and operated flight earns EQM since the death of the Alaska partnership.
Do you have information that this may change?
Good news for American. They don’t do well in Mainland China.
when will they allow first class ?
Their best business class seat is probably on their 787s or A350s if they have them.
Would be nice to fly business class into Guangzhou or Shenzhen and then take the new high speed rail over to HK. It’s like a 14 minute ride.
American doesn't seem to allow elite mileage accrual on any non-oneWorld partners unless a codeshare agreement is in place and the flight is marketed by AA.
Is there any reason to suggest that China Southern would receive preferential treatment in this regard?
Does this mean you can fly Australia to Europe on one award using AA miles on CS as you’re allowed to connect in Asia 2?
That is a good news for Chinese studying in Australia, as China Southern's flight network is quite huge across almost every airport in China. For example, now you can redeem 40,000 miles for SYD-CAN-LZO, or SYD-CAN-DYG, or SYD-CAN-KWI, which are small airports that haven't been covered by oneworld networks.
I searched Business Class award on Expertflyer and I have not find any availability in Business Class (O) from USA to CAN. It is usually nonexistent?
Why would anyone earn redeemable miles and no EQM / EQD on CZ when one can get everything via HGK on CX which, in spite of losing some of its luster, still provides service miles ahead of any Mainland China airline? I can see the point of booking award flights if they are available but not much beyond that.
UNLESS of course a major reshuffle of OW is in the cards, with the loss of QR, CX (they can't be happy about the AA/CZ move), and/or more. In that case, Oneworld would quickly become Noworld for me (and I suspect many), especially as AA is slowly but surely morphing into something akin to Aeroflot in the late days of the Soviet Union.
Ironically, by the way, Aeroflot has now become an excellent airline, nowhere like a Skytrax 5 star airline (but neither CX nor LH deserve that rating), more like a very solid 4.
I found their biz class seat very hard and uncomfortable. Food portions were tiny and scarce. Crew did not appear to smoke during the flight.
The rate is really bad, it's worse than CZ itself. The chart doesn't have T class, which I had flew before. So, I wouldn't earn miles on that flight if I credit it to AA.
Apparently after speaking to several AA reps and leads, award booking on China southern is not yet bookable via the AA agents either as it hasn’t been loaded in the system yet. No word on when it would be. Is anyone else getting the same response? Is so, their website is not correct to say that redemption is absilable
I have approx. 45k China Southern (Skypearl) points I want to use on internal US flights. Any thoughts?
This article incorrectly states travelers will earn EQMs. You do not. I learned this shortly before flying this summer, and have just confirmed it on the phone while trying to plea for the EQMs I need to maintain my status in 2020. You earn AWARD MILES ONLY for flights booked through China Southern (flights that are not already code shared with AA). China Southern also has no easy mechanism for adding your AA# to a ticket, so even earning the base miles is a challenge. Their online system still recognizes a long defunct partnership with Delta, so you have to call or show up at the desk and hope to get someone capable, which took me a number of tries. The partnership remains an incredibly disfunctional one in my opinion.