Just a quick update to let you know that American has added a new feature to the website: now you can book FinnAir and AirBerlin AAdvantage partner awards online at AA.com.

Other options when booking an award online inlclude:

American Airlines (of course)
Alaska Airlines
British Airways
Hawaiian Airlines
Qantas

It’s good that they make it easy to earn AAdvantage Miles, but even better when they make it easier to use them!

(Shameless plug – don’t forget to vote in American’s AAdvantage Tips Facebook contest for a chance to win 5,000 AAdvantage Miles.  You can also vote for your favorite Expert Tip (I’m participating) and help me win some miles to give away on the blog and to donate to AA’s Miles for Kids.

Speaking of AAdvantage Tips: Don’t forget that Monday is AAdvantage Day at the Frugal Travel Guy. Go share your favorite AAdvantage advice in the comments section for a chance to win 2,500 AAdvantage Miles!)

Back in November of last year, American improved the award booking process by enabling you to use aa.com to book AAdvantage award travel on partner carrier Alaska Airlines.

They’ve said several times since, that it’s their goal to make it possible for AAdvantage members to book more partner awards online.  And back in January at the oneworld MegaDo the the American and AAdvantage teams gave an outline of some of the improvements they were working on, which included:

• By end of 1Q, customers will be able to book routes continuing BA flights using AAdvantage award miles on AA.com.

• Alaska already participating.
Other carriers on deck:
Qantas
Royal Jordanian
Finnair

Over the weekend, the web ninjas at AA.com deployed an update to the site and now you can search for AAdvantage Awards space on British Airway and hawaiian airlines!

Here’s a look of the list of participating Award Carriers:

Now when you search for an award, you’ll see the option to search AA and Partners:

Here’s a close up:

Here’s a look at the search results for a round-trip, DFW to London award, it includes flights on American Airlines (AA) and British Airways (BA):

As an aside, there’s lot of availability on British Airways, but then that might be a result of the hefty fees that attach to award tickets.

Here’s a look at the fees for round-trip flights on British Airways, between Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) and London (LHR), in economy:

Now here’s a look the fees for a similar, round-trip economy class award ticket between DFW and LHR on American Airlines:

I might consider paying the fee for a premium class ticket on their 747 from DFW to London, but not on any other aircraft and certainly not in coach. When you have a choice between American or British Airways, you’ll get much more value from your miles if you choose to redeem them on AA flights instead of BA.

Despite my grumbling about BA’s fees, it’s nice to be able to search their inventory for award space. My brother and I have been kicking around the idea of a trip to Istanbul and have had to use KVS Tools and the Qantas website to search for availability.

This makes it as easy as looking up a flight to Indianapolis.

Searching for flights to on Hawaiian Airlines is pretty easy too, here’s a search between Dallas and Honolulu:

And here’s a look at the fees:

$10 to Hawaii – what a bargain!

This is a great improvement. AAdvantage already offers more ways to use your miles and they continue to make it easier. A big high five to Team AAdvantage and the IT team 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…..

It’s been a slow week as far as AAdvantage offers go, it’s usually that way at the end of the month when offers expire and news ones haven’t been announced, but despite the lack of new AAdvantage offers, it’s been a busy week for contests. Here’s a new one from oneworld member and AAdvantage partner, Cathay Pacific.

The start of their new non-stop service from Chicago to Hong Kong is just over a month away and to promote the new route they’re offering a new Facebook contest with the winner receiving two round trip tickets to Hong Kong. This new promotion is a little more involved than your usual sweepstakes and in order to win you’ll have to tap your creative side:

Use your artistic talents for a chance to win 2 tickets to Hong Kong!

To celebrate our new nonstop service from Chicago to Hong Kong, we’re hosting a competition on Facebook to blend these two iconic cities into one. Blend the cities’ skylines, monuments or streets using photography, sculpture, illustrations or any other medium you would like – the options are as wide as your imagination.

Grand Prize: The winner will get 2 tickets to Hong Kong and a cultural Feng Shui architectural tour, courtesy of the Hong Kong Tourism Board. In addition, the winning entry will be featured on the Cathay Pacific Facebook fan page and will be on display at select airport locations.

Here’s the short description of how it works: create your work of art, submit it to their contest page on Facebook and let people vote on it. The ten entries with the greatest number of votes will then advance to a final round with the winner being selected by artist Maria Lobo. To read more visit the Cathay Pacific  Facebook page.

