Qantas partner American Airlines is selling points in its frequent flyer program, AAdvantage, for the cheapest price we’ve seen since December.
You can redeem these points – “AA miles” – for 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 28 April, American is offering miles for as low as US1.81 cents each. 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 115,000-point bonus.
The cost of these 265,000 miles is US$4,787 – or US1.81 cents per mile, which is a very good price historically (the lowest we’ve ever seen is US1.72 cents per mile).
If you choose to buy fewer miles, the price goes up a bit. For example, you can buy 125,000 miles and get a 75,000 bonus for US$3,994 (US 2 cents per mile) or you can buy 100,000 miles and get a 60,000-point bonus for US$3201 (also US2 cents per mile).
As usual, 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 and buy the miles in the last week of the offer period.
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
- Australia to New Zealand in business class for 25,000 miles one-way (again, this could be all the way from Perth for the same price)
- 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.
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.
Check out my previous post for more detailed information about how this works or go straight to the American Airlines site to buy the miles here.
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