If you’re thinking about using some of your AAdvantage miles for a late Spring or early Summer break, and you’re a Citi AAdvantage cardholder, then you might be interested in the just released list of destinations on Citi’s second quarter 2013 reduced mileage awards chart:

Second quarter awards are valid for eligible round trip travel originating in the 48 contiguous United States. Booking is valid March 1, 2013 through June 30, 2013 for travel from April 1, 2013, through June 30, 2013.

Depending upon which Citi AAdvantage card you have, you can save 5,000 to 7,500 AAdvantage miles on a round-trip MileSAAver award ticket.

Even better, Citi AAdvantage Reduced Mileage awards qualify for the 10% mileage rebate (up to 10,000 miles annually) benefit that comes with the Citi AAdvantage credit card.  So rather than spending 25,000 AAdvantage Miles on a round-trip ticket, it’s possible for you to end up using just 15,750 miles.

There are many great destinations listed, here are some of the highlights:

Museums, Food, Nightlife

New York LaGuardia, NY

Montreal Trudeau, Canada

Toronto, Canada

Washington Reagan Nat’l, DC

Beach

Fort Walton Beach, FL

Miami, FL

Pensacola, FL

Brownsville, TX (Padre Island)

Mountains

Aspen, CO

Colorado Springs, CO

Grand Junction , CO

Gunnison/Crested Butte, CO

Montrose, CO

Steamboat Springs, CO

Vail/Eagle, CO

Art Galleries and Culture

Santa Barbara, CA

Monterey, CA

Santa Fe, NM

Tornado Chasing

Oklahoma City, OK (shameless plug for the mother country)

A few things to keep in mind:

• You have to call AAdvantage reservations to book an award, it can’t be done online.

• Unless you have AAdvantage Executive Platinum status, there’s a $25 processing fee for booking the award over the phone.

• Requires a round-trip award. Not good for one-way travel.

• Travel must be completed by June 30, 2013.

Go here for the complete list or for more information.

Win 2,500 AAdvantage Miles

Don’t forget that The Frugal Travel Guy’s Monday Deal of the Day is sponsored by AAdvantage.   Visit his site to find out how you can win 2,500 AAdvantage Miles by sharing your best AAdvantage or American Airlines related travel tip!

Photo: Reduced 1970
Credit: Jacky Tranter on Flickr

With much of the country either digging out from under the snow or bracing for a blizzard, it might be time for a winter break.

If you’re thinking about escaping to someplace warm, here’s a chance to go to Hawaii and save some AAdvantage Miles!

Limited Time Special to Hawaii!

Participating Airline: American Airlines

Award: Reduced Mileage Offer

Limited Time Offer: Want to swim, surf, or just soak up the sun?

Book an Economy Class award for only 15,000 miles each way for travel on American Airlines between the US, Canada and Hawaii.

Offer Dates: February 8, 2013 through March 13, 2013

From the fine print:

This award special is valid for travel on flights marketed and operated by American Airlines between the US, Canada and Hawaii on a MileSAAver Off-peak Economy Class award. Award inventory is subject to seat availability and capacity controls, and seats for award travel may not be available on all flights.

An off-peak, MileSAAver Economy Class award to Hawaii is usually 17,500 AAdvantage Miles one-way, 35,000 miles round-trip. So with this offer you’re saving 2,500 miles one-way and 5,000 miles round-trip.

If you have a Citi AAdvantage card you’ll also get a 10% rebate for your mileage redemption – up to 10,000 mile per year – so you’re redeeming for net 27,000 miles round-trip.

These awards can’t be booked online, you’ll have to call AAdvantage Reservations at 1-800-882-8880, to get them ticketed. Because of this, a $25 ticketing service charge will apply (waived for AAdvantage Executive Platinum members) and be aware that there’s a $75 AAdvantage Award Processing fee for awards issued less than 21 days prior to departure (it’s waived for AAdvantage Executive Platinum, AAdvantage Platinum and AAdvantage Gold members using miles from their account).

Go here for complete details.

If you’re in the path of the storm or traveling this weekend, stay safe and stay warm!

