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.
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