It looks like American’s website is getting consistently more useful for searching award space. In April they added the ability to search and book Hawaiian and British Airways award space on aa.com, which was a huge enhancement. Not only do I find aa.com to be pretty easy to use for searching award space, but booking online also saves you the $25 ticketing fee that’s charged by phone.
Anyway, it looks like Qantas award space is now also available on aa.com as well, which is great. Unfortunately they’re not great about releasing business and first class award space between the US and Australia, though if you’re booking way in advance it can be possible to snag a couple of first class award seats on the Airbus 380.
They have much better award space on their domestic flights as well as flights between Australia and Asia.
As before, American continues to have one of the most generous hold policies, so now it’s possible to place a Qantas award ticket on hold for five days through aa.com.
Keep it up, American! Now just add Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and LAN, and your site will be just about as comprehensive for OneWorld as United’s is for the Star Alliance.
I have only just noticed that on the American website there is almost no economy award space at all for Qantas, a bit in June or July, but nothing for the rest of the year. Wonder if Qantas is now giving nothing to American airlines? I'm a fairly experienced award traveler, and have checked into this, so this is a worry!
@ Andy -- If you're using Avios points the booking has to be made on ba.com. You can't make bookings with Avios on aa.com unfortunately.
may i ask you to show how to book reward flight on aa.com using avios points? i recently got a chase BA visa to be able to earn 100,000 avios miles and I read that NY to Toronto only needs 4,500 avios miles. could you please shed light on how to do so on aa.com website?
Like Tony, I've also seen a decent amount of missing inventory, especially for F on SYD-HKG. Its visible on the Qantas site, as well as when I call the EXP line, but not showing up on AA.com.
@TonySCV - is that because not all QF award space is available to alliance partners?
Just FYI - aa.com is missing inventory at present. Checking random dates on SYD-AKL or SYD-WLG there is plenty of business class space available that does not show up at all on aa.com. Still some kinks to work out I guess.
keep it up AA... but do please try to drop fuel surcharges like United does on TATL award bookings.
I can see award space on QF's website, but not AA. Can I still book using AA?