Qantas’ partner American Airlines is selling miles in its frequent flyer program, AAdvantage, for the cheapest price we’ve seen for a while.
You can redeem AAdvantage miles for award seats with Qantas and other oneworld alliance partners.
This can be a useful hack for scoring cheap business class seats, as I’ve written about previously.
Until 30 June, American is offering miles for as low as US1.73 cents each – on par with the lowest we’ve ever seen.
As usual, the cost varies depending on how many you buy, with the ‘sweet spot’ being purchasing the maximum 150,000 miles and getting a 100,000-point bonus for a total cost of US$4,315.
If you choose to buy fewer miles, the price goes up a bit. For example, you can buy 101,000 miles and get a 45,000 bonus for US$2,917, which works out to be around US2 cents per mile.
You need to have been an AAdvantage member for at least 30 days to qualify for the promotion.
If you’re not a member, you can join for free now to be ready next time.
As I’ve written before, my favourite uses of AAdvantage miles are:
- Qantas domestic business class flights, which require 20,000 miles one-way no matter the distance within Australia, and can include layovers (if you paid US1.73 cents per mile, the cost is USD$346 or around AU$500 – a bargain on some routes)
- Anywhere in Australia to anywhere in New Zealand in business class for 25,000 miles one-way
- Australia to Asia in business class for 40,000 miles one-way (Brunei, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Japan).
You’ll also have the usual taxes and fees, which are typically quite low with American Airlines (eg. just $13 for a Melbourne-Perth Qantas business class booking).
Note that American allows you to put award seats on hold for five days before confirming a booking, so you can find an award seat first, get it held, then purchase the miles to pay for them.
More information is available on American Airlines’ site here.
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