American Airlines Decommissions Old Award Search Tool & Calendar

by Gary Leff

A year and a half ago American Airlines launched a new award search tool clearly geared towards dynamic pricing of redemptions.

While many readers preferred the old award calendar, which lets you show availability by award type (special, saver, standard) and not just the single lowest price on a given day for each cabin, it was clear that the airline was investing only in the new tool moving forward.

  • They introduced premium economy awards, and added that only to the new tool.

  • They introduced discounted non-changeable awards for premium cabins, and added that only to the new tool.

Unsurprising except that we didn’t know when it would happen in advance, as of today the old tool is gone.


Old award calendar

American Airlines spokesperson Josh Freed shares,

To create a more consistent experience for customers using aa.com, we’ve updated how flight results display when using the Advanced Search function or Award Map. Customers will now be directed to the new award booking path, which shows all available award options.

As a reminder, the legacy award tool did not display Premium Web Special awards or Premium Economy awards. The new one does.


New award calendar

So the new calendar it is.

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. Wow. The new interface is basically non functional for premium cabins. I sent AA a list of issues a while ago and actually got the impression they’d work on these. Now this?

  3. You can still get the old results chart if you use the multi-city search on the old search page. Who know when that will be gone too.

  5. Oh, my! How we hate change. Doesn’t AA know that? My home airport is FLG – Flagstaff Pulliam Grand Canyon Airport and I have only two choices of carriers: AA and United. As a credit card holder of AA, I have a checked bag free. With United, not. So I prefer to fly AA, but if this change makes it more difficult to book, then United it is!

  7. I’ll just be calling them for award availability for every single award I book now. Then I’ll book online to avoid the fee.

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