Photo: Breakfast, Hawaiian style at Koa Pancake House
Credit: Bert Kimura on Flickr

If you’re thinking about using some of your AAdvantage Miles on a post-holiday winter break you might want to take a look at the just released Citi AAdvantage Reduced Mileage Awards chart for the first quarter of 2013.

Here are a few of the destinations that you might find appealing.

If you like to ski:

Gunnison, CO
Hayden, CO
Jackson Hole, WY
Colorado Springs, CO
Eagle, CO

If you’re looking to escape the cold, you might have some luck here:

West Palm Beach, FL
Pensacola, FL
Fort Walton Beach, FL
Orange County, CA

These destinations are on the list and all of them offer great food, culture, art, or music options:

Santa Fe, NM
Montreal, Canada
Vancouver, Canada
Toronto, Ontario
NY LaGuardia, NYC
Reagan National, Washington D.C.
Monterey, CA
Santa Barbara, CA

Reduced Mileage Awards are a great way to save money on airfare and make the most of your miles. You can save 5,000 to 7,500 AAdvantage Miles on a round-trip MileSAAver award ticket depending on wich Citi AAdvantage credit card you have in your wallet.

Even better, Citi AAdvantage Reduced Mileage awards qualify for the 10% mileage rebate (up to 10,000 miles annually) benefit that comes with the Citi AAdvantage credit card.  So rather than spending 25,000 AAdvantage Miles on a round-trip ticket, it’s possible for you to end up using just 15,750 miles.

Something to think about:  Ben over at One Mile at a Time made a great point the other day with a reminder about maximizing your 2012 Citi AAdvantage mileage rebate even if it’s for travel next year.

A few things to keep in mind

• You have to call AAdvantage reservations to book an award, it can’t be done online.

• Unless you have AAdvantage Executive Platinum status, there’s a $25 processing fee for booking the award over the phone.

• Requires a round-trip award. Not good for one-way travel.

• Travel must be completed by March 31, 2013.

Go here for the First Quarter 2013 Citi AAdvantage Reduced Mileage Awards chart .

The only thing better than saving miles is winning miles! Don’t forget that The Frugal Travel Guy’s Monday Deal of the Day is Sponsored by AAdvantage. Share your best American Airlines or AAdvantage related tip for a chance to win 2,500 AAdvantage Miles!

Photo: Reduced 1970
Credit: Jacky Tranter on Flickr

The fourth quarter Citi reduced AAdvantage Award chart has been published and there are a number of great destinations listed.  Here’s a look at a few of them:

Montreal, QC
Santa Barbara, CA
Monterey, CA
Sante Fe, NM,
Grand Junction, CO
Colorado Springs, CO
Charleston, SC
Reagan Airport, Washington D.C.
Walton Beach, FL

Depending upon which Citi AAdvantage card you have, you can save 5,000 to 7,500 AAdvantage miles on a round-trip MileSAAver award ticket.

Even better, Citi AAdvantage Reduced Mileage awards qualify for the 10% mileage rebate that you get when you use your Citi AAdvantage card to pay for the fees and taxes.  So rather than spending 25,000 AAdvantage Miles you’ll end up using just 15,750.

A few things to keep in mind:

• You have to call AAdvantage reservations to book an award, it can’t be done online.

• Unless you have AAdvantage Executive Platinum status, there’s a $25 processing fee for booking the award over the phone.

• Requires a round-trip award. Not good for one-way travel.

• Travel must be completed by December 31, 2012 (keep this in mind if you’re making holiday travel plans).

I counted 111 destinations, go here to see the full list.

I’m sure this has been posted elsewhere, but I just became aware of this AAdvantage Award chart that displays the number of miles needed for a oneworld Explorer ticket, the continent based round-the-world travel product from the oneworld alliance:

Travelling the world has never been easier, more flexible or more affordable thanks to oneworld Explorer. Reaching more than 800 global destinations across six continents in the oneworld alliance network, oneworld Explorer lets you create your ideal round-the-world trip.

To keep things simple, we divide the world into six continents to calculate your oneworld Explorer fare.
The fare you pay is based on the class you choose to fly, plus the number of oneworld continents you visit or pass through, (including your continent of origin and any continent in which you transfer).

