American AAdvantage Can Book First Class Etihad Awards Again!

by Gary Leff

Yesterday I wrote that American AAdvantage was having problems booking first class awards on Etihad.

This was concerning because:

  • Etihad is devaluing its own program July 8 including increased points cost for first class awards.

  • In the past when there have been IT glitches between American and Etihad it hasn’t affected just one class of service.

One could imagine this being more than just a glitch because Etihad first class awards are such a darned great value use of American miles (even though American’s award chart for the ‘Middle East and Indian Subcontinent’ isn’t cheap – a first class award such as Los Angeles or New York JFK to Abu Dhabi to Delhi is 90,000 miles each way) and because the trend in frequent flyer programs generally (although not yet with AAdvantage) has been rather downward, especially for premium cabin redemptions.

And Cathay Pacific – my other favorite use of American miles – has been talking about restricting the award inventory available to partner airlines.

However this really did appear to be a glitch and one that got resolved quickly because you can again book Etihad first class awards with AAdvantage miles.

In fact, I just put an Abu Dhabi – Washington Dulles flight on hold this morning. (I’ve since cancelled the itinerary.)

(HT: Milecards)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Yep, but looks like Etihad pulled a WHOLE lot of 380 award inventory off the market. I think this was done on purpose so they could get some time to sort out all these AA flyers booking cheap awards in Apartments…. but that’s just a guess.

  3. In fact.. I can no longer find a single A380 F award seat on any date from my random sampling so far. Anyone else have any luck?

  4. “even though American’s award chart for the ‘Middle East and Indian Subcontinent’ isn’t cheap” – compared to United it is very very cheap.

  6. Did you check LHR-AUH-LHR route on Etihad.com?

    I don’t see them anymore, they were wide open yesterday.

  8. @mark relatively quite few. although if you’re curious you could do a data analysis. and feel free to share the results with yourself.

  9. @Gary – if you are going to take on the trolls you need to up your game. You response should have been “And feel free to share the results with yourself!”

  10. Per a previous comments a week or so ago on some Etihad topic, I couldn’t find a single F seat from JFK-AUH on the A380 from Jan through to end March. Although plenty available on the disaster Jet Airways plane (hard product, service, food, etc…is miserable). How Etihad can price the A380 F and the Jet Airways the same is beyond me. Might just book the Jet Airways with the hopes that they change the aircraft sooner rather than later on one of their most important routes.

    Etihad doesn’t have its priorities right….instead of buying up stakes in Air Seychelles and Air Serbia (and Air Berlin which has not reaped any benefits as Air Berlin posted more losses), they should invest in putting proper aircraft on their key routes rather than leasing an old and haggard one.

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