On another topic, you’ve probably already read this, but if not, check out the Frequently Flying to see a vintage American Airlines’ 747-100 seatmap which includes dining table seating in First Class.   Also, read this store from the View from the Wing blog about a possible  oneworld MegaDO.  If you’re not sure what a oneworld MegaDO is, think of it as AAdvantage camp/oneworld palooza.

Have a great weekend.

“Qantas Club” Photo credit: Bentley Smith on Flickr

Last year I seriously considered joining Qantas Club instead of buying a membership at the Admirals Club for one big reason: Qantas Club members can access the Admirals Club when traveling on American Airlines and British Airways lounges when traveling on British Airways.

So even if you never travel on Qantas, a membership in their lounge is useful when you travel on American Airlines. An Admirals Club membership won’t get you access to any partner lounges, even when traveling on a partner airline (recently that changed and Admirals Club members can get into the Alaska Airlines Board Room when traveling on certain flights).

In the past it wasn’t a problem for me, I had AAdvantage Platinum status and was able to to access oneworld partner lounges when traveling on a international itinerary, but my travel dropped off last year and so because I dropped down to AAdvantage Gold status, I no longer have access to oneworld lounges when traveling.

I still have my Admirals Club membership, so it’s not a big problem except when I connect at London Heathrow to a British Airways flight. Heathrow has an Admirals Club lounge in Terminal 4, but British Airways flights leave out of Terminal 5 and you have to clear through security when transferring between the two terminals. So now that I don’t have access to any of the BA lounges in Terminal 5, a Qantas Club membership would solve that problem. I enjoy having access to free wifi, a place to brush my teeth and clean up a bit, and the snacks, but in the end I decided against it mainly because of the cost. I just couldn’t justify the extra cost of a Quantas Club membership in order to use the BA lounges a couple of times each year. I do miss the British Airways bacon sandwiches though!

But for others though, a Qantas Club membership might make more sense. Particularly so now that Quantas is having a 72 membership sale:

By joining The Qantas Club, you’ll be welcome to relax, dine, freshen up or even catch up on work before you fly at more than 25 international and domestic departure lounges around Australia when travelling on an eligible flight#. Plus, you’ll be welcome at more than 130 Qantas Clubs, International Qantas Business Lounges and partner and associated airline departure lounges around the world.

You’ll also enjoy exclusive membership privileges such as a chip enabled membership card allowing you to access faster, smarter check-in at selected domestic airports, as well as the ability to request On Departure Upgrades using points within Australia and receive International Priority Check-in when travelling on a Qantas International flight.

However, during this 72 hour sale you can buy a membership for $470 AUD instead of the usual $840 AUD. The fine print though is this:

Rates are…based upon a tax residency of Australia for Australian Income Tax purposes.

I went ahead and tried to sign up using my U.S. address and it let me, so I’m not sure how that is defined or what qualifies as residency, so that a question better answered by someone that’s familiar with that issue. But if you do qualify as an Australian resident for AU Income Tax purposes, you might want to take advantage of this sale before it end at 11:59pm AEST on 30 June 2011.

Go here to join or to read the complete terms and conditions.

“The Savage Shrimp Truck on Koloa” Photo credit: _e.t on Flickr

AAdvantage 30th Anniversary Deal of the Day update: Through May 31, 2011, earn 30 AAdvantage Miles for donations to American’s Miles for the Cure campaign, which supports Susan G. Komen for the Cure or to American’s Miles In Support of All Who Serve campaign, which supports USO programs.  Go here for details and don’t forget to submit your name in the daily drawing for 30,000 AAdvantage Miles.

Update:  It’s official, the updated page is live now. American Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines have been codeshare partners for some time now and AAdvantage members have been able to earn miles on select fares on Hawaiian Airlines flights within Hawaiian Islands and to redeem miles on flights between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii.

Credit netsc in the FlyerTalk forums, but it’s possible that coming soon, you’ll be able to earn miles on all fares within the Hawaiian Islands and between Hawaii and Australia, Japan, Korea, Philippines and Tahiti.

Earn miles when flying on Hawaiian Airlines marketed and operated flights for travel on an eligible published fare ticket within the Hawaiian Islands or between Hawaii and Australia, Japan, Korea, Philippines and Tahiti (excludes travel between the Continental US and Hawaii). Miles are also earned on Hawaiian Airlines codeshare flights operated by American Airlines.

