Is it just me, or is AA really tightening down on available FF mile flights? My real question is, if you call them directly are there more flights available? Or, is the internet availability showing everything? thx, rss

PS - In answering this, don't be trying one of those "BVI Hazing Newbie Tricks" on me neither!

If you find a way to use them, let me know. I gave up trying after several attempts. I could only use them at times that no one wanted to travel to places that no one goes

Since the merger with US Air, there are many more people trying to chase the same number of FF seats, is my take on it. Think about it, all those people with lots of US Air miles that got transferred to AA miles, and not that many more flights than before.. We've been pretty lucky, booking from Florida on AA, but I think it also is a function of where you are flying from..

I've also got lots of FF miles. The seats open 331 days before the date. Often you can book the outbound flight (one way) then wait for the return to open and grab that one. If you wait for the return to book as a round trip often the allotment is already taken. That strategy has worked for my when getting flights to Hawaii. You may also find availability closer to the date. I have also found that some flights only have one seat open. One thought may be to get one "award" flight and pay for the other (if you need 2 or more).

rigirly

There are seats available for AA rewards redemptions during peak travel times if you are willing to pay a premium # of miles, i.e. 50,000 or more per segment. Otherwise expect to travel during off peak.

We often grab a flight that is not our preferred flight, but one we can live with if absolutely necessary, and then wait to see if better flights come up available, which they often do. We did that again for flights in June this year. We'll see if we get lucky again. And actually one time when we were in St. Maarten, we were able to change our flights to a day later than our original flight coming home, which gave us an extra day of vacation!! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" />

We stopped using AA miles years ago. If they did have availability, you never get direct service. We exclusively use Capital One, 2 for 1 miles on all purchases. You book your own flights and Cap 1 reimburses you.

Which Capital One card? Ventures? I am looking to get a different card for miles.

Both my mother (who is tireless in her quest to use AA miles) and I are having a very hard time lately with award tickets.

As said two for one miles PLUS they refund the price of your ticket if you have enough miles in the "bank"..PLUS you still get your air miles when you fly..buy your ticket..get the refund and use you air miles to upgrade!

A bit of perspective regarding use of AA miles from one who has lifetime Platinum status and 4 million miles on my record. As noted above, the merger with USAir and the incorporation of their users has made a bad situation worse. If you need to travel to Albuquerque, Nashville, or other similar venues, you should have minimal issues using your miles. Traveling to/from Dallas, New York, Las Vegas,Chicago, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, your options are basically:

1)Forget the notion of a 25K round trip unless you book the 331 days in advance and are prepared to travel at 0600 or 2300 hrs.
2)Bite the bullet and cough up 50K miles for a coach ticket (or look closely at business/first class availability as you can occasionally get a business/first class mileage ticket for the same 50K miles)

If you look at seat availability for most flights booked months in advance, there are plenty of seats for paying customers. AA miles tickets are rigidly rationed early in the booking period. As the time gets closer to the actual departure date, some miles tickets are opened up-but clearly a risk if you are trying to book a bad schedule with hopes to get a change to a better flight.

We are long time Advantage members and, like others have said, can rarely use miles for flights any more. We now redeem our miles for hotel nights in the BVI or on St John. In 2013, they had a "sale" on redemption of miles for Scrub and Peter Island. We got 10 nights lodging for free.
I recognize this may not be an option since many here are sailors, but wanted to mention it since its worked very well for us.

This is quite a coincidence, as I just booked my return flight for March using my AA miles (flying down on Delta using CapitalOne points) literally ten minutes ago. Traveling from STT to Charlotte was no problem. There we not a lot of flights available, but I didn't find a lot on other airlines during my search either. Had no problem with seats either. I think I got lucky <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />

Booked a non-stop AA flight from jfk to STT about 2 months ago at the cheapest rate. No problem. Came down yesterday.