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Over the last few days, the AwardWallet team has stumbled across a massive wave of discounted AA award availability. Specifically, we've found dozens of domestic AA routes offering Web Specials rates as low as 5,000 miles one-way!
How to Find Availability
Like our previous AA award availability alerts, these rates are Web Specials. That means that AA has dynamically priced these awards on AA aircraft to reflect ticket pricing. As ticket prices are currently way down, so are the award prices.
If you want to find the cheapest routes, you'll need to focus on one-stop itineraries featuring secondary cities. Moreover, many (but not all) of the most affordable dates fall within the next three to four months.
If you have a specific trip in mind, pop your departure airport into AA's award mapper tool. This will allow you to utilize your desired dates and find all the places you could go for only 5,000 miles. For example, the blue dots below are all of the potential destinations from New York City pricing at just 5,000 miles for May 12, 2021:
Even if your specific destination isn't available for the 5K rate, chances are good that you'll find a competitive price.
Example 5k Web Special Routes
As far as the basement-level 5K pricing goes, availability runs the gamut. We've seen coast-to-coast routes, short hops, popular routes, and trips to small towns all price out for 5K miles. Here are a few examples of the availability we've found:
Miami (MIA) to Los Angeles (LAX)
Burbank (BUR) to New York City (NYC)
Indianapolis (IND) to Bozeman, Montana (BZN)
Ontario, California (ONT) to Dallas (DFW)
Lexington (LEX) to Denver (DEN)
Jacksonville (JAX) to El Paso (ELP)
Boise (BOI) to St. Louis (STL)
Redmond, Oregon (RDM) to New York City (NYC)
Bangor, Maine (BGR) to Cincinnati (CVG)
Bottom Line
A one-way ticket for only 5,000 AA miles is about as good as it gets. The last time we saw widespread rates like this was late 2019.
Further selling this deal is the fact that AA is currently waiving award reinstatement fees for all bookings made through the end of the year. Consequently, you can lock-in these prices even if you're not sure you'll be able to take the trip.
While dynamic award pricing can be a drag, we're big fans of discounted award availability. If you're considering taking back to the skies, you're not going to find a better deal than 5K AA miles per way.
Have you found any other great AA Web Special pricing that we've missed? Let us know in the comments.
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
I believe there are great fares but I found that award wallet comments are the best way to keep your AA miles active. lifesaver for me.
Sorry to intrude into this offer, but truly do not know where to address myself to inquire about the continuity of the partnership of the AAdvantage program with (any) credit card(s) in Argentina. Held a Citybank (then Santander…) VISA card for more than thirty five years and now we AAdvantage members have been ‘discontined’… for how long?
I wish we knew! It’s really frustrating that AAdvantage pulled out of the Argentinan credit card market completely like this.
Sorry, AA, you had your chance with me and screwed it up…last time I booked AA, they cancelled my flight at the last minute, and taxied me to another airport for a flight the next night. I spent the whole next day wandering around a tiny airport before I could even depart for my destination 24 hours late. Never again.
Wow, a 5k transcon flight. So good!
Now to convince my wife that it is OK to travel 🙂
I’m looking to burn the 11k that I have left, rather than letting them expire, so this is good to know, even though there’s not much out of central Florida for 5k.
Not just domestic. Montreal-Miami is also 5,000 miles now.
Hopefully, many more heavily discounted award seats will be available when it is actually realistic to travel abroad again.
Perfect time to use the 15k AA miles I have saved up!
Its great to see these web specials to make people travel again. I just wish it did not have to happen with an ongoing pandemic.
Gotta love the 5K transcon flights.
Wow! Almost makes me want to buy a ticket somewhere…almost. Unfortunately, there are still too many people getting sick for me to fly just yet. I wonder if this is just to get people to fly this holiday season or to convince more who fly AS to use AA? Or can I hope that AA is trying to be more like AS and have more availability with miles?
This only good if the city nearest you is on the list and where you’re interested in going. But, still nice they are doing something like this. It does fill seats.
As we point out in the piece, pretty much every city has some sort of 5k availability! We were just highlighting a few examples in the article. But, we highly encourage you to search flights for routes you want.
Cheap mileage is always available on 3rd tier cities
Not as cheap as 5k. AA has had a hard floor of 10k miles on Economy Web Specials since around March 2020. And, also, this isn’t just on third-tier cities.
I think they have extended availability, before it was hard to find those. But now there are more dates available. This is a great AA move! Way to go!
airlines are not getting paid business, so they lowered mileage to 5000 even then customers are not coming back. may be they should give free ride (o miles)
Even then customers may not come back
I know it may not seem like it now, in the thick of things, but this will end. A lot of intellectual and monetary capital is highly motivated to tackle this pandemic. They’ve already made great strides and will continue to do so. Keep the faith!
Fingers crossed for some international discounts – they must be hurting still!
It just shows how few people are willing to fly in the foreseeable future. That’s worrying.
I prefer to redeem MIA-LAX, but i am just from LAX to MIA first. does it’s can be get a redeem ticket from LAX to MIA just only 5K points? Will be go to AA website later.
Yes! We are seeing 5k rates from LAX to MIA and the reverse.
Great thought to lock this price first and then re-book it if you want to the place which you have locked. I have never thought that cause it’s have no date which i want to travel. Thanks.
Exactly awesome information , So many route can be only spend 5K points at US, But i am local at Japan , what’s sad! Hope you can redeem this 5K flight.
And Hawaii? I search but did not find award tickets for that destination.
Unfortunately, it’s just domestic US (and Canada) routes that we are finding at 5k
Wow! I’m blown away American has their own website that will show you where you can go for a specified mile amount. Does any other airline have that too?
Not that we know of! That award mapper tool is amazing!
Wow! To see the town where I’m moving to NYC for 5000 points is pretty amazing. I would certainly fly friends out to visit me with those type of deals. I doubt we will see such deals when travel gets back to normal. Until that time, we can dream. Kudos to those who can take advantage.
Wow, really trying hard to get people back into planes aren’t they
A couple of really nice rates in there. And might be worth taking a stab at, even now.
With the reinstatement fees gone through year end, this may tempt me.
Thanks for the alert! I definitely want to go somewhere and this will make it affordable.
Nick