American AAdvantage New Award Option: Premium Economy Airline Partner Redemption

American Airlines was first among U.S. airlines to offer premium economy and expand it across their fleet. They introduced premium economy awards on their own flights back in January. Here’s the award chart for American Airlines premium economy awards.

JT Genter points out that premium economy awards on British Airways are now bookable by AAdvantage members. They even show up at AA.com.

American’s oneworld award chart hasn’t been updated to include this option. That’s a concern because United introducing awards for their own premium economy, without a premium economy award chart, was the first giveaway that the airline would eliminate award charts altogether.

Update: American’s oneworld and partner award chart has now been updated with premium economy. That’s great news for transparency.

British Airways transatlantic premium economy award pricing matches the same mileage prices as on American – plus fuel surcharges, naturally (though those are lower for premium economy than for business). You’ll need to use the ‘new award search’ to find premium economy space.

Where saver space is available in both premium economy (40,000) and business (57,500) business is a far better value for points, although the cash difference is material. However you may find times where you’re just looking to get out of coach – and British Airways award space in premium economy is orders of magnitude better than award space in any premium cabin on American.

We can expect American to expand premium economy award redemptions further on other partner airlines as well, though they haven’t given a timeline for when to expect this. At the beginning of 2019 we were also supposed to see redemptions for premium economy upgrades on American flights sometime this year but that timeline got abandoned months ago.

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. They are extremely unlike to release an award chart for PE, although it’s highly in their interest to do so.
    IMO, they should have clear cut award charts for Y and PEY, while leaving the variable pricing to J/C. After all, the revenue they care most about being able to control tightly is J/C.

    Splitting PEY/Y from J/C would give people a reasonable target for comfortable redemptions without “stealing” a seat that could otherwise have gone for significantly more in cash.

  2. PE for 80K plus hundreds in fees to Europe on BA or 100K (!!!) to Hawaii is crAAzy for milesaver. I’ll pass.

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