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.