Questions and Answers

I’ve read that one way economy flights less than 500 miles should be available for 7,500 miles. When I search their website all I can find is flights for no less than 12,500. Is there something I’m missing?

I was thinking of getting the [URL=’https://home.barclaycardus.com/cards/aadvantage-aviator-red-world-elite-mastercard.html’]AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite MasterCard[/URL] to use for short flights and save my Amex & Chase pts for other redemptions.

Unfortunately not missing anything! American has just been extremely stingy with releasing low-level availability on their own flights. o_O

Lucky wrote a nice post about this a few weeks back.

[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/04/28/no-american-award-seats/[/URL]

And don’t forget if you find short flights available on AA for 12.5K then you should be able to use 7500 Avios instead. But you lose PreCheck if you do that.

You won’t necessarily lose pre-check. You just have to add your AA FF no to the reservation after you book it through BA and precheck will show up again :).

Thanks. Another goal I would have is for both myself and my gf to apply for the card to get 50k each. Then try and get round trip first class tickets in the A321 Transcon with the flatbed seats. Am I crazy to think it’s doable?

It’s good to have goals! But, keep in mind that First Class on the A321 Transcon is 50K each way at the saver level. And saver level awards are virtually non existant at the moment. So you’d more than likely need 82,500 miles for a one-way first class ticket.

My mistake, I mean to go for business class instead of first. Only thing is that once selecting the flight it doesn’t specify exactly which 321 plane it is so it’s a bit hard to tell if it’s the one with flat beds.
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Well, every non-stop flight from San Francisco (and LA) to JFK on American is a three-class plane with lie flat seats. So unless the options from your screen shot were connecting flights, you’d be good!

I think the chances of finding two seats at the saver level in business class on that route is going to be extremely difficult. If that’s the goal, I’d just encourage you to be very flexible on your dates. And also keep LAX as an option. Also, consider a paid subscription to a site like ExpertFlyer so you can monitor availability without manually checking every day.