AwardWallet receives compensation from advertising partners for links on the blog. 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.
Using your American Airlines miles can be difficult. While occasionally there is great space available on AA metal, more often than, recently, American Airlines award availability has been tough to come by. Because of that, looking for awards with partner airlines, especially transatlantic, has been a better option. American Airlines has now added Iberia awards to the list of partners that you can search and book online.
Sadly, quite a few Oneworld partners are still not bookable online. Currently, you have to book the following airlines via phone if you want to redeem American Airlines miles:
- Cathay Pacific
- Japan Airlines
- LATAM
- Malaysia Airlines
- Qatar
- S7
- SriLankan
If you do book an award over the phone with one of the above, you won’t be charged the phone booking fee, since they are not bookable online.
Iberia offers one of the best options for transatlantic travel since it has a decent Business Class product and does not impose huge carrier fees, unlike its sister airline British Airways. At the moment award space seems a little limited, and there seem to be some IT gremlins with the search functionality, but in the long run, this should be smoothed out, and Iberia generally releases a decent amount of partner award space.
The AA search feature is excellent and is now the best online option for searching for Iberia space. This is because you can search 11 months in advance, and you can use a month-long search feature.
Overall
While there sometimes are American Airlines AAdvantage sweet spots, there is limited availability. Any move that increases your options for using your AA miles is to be welcomed. Ultimately finding and using American Airlines miles has its good points and its bad points, and the good points just got a little better.
Source: One Mile at a Time
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.
