Book Quickly: American’s New International Routes Have Great Award and Upgrade Availability

by Gary Leff

In addition to American’s suspension of Los Angeles – Auckland for seven months next year, this weekend’s schedule load also brought their new seasonal international routes online.

These new flights operate May 4, 2018 through October 27, 2018 though American only has flights through July 17, 2018 currently bookable.

Here’s Philadelphia – Budapest in business class for three passengers:

Generally speaking when there’s business class award space available, there’s equal or better upgrade space available. And indeed we’re generally seeing at least 7 confirmable upgrade seats per flight (the most inventory American shows is 7, which means 7 or more).

Here’s Philadelphia – Prague in business class for three passengers:

Upgrade space is also just as good as Phildelphia – Budapest, showing 7 or more confirmed business class (“C”) seats available across the available schedule for the Prague flight.

Here’s Chicago – Venice in business class for three passengers:

Chicago – Venice has amazing upgrade space just like the two Philadelphia routes.

Of these I like the Chicago – Venice flight best. The two Philadelphia flights are operated by Boeing 767s which means we should get narrow Thompson Vantage seats.


American 767 Business Class

The Venice flight, however, is operated by a Boeing 787-8 which means fully flat direct aisle access, one-two-one seating, that means four-across compared to the tight six-across seating United offers on the same aircraft.

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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  1. As it says on your screenshots above, the two PHL flights are actually operated by 767-300s

  6. I booked 3 seats with AS miles. I did notice BA/IB aren’t showing the availability, but with the fuel surcharges why would you want to.

  7. Kinda weird; I tried to change an existing flight to Prague on the phone and they could not do it, however I could put it on hold online.

  8. The 788 J has backward facing seats? If so, are any of the forward facing seats free from the shaking problem?

  9. Thanks for the tip! Managed to snag ORD-VCE earlier today when it was wide open and now most dates look gone.

  10. Is it gone? I was amazed that AA was releasing trans Atlantic business class space. I only had spotty internet and I looked at a couple of dates yesterday and didn’t see anything.

  11. Do you have a post of upgrade awards? I have booked tons of awards but have no clue how upgrades work.

  12. Hi Gary, good info, how do you get the qty of seats available for upgrade/mileage? I have never seen it displayed?

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