It has long been possible to redeem American AAdvantage miles for travel on Fiji Airways. However, there has just been an update to the types of redemptions that are possible, as flagged by @TheForwardCabin.
In this post:
American AAdvantage updates Fiji Airways award pricing
American AAdvantage seems to have rolled out dynamic award pricing on Fiji Airways. Or more specifically, you can redeem AAdvantage miles for a seat on just about any Fiji Airways flight, though the pricing reflects demand for a particular flight.
For context, one-way saver awards between the United States and South Pacific have historically cost 40,000 miles in economy or 80,000 miles in business class.
However, now you’ll find that some one-way awards between these markets cost as much as 67,000 miles in economy, or as much as 267,000 miles in business class.
Pricing is arguably even steeper on the short flight between Fiji and Australia, where business class costs as much as 135,000 miles one-way.
Why American has added dynamic awards on Fiji Airways
While American has long had dynamic award pricing for its own flights, the program hasn’t historically had dynamic award pricing for travel on partner airlines. So, why has the program introduced this on a partner? Well, it’s likely not a coincidence.
Fiji Airways is shortly joining the oneworld alliance, and on top of that, is even going to use American AAdvantage as its own program. Just as American offers dynamic award pricing for its own flights, it’ll do the same for Fiji Airways.
Presumably the two airlines have some financial arrangement whereby it makes sense for Fiji Airways to make more award seats available at a higher cost. I also suspect this means that Fiji Airways will shortly be fully integrated into AAdvantage.
As things currently stand, I wouldn’t at all consider this to be a negative development. There’s a limited amount of saver award space, just as before, but there’s now also the opportunity to redeem in situations where there’s not saver award space.
Bottom line
American AAdvantage has rolled out dynamic award pricing on Fiji Airways, making this one of the first times American has offered dynamic pricing on a partner airline. Presumably this reflects that Fiji Airways is going to use AAdvantage as its loyalty program, so just as American has dynamic award pricing, the same will apply on Fiji Airways.
What do you make of AAdvantage rolling out dynamic award pricing on Fiji Airways?
Sadness! I had a lot of hope when Fiji Airways announced it was joining AA’s program. Particularly that it would open up FA’s regional and domestic network that has previously not been available for partner awards and where cash prices are high for short flights. Well it seems these regional routes are now online, BUT at prohibitive award prices. Example: NAN-VAV (Tonga) is pricing out at 188.5K miles + $112 roundtrip compared to cash prices...
Sadness! I had a lot of hope when Fiji Airways announced it was joining AA’s program. Particularly that it would open up FA’s regional and domestic network that has previously not been available for partner awards and where cash prices are high for short flights. Well it seems these regional routes are now online, BUT at prohibitive award prices. Example: NAN-VAV (Tonga) is pricing out at 188.5K miles + $112 roundtrip compared to cash prices ~$800 - that’s 0.36 cents per point! Note these regional routes aren’t available via other partners. I’m still not seeing any new availability on FA’s domestic routes, but it appears that if it’s coming it’s going to offer exceptionally poor value. Why would Fiji Airway do any of this? Integrate with AA just to offer such terrible value that no one would ever book? AA can get away with providing terrible value on their own metal because presumably they have many AA accruing members that have low points literacy and just burn their miles on poor value redemptions, but this isn’t going to be the case for FA. Doesn’t make any sense …
Try booking an AAdvantage award on an itinerary involving British Airways or Finnair. It will work fine until entering/confirming your details. After that page, you'd see an error page. Has been ongoing for 4 days now.
Quick question, so these dynamically priced redemption would be ticketed in an eligible miles earning booking class, will they as a result be mileage earning?
What’s also interesting is Sydney to NAn
Is now 107k one way in business class for a 3 hour flight.Thats extortion
And American is not letting the leg come up in a search from. Syd steering members to their own overpriced awards on their metal
You can only only book from Nan back to the US or canada
Something rotten in Denmark or at least at AA
Not only are not all seats available but NAN to Dfw which was 80k now 270k!
American Airlines program now toast
Cutting up my AA Citicard
A year ago the flight was 55k on Alaska
This is why those alliances and anti trust immunity needs to go otherwise u maybe have another year or 2 and the travel gig is done with points. People who have 260k or whatever points per person per route either are rich and have those through cc spent or can do this once and they are wiped out and can’t get a return ticket. This is collusion and price fixing on a grand scale. They...
This is why those alliances and anti trust immunity needs to go otherwise u maybe have another year or 2 and the travel gig is done with points. People who have 260k or whatever points per person per route either are rich and have those through cc spent or can do this once and they are wiped out and can’t get a return ticket. This is collusion and price fixing on a grand scale. They are clearly out to shove our point obsession in our faces and laugh all the way to the bank.
I've been findings lots of unbookable ("please choose another fare") 80k point US-NZ results in AAdvantage award search.
Martin, there's a glitch with partner redemption. It hasn't been fixed since Oct 27. Maybe they don't even know.
Wow! I'm sure glad we already booked our DFW to NAN trip for next summer. FIJI Air, Business, Nonstop. 80k AA per segment.
This past week and this week I noticed that there was no availability from September 16th onwards for AKL-NAN in either class. Today, after this announcement, suddenly everything opened up for more than double the price from 30k to 63.5k for business and from 15k to 27.5k in economy. Does not seem to affect prices before September 16th. Very disappointing since literally that week I was planning to travel on that route.
It's about inventory.
It's nice to see that AA is starting to adopt dynamic pricing on partner airlines. Clearly, they are following the world's most premium airline's approach.