Within the Hawaiian Islands

⁺Effective May 25, 2011

International – Effective May 25, 2011

*Bookings in A represent an Economy Class fare with an upgrade to First Class and do not earn the Class of Service Bonus.

You’ll also now be able to redeem your miles on all Hawaiian Airlines flights and not just the flights between the U.S. mainland and Hawaii.

Use AAdvantage miles to book award travel on all Hawaiian Airlines flights (including travel between the U.S. and Hawaii) with the AAdvantage participating airline awards. These awards allow travel on any combination of AAdvantage participating carriers.

These changes haven’t haven’t been posted to American’s website yet, but you can find a Google cached copy of an updated version of the Hawaiian Airlines AAdvantage Partner page with these changes.

Obviously these changes aren’t effective until American either announces them or publishes them to their website, but if you planning to book some travel to, from or within Hawaii soon, I’d wait a day or two and see what happens.

Christmas #7 by Kevin Dooley on Flickr

(EXTENDED NOW TILL FEBRUARY 15, 2011) Wow, it seems a little early, but the holiday offers from retailers are already starting to arrive.  Avis is offering up to 3,000 bonus miles and a 35% discount through then end of the year.  Budget is offering quadruple AAdvantage miles and a 30% discount when you rent a car from them.

Here are the Avis details:

Save up to 35% with every rental plus earn up to 3,000 American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles

• At participating Avis airport locations in the U.S. and Canada from September 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010 FEBRUARY 15, 2011

• Rent for 1-2 days and earn 1,000 bonus miles

• Rent for 3 days or more and earn 3,000 bonus miles

• Use coupon # MUAA022 to earn your bonus miles

• In addition to your everyday savings of up to 35% when you use AWD # K817165

Here are the details for the Budget offer:

Save up to 30% off and earn even more with American Airlines AAdvantage quadruple miles

•At participating Budget airport locations in the U.S. and Canada from September 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010 FEBRUARY 15, 2011

•Earn more with our quadruple miles offer — that’s 200 miles per rental day

•Use coupon coupon # MUAZ034 to earn your bonus miles

•Save up to 30% off every rental with BCD # U072411

Go here to for the terms and conditions.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS7oJNozQZM
Qantas Australia – I Still Call Australia Home

Qantas was founded on November 16, 1920 (which is also Oklahoma Statehood Day, in case you’re a fan of trivia) and to mark the occasion you’ll earn double AAdvantage Miles on qualifying tickets booked on Qantas or American Airlines codeshare flights between the U.S., Australia, or New Zealand during March, April or May of 2011 on tickets purchased between November 10, 2010 and January 31, 2011.

In order to take advantage of this offer, you’ll need to register before making your travel plans using promotion code: QF90Y – make sure you check your fare class, to make sure it’s eligible to earn AAdvantage Miles, not all fare classes earn full miles, some don’t qualify for any miles at all (I learned this lesson from Qantas a few years ago).

Here’s the details from American’s website:

Dates:
Book your trip between November 10, 2010, and January 31, 2011 (dates inclusive).
Travel between March 1, 2011, and May 31, 2011 (dates inclusive).

In celebration of Qantas’ 90th Anniversary, AAdvantage members can earn double miles when traveling on a qualifying ticket on any Qantas Airways or American Airlines flight number between the US and Australia or New Zealand during March, April and May 2011.

For every trip you take during the promotion period, you can earn double miles. Just book your trips before January 31, 2011 and register before travel. The extra miles you can earn are in addition to your standard base miles and class of service bonus.

Experience Qantas’ A380 on selected services between the US and Australia. Onboard, you can enjoy Qantas’ award winning products, including Premium Economy, voted best in class at the 2010 Skytrax World Airline Awards.

Offer valid for residents of the US and Canada.

Register before travel by selecting the red “REGISTER” button.

The A380 by Qantas. Enjoy the Journey

Go here to register, here for more details or to read the terms and conditions.

(This YouTube video is from the “I Still Call Australia Home” Qantas advertising campaign.  The actual song was originally written and performed by Australian Peter Allen: some love it, some hate it, but it occupies a unique place in popular Australian culture and this commercial was wildly successful.)

