American Airlines is known for being particularly stingy with international business class award space on its own flights. I redeem AAdvantage miles more than any other airline currency, but almost always for flights on their partners.
The pattern of refusing to make international business class saver awards available to AAdvantage members has largely continued through the pandemic, with a few exceptions. Right now, though, there are some good opportunities to spend miles for fall and winter business class to Europe.
One flight I like right now for redemption is American’s Charlotte – Frankfurt service where I’m seeing 4 business class saver awards on a majority of flights in November and for January through March. Here’s a search for 4 non-stop business class seats on the American Airlines website showing dates available in March:
What’s useful about this is the connectivity in and out of Charlotte, much of it pairable with this daily Boeing 777-200 flight.
- Charlotte – Frankfurt, 4:45 p.m. – 7:15 a.m.+1, American Airlines 704
Frankfurt – Charlotte, 10:15 a.m. – 2:30 p.m, American Airlines 705
American Airlines features two different business class seats on Boeing 777-200 aircraft. This is the Zodiac ‘Concept D’ seat.
And what I really appreciate, with all of the uncertainty that remains in the pandemic and what destinations will work for travel, is that American eliminated mileage cancel and redeposit fees for all members. So you can make an AAdvantage award booking and if you need to change plans, put the miles back in your account for free. So grab opportunities while they’re available, you’re really just creating an option.
Since these are saver awards (priced 57,500 AAdvantage miles each way) and not web saver awards, they are available to members of partner frequent flyer programs like Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, British Airways Executive Club, and Cathay Pacific Asia Miles.
Nothing much to do in FRA in March. A small provincial city. And it’s a poor OW connection airport. No surprised. Overall load must be poor. What is AA thinking?
March to FRA? It’s still pretty cold there. Notify us when it’s available in the summer or put the availability dates in the title please.
seems like pretty high fees….
The large cash outlay doesn’t make this attractive.
@PMV and @Allen – I think the cash price is wrong. I have been planning to go to Frankfurt for over 18 months (originally to fly Singapore’s 5th freedom flight from JFK). Has been cancelled and rescheduled 3 times. I live in CLT so have booked this non-stop. Latest plan for this September but I cancelled and rescheduled for early March 2022 (not too cold for me and plenty to see and do as opposed to the views above – not Munich or Berlin but solo trip and will take wife later to those cities). I got it for a web special CLT-FRA business class for 108,000 miles and a total cash price of, as I recall, around $170. No way a one way award ticket on AA is $765 (maybe booked through BA site and that is their cash add-on). On other hand if AA is charging $765 plus 57.5 each way (I did get a web special but assume cash add on is same regardless of miles used) no way it makes since.
It does appear as if the deal is a cheap points redemption for the extra ~$600 in fees. Not a great deal for me.
Gary, this looks like BA availability. AA fees are not that high, but this looks similar to BA.
@beachfan – the $765k is confusing, sorry – that was from a different date before I clicked onto non-stop availability. The calendar is showing dates where only non-stop AA flights are offered.
This is BA not AA metal I think.
Sorry for the duplicate comment, I didn’t see my first one post.
@Beachfan – and see my response above, it’s not BA metal, just a quirk from the search and screen shot I did