March 19
American emailed me today about their new Award Map, and I am kinda digging it! It reminds me of the old Travelocity Dream Map (or something like that) where I would put in how much I wanted to spend from my home airport and it would show me where I could go.
With this American Airlines Award Map you can now get a real-time map of available reward destinations simply by entering travel dates, number of travelers, the type of destination (beach, ski, golf) or region (Hawaii, Mexico, Europe, Asia, etc.), and the number of miles you want to spend. By selecting “more options” you can also indicate the type of cabin you want to fly (main or business/first) and whether or not to include partner airlines.
This tool is absolutely fantastic for families who want to go somewhere on certain dates, but want to brainstorm where their miles can take them based on availability. It certainly saves time over searching city by city. For example, you can say you want to go to a beach on spring break or they want to go to Europe for a week in June, and you will get back all the results on a nice and pretty map. Just type in your departure airport, preferred type of destination, dates, the number of miles you have, and let the map come back with results.
From there it is just a simple click to the screen where you can select flights with your AAdvantage miles. I’ve been playing with the map now for the past half-hour and I really like it so far. What do you think? Had you seen this before? Useful for families or just a cool toy?
This is exactly what I wanted. I wish a third party can come up with one that would check all FF programs and maybe even include UR, MR, TY too.
David, that is exactly what I was thinking as I played with it….my thoughts turned to milewise.com!
Love this…makes me consider switching to American since I just spent 2 hours on with Delta reps trying to plan an award trip to S. Korea and China. Very similar to Google Flights, which is a must for anyone who has flexibility.
I’ve always wished for someone to create something that would tell me ALL the flights I can take with X amount of points. The same goes for hotel stays as well. I have the “partner airlines” box checked but no mention of CX to JPN.
@mommypoints,
milewise dont have AA on there. which is a huge hit for me. But I do LOVE their ability to consolidate all accounts and for your name your own value for each.
Now days, I only have “dates” for vacation. It’s a pain to try to find possible vacation “spots”. As Ken said, would love an all in consolidated Flight/hotel rewards search tool.
wish it only showed saver level awards.
It is a fun tool the only problem is that there is no way to find low level awards from the US to South America (Sao Paulo – GRU specifically). They have it as 40,000 miles but they are never available. So, why bother?
@Santastico,
It does show low level rewards. I just tried for next week and it pulls up GIG at 40K round trip.
This search is only good for exact dates…no flex date search…
Just what I needed, yet another thing to spend hours playing around on!
Agreed that this is a huge step in the right direction. Seems like only a matter of time until alliances start doing their own…*fingers crossed*
Wow, that’s great. Super useful for booking awards when we used to have to search city by city! Now I can check for Caribbean island availability every weekend last minute and use my BA miles to book last minute since they don’t charge a close-in booking fee at all.
David, right, but the functionality reminds me of something they should/would love!
This is very cool and useful as well! I already thought that AA was the easiest airline on which to find award flights, but now they’ve made it even better! I wish the other airlines would step up and try to compete on this aspect of customer service.
Just tried it out…Did Aug 17th-Aug30th from NYC to anywhere in the US for 100,000 pts/4 people. It brought up Pitt, Columbus, DC, and Tampa. Really? Then, did Europe for the same dates 250,000 pts/ 2 people. It gave me a few places…Madrid, London, Dublin (nothing in Eastern Europe at all) and all awards started at 240,000 pts. Seems kinda…useless.
This is great. It does remind me a lot of the Kayak.com Explore tool, except instead of pricing in cash it prices in AA miles. Awesome tool! I hope other airlines follow suit.
[...] There was a lot of news last week when American Airlines announced a new feature that maps potential award flight destinations. Simply enter your home, where you want to go, dates, and how many miles you want to use. American will report back with various destinations that fit your needs. (HT to Mommy Points.) [...]
[...] There was a lot of news last week when American Airlines announced a new feature that maps potential award flight destinations. Simply enter your home, where you want to go, dates, and how many miles you want to use. American will report back with various destinations that fit your needs. (HT to Mommy Points.) [...]