Chauffeur Rocky by Sunrise on Seven from Flickr

I wasn’t aware of this, but Avis has partnered with WeDriveU to offer Avis Chauffeur Drive service for $36.80 an hour, with a three hour minimum, not including the cost of the rental.   If you make use of this service before December 31, 2010, you can earn 1,500 bonus AAdvantage miles.

Hiring a chauffeur is probably not something that everyone will want to do, but if you’re in New York for a day on business, and the schedule is tight, it’s a lot cheaper than spending $80 an hour with a typical car service, and if your times is valuable, it’s a lot more productive than waiting for a taxi or riding the subway.

Here’s how Avis explains the benefits:

Convenience: Take calls, prepare for meetings or relax while your chauffeur navigates. WeDriveU will pickup and return your Avis car and drive for meetings, golf, a night out, sightseeing and more.
Cost Savings: Pay for a chauffeur only when you need one. 30 – 40% less than a limousine/sedan service.
Safety: Eliminate distracted driving with insured & certified chauffeurs.
Low profile: Understated transportation suits your image.

You have to be an Avis Preferred member to take advantage of this offer, you can go here to sign up, and you have to mention coupon code MUAA109 when you set up your travel arrangements with Avis. Here are the details of the Avis Chauffeur Drive – Earn Up To 1,500 Miles offer:

Award: 1,500 bonus miles
Dates: Now – 12/31/2011
Offer: The next time you travel, enjoy a worry-free trip with Avis Chauffeur Drive by WeDriveU – the perfect way to get to your destinations. Be driven by a chauffeur in your Avis rental car for a few hours or a few days.

Restrictions:
1,500 bonus miles valid on a qualifying rental of one or more consecutive days at participating Avis airport locations in the U.S. that participate in Chauffeur Drive.
Avis Chauffeur Drive must be added to rental and three or more consecutive chauffer hours must be taken in order to receive bonus miles.
Bonus miles offer valid on all car groups.
An advance reservation is required by calling 800-272-5839.
Offer may not be used with any other coupon, promotion or offer except your AWD discount.
The savings of up to 25% off car rental applies to the time and mileage charges only.
Taxes, concession recovery fees, vehicle license recovery fee, customer facility charges ($10/contract in CA) and fuel charges are extra.
Optional items such as LDW ($35.99/day or less) and other surcharges may apply and are extra.
Please mention coupon number MUAA109 to take receive bonus miles offer.
Offer may not be used in conjunction with any other promotion or offer.
Offer is subject to vehicle availability at the time of rental and may not be available on some rates at some times, including some online rates at Avis.com.
Car rental return restrictions may apply.
Offer subject to change without notice.
Renter must be an Avis Preferred member.
Renter must meet Avis age, driver and credit requirements. Minimum rental age may vary by location. An additional daily surcharge may apply for renters under 25 years old.
Rental must begin by December 31, 2011.

WeDriveU Terms and Conditions:
Chauffeur Drive applies to rental of of 3+ consecutive chauffeur hours in a single day.
$36.80 per hour for Chauffer Drive Service (minimum of 3 consecutive hours of service)
Chauffeur rate excludes cost of Avis vehicle, gratuity, gas, tolls, parking and other charges.
Not valid for contract accounts.
Based on availability.
WeDriveU bills client directly for chauffeur. Avis bills directly for vehicle.
Some restrictions apply.

MasterCard cake by Alan Chan on Flickr

I read an interesting article the other day about how the airlines were seeing increased revenue from ancillary fees including money they earn when passengers book hotels, car rentals, even airport transfers using the airlines’ websites.

“there has been dramatic year-on-year growth in the percentage of passengers using airline websites to book hotels, up from 21% in 2009, to 38% in this year’s survey; car rental, 19% to 35%. Similar growth is being recorded in other ancillary revenue streams including purchase of travel insurance, bus and train tickets and duty free items.”

American has been pretty aggressive this year, offering a 250 bonus AAdvantage Miles for making a hotel reservation using AA.com.  Now they’ve teamed up with MasterCard and are offering up to a $50 MasterCard Gift Card for making your travel plans at AA.com and paying with your MasterCard.  Here are the details:

Purchase air-only and receive a $10 MasterCard gift card

Purchase air + another travel item (car, hotel, or activity) and receive a $25 MasterCard gift card

Purchase air + 2 other travel items (car, hotel, or activity) and receive a $50 MasterCard gift card

To sign up for your gift card, go here.  You have to purchase your travel by December 15, 2010 but you have till March 31, 2011 to complete your travel.