AwardWallet receives compensation from advertising partners for links on the blog. Terms Apply to the offers listed on this page. The opinions expressed here are our own and have not been reviewed, provided, or approved by any bank advertiser. Here's our complete list of Advertisers.
American Airlines keeps making it easier to use AAdvantage miles. Over the past few years, AA has added new partners, strengthened partnerships with existing partners, and made it easier to search and book partner awards online. And, AA just took another step forward by adding the ability to book awards online for yet another partner.
An American Airlines spokesperson confirmed to AwardWallet that members can now search and book Royal Air Maroc awards on AA's website. This functionality was enabled on Wednesday afternoon.
At the beginning of 2018, AAdvantage members could only book award flights for 8 partner airlines online. With the addition of Royal Air Maroc today, AA members can now search and book 20 different partners online—including all 13 Oneworld members and 7 of AA's 10 non-alliance partners. This leaves just three award partners not bookable online: China Southern Airlines, Interjet, and AA's newest partner GOL Airlines.
Pricing of Royal Air Maroc Awards
In April 2020, American Airlines moved Morocco from Africa to Europe for the sake of AAdvantage award pricing. This is great news for those hoping to travel to Morocco, and it's also great news for award travelers looking for another option to get to Europe.
Before this change, award travelers would have to pay for two separate awards to book an award from the U.S. to Europe through Morocco. Now that Morocco is considered part of Europe, you can connect through Casablanca on an award to Europe. This gives award travelers another option to fly across the Atlantic using AA miles American Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, and Iberia.
AAdvantage awards between the U.S. and Europe—including Morocco—cost:
- Economy Off-Peak: 22,500 miles each way
- Economy Standard: 30,000 miles each way
- Business Class: 57,000 miles each way
That's regardless of if you're flying nonstop on Royal Air Maroc's route between Washington DC and Casablanca:
Or flying from New York City through Casablanca to the far reaches of AA's Europe region. For example, you can fly from NYC to Istanbul for just $24 out-of-pocket:
Why This is Good News for All Award Travelers
The ability to search and book partner awards on AA's website is good news even for when you don't want to use AAdvantage awards to book an award. Royal Air Maroc awards are a perfect example of this.
AAdvantage awards between the U.S. and Morocco are affordable at 30,000 miles each way in economy or 57,500 miles one-way in business class. However, nonstop awards on Royal Air Maroc award flights cost even less when booked through Etihad Guest:
- Economy: 22,000 miles each way
- Business Class: 44,000 miles each way
Unlike American Airlines AAdvantage—which isn't a transfer partner of any bank program—Etihad Guest is a partner of American Express Membership Rewards (1:1 transfer ratio), Citi ThankYou Points (1:1 ratio), and Capital One Miles (4:3 ratio), as well as Marriott Bonvoy (3:1 ratio with a 5,000-mile bonus for transferring at least 60,000 points).
Before now, there wasn't an easy way to search Royal Air Maroc award availability. Even ExpertFlyer doesn't show the airline's award availability. With AA adding Royal Air Maroc award availability to its website, you can find award availability online before calling Etihad Guest to book the award.
Final Thoughts
It's great to see American Airlines add yet another partner's award availability to its website. With this addition, you can now book AAdvantage awards online for all 13 Oneworld airlines plus 7 non-alliance partners. That makes AA.com the increasing go-to for searching awards—regardless of which program you use to book the award.
While AA's new award search tool will show Royal Air Maroc awards, remember there's still a workaround to using the legacy award tool if you prefer that format:
Just make sure to double-check that there's not a cheaper way to book an award before booking it using AAdvantage miles.
What Royal Air Maroc awards are you going to book?
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.
It’s always nice to have more options, and it’s good to see that AAs IT department is finally catching up to the 21st century. Their online booking services have always lagged the industry, with very poor partner availability other than BA. Another nice benefit of adding Royal Air Maroc is that they actually have business class seats on their 737s for flights from CMN to Europe (basically like US domestic first class). Even their ERJs have business class seats for shorter flights, like to Marrakech. Aside from a couple of widebodies that Turkish occasionally flies from IST to LHR and CDG, I do not believe any other airline in Europe has business class seats within the continent. Also, RAM does not tack on the excessive fees that BA charges. BA has long been known for their FU fees, which have always made it difficult to score a decent redemption to Europe on AA. I have literally seen situations where a cash ticket to LHR would cost less than an “award” ticket on BA. When this pandemic is behind us, I look forward to trying out RAM’s business class product, and I might even spend a few days in Morocco.
The possibility of booking online is very good thing.
It’s more convenient than calling the airlines.
One side effect is that there will be more competition for the award seats.
It is great that American are making it even easier to travel from Europe to the US on an Award booking – but when is the US Government going to open the Visa Waiver programme for travellers from Europe again?
Nice that they are expanding online booking capabilities, but I still MUCH prefer their old award search tool.
Hope they have decent availability!
I’m still in the “building points/miles” stage (which is awesome now that I’ve learned how from all these AW posts 🙂 ), so thankfully I have time to figure things out. I am utterly lost when it comes to transferring and booking with partners. It seems like this complex tangled web and I just can’t seem to make any sense out of it.
Welcome to the points game. 🙂 The same way AW got you up to speed on building, you’ll see lots of posts that do the same for redeeming. Stick with it, as transferring and booking with partners gives you more options and thus can result in better value.
It would be great if someone could share some Royal Air Maroc experiences.
Thanks. Cann’t wait for things to get back closer to normal and start traveling again. Morocco is high on my list and with 200K American miles to burn business class on Royal Maroc would be a great way to use them!
Great post. Was always searching for a cheap way to use miles for Morocco. Searching all AA miles partners is fantastic.
Can’t wait for travel and covid to clear up, so I can try my hand using AA miles on partner airlines.
Good news, hopefully soon we can use our American Airlines points to fly again
This is a good thing especially in this day and age. All of the loyalty program should be doing this. The wait time on the phone is ridiculous.
Great to see Royal Air Maroc added to the system, it’s a fascinating country to see as well!
I can’t say I’ve heard of them before but I believe more options are always better. I don’t fly AA often though so I don’t think this will affect me in any way.
I wish CSR points would swap to AA, but UAL has Chase locked up.
Hard product looks nice from the photo in the post, but curious if anyone has experience actually flying AT that they’d like to share?
Hey if you want extra options flying into Morocco, then you have Royal Air Maroc. However, personally, I would not fly them. Flew with them to Marrakesh years ago and can confirm their reputation as a 3rd tier airline.
That’s a little disappointing to hear, although not surprising.
What was the experience like? I’m considering flying them and would like to know how bad it might be…
May be it was a ‘third tier’ airline years ago, but surely AA wouldn’t add them to their Alliance if that were still the case. Going forwards RAM will need to ‘up their game’ and standards etc. One to keep under review.
Nice to learn about the Etihad sweetspot on Royal Air Macoc