Questions and Answers

Hi there, I am very new to most travel ideas. I won some American mileage points in a promo at a radio station so I had to get a AA account. It is suppose to be enough mileage for two air tickets at 50,000. Generally is this enough mileage to cover two tickets and how do I redeem them, I have to wait 72 hours to claim, so was just wondering advice when I do claim them.
Thanks

Hi Karen, how cool to win 50K miles!

Within the lower 48 states you could use those miles several different ways:
[LIST]
[*]2 round-trip flights in economy
[*]1 round-trip flight in “first class”
[*]2 one-way flights in “first class”
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Of course all of this is contingent upon you finding award space on the flights you want to take. To look for award space, go to aa.com and enter the destination and dates you want to travel. On the line where you can choose from Round Trip, One Way or Round Trip + hotel you’ll see a box that says Redeem Miles. Be sure to check that box.

When you hit Search the results will show you which days have availability and at what level. American (who loves to use the AA when naming things) calls their saver-level awards MileSAAver. When your calendar of dates is displayed, it will default to having days with Economy SAAver awards highlighted in a lighter green. If that award is not available on that particular day, you’ll see the date in gray and the number of miles required for a one-way ticket on that day.

Now, just because your date is highlighted in light green, that doesn’t mean the routing or flight times are something you will like. So select a day for both the outbound and the return flight, click Continue and the next page will show you the flights available on that day. If they are something you’re happy with, great! Continue on and purchase your ticket. When using miles domestically there’s a nominal fee called the Sept. 11 fee and it depends on how many segments your flight is but it’s less than $15 per person max. American does have a close-in booking fee so if you’re trying to book a flight within 21 days of departure there’s a $75 booking fee as well.

If there’s no activity in your AA account (meaning adding or using miles) within 18 months of the date the miles are deposited, your miles will expire.

If that’s not enough to get you started, let us know where you’re having issues and we’ll see what we can do to help out.