Hattip to @colinize and @wfagundes

source: American Airlines at AA.com

Update:  Brett Snyder had one of his “Across the Aisle” interviews with AAdvantage President, Maya Leibman over on his Cranky Flier blog. You can read it here.

Last Friday I wrote about AAdvantage President Maya Leibman and her team asking members of both the FlyerTalk and milepoint forums for ideas about how to improve the AAdvantage section of AA.com.

The most frequent request was for the ability to book oneworld and partner awards online.  Which wasn’t surprising for a couple of reasons, in that there isn’t any way on AA.com to:

• Find AA partner and oneworld award inventory

• Book an award without calling reservations and incurring a $25 service charge

It’s a frustrating limitation that’s long been a discussion in the forums.

The subject even came up during the milepoint chat with Maya back in May:

7:45 Comment From Cameron:
Is there any plans to allow AAdvantage members to see/book partner awards online?

7:45 Maya:
I’m really glad we got this question. This is a priority for us and one that we’re working on now. I don’t want to get into “how the sausage is made,” but it is my hope to have this available by the end of the year.

That was the first indication that a fix was in the future.

Things started to look more imminent a couple of weeks ago when JonNYC posted this in the Traveling Better forums:

Booking of partners awards coming to AA.com– in bits (Alaska Airlines first)

On or about NOV10, we’ll be able to book awards on AA.com that incorporate AS.

More exciting; it’s being “advertised” (internally) as:

Quote:
…the start of incorporating all 27 airline partners on to AA.com

Well it looks likes the first big step has happened: over the weekend American updated their website and it’s now possible to book Alaska Airlines awards online.   This is from the Alaska Airlines partner page at AA.com:

Book award travel on Alaska Airlines/Horizon Air carriers on AA.com or contact Reservations at 1-800-882-8880 (or your local American Airlines office).

I played around a little with this new AA.com feature, and availability of awards from DFW to HNL on Alaska Airlines looked good.  I was even able to find some at the lowest, MileSAAver, redemption level.  Here’s a look at some screenshots:

Booking AAdvantage Award at AA.com for travel on Alaska Airlines

Detail of booking AAdvantage Award at AA.com for travel on Alaska Airlines

Hopefully they’ll expand this feature soon and you’ll be able to book awards with more partners.

So clearly a pattern has been established. Post your suggestions in one of the forums on Friday, and Maya and the AAdvantage team will work over the weekend and have it ready by Monday.

Nice!

This is off topic, but since it’s Monday, I thought you might be interested in a little distraction from your inbox.

Video artist Michael Konig released this HD video over the weekend: it’s series of time lapse sequences of photos taken from the International Space Station.

Sigh….hopefully there will come a day when we can use our AAdvantage Miles to travel to space…..

If you’re planning to burn some of your AAdvantage Miles this winter on a trip  to Kalamazoo, MI, Fort Smith, AR, Ottawa, Canada or  51 other destinations, you will be happy with this list from Citi of Reduced Mileage AAdvantage Awards available for fourth quarter 2011 travel:

Fourth quarter awards are valid for round trip travel originating in the 48 contiguous United States. Booking is valid September, 2011 – December 31, 2011 for travel from October 1, 2011 through December 31, 2011. All travel must be completed by December 31, 2011.

What you won’t find are reduced mileage awards to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vegas, Chicago, New York City, D.C. or Miami.   Not to malign any of the fine cities on the list (for the recored Montreal is one of my favorite cities and I used to call Tulsa home) but I’m not sure that there’s a lot of value spending 17,500 AAdvantage miles on a winter trip to Cedar Rapids, IA or most of the other destinations.  Go here for the full list.

A better deal might be this offer published over at Deals We Like: Earn up to 2,500 American Airline Miles when Redeeming Miles.

Citi/AAdvantage credit card members can earn 10% miles back when redeeming AAdvantage miles through November 1, 2011. The bonus miles is maxed at 2,500 miles which is not too much, but still better than nothing.

This may or may not be a targeted offer so no guarantees. Go here to read more.