If you’ve put all your eggs in the Qantas and Velocity basket, you might be surprised to know that many overseas programs offer unbeatable value with miles. One shining example is American Airlines AAdvantage. This region-based loyalty scheme has many sweet spots. Plus, it’s easy to buy miles on sale and use them for travel on oneworld airlines.
How does flying Qantas Business Class from Sydney to Perth for around AU$500 sound? With what Qantas charges, that’s sometimes more than 75% off the cash rate! If you’re ready to step up your points hacking game, then we’re ready to help.
Also, for a limited time, you can transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to Marriott Bonvoy with a 50% bonus. Then, you can send those points to AAdvantage for cheaper redemptions. Read more about this amazing hack, which finishes on 30 September 2022.
Also, see the latest ‘Buying AAdvantage miles’ promotions →
How do I buy AAdvantage miles?
If you’re an AAdvantage member with an account more than 30-days old, it’s very easy to buy miles. (If you don’t have an AAdvantage account, sign up now to take part in future offers).
- Head to the AAdvantage buy/gift/transfer miles landing page.
- Log in to your AAdvantage account when prompted.
- Choose the number of miles you wish to purchase.
- Enter your payment information to complete checkout.
- Your purchased AAdvantage miles should be ready for use almost instantly.
You’re allowed to buy up to 200,000 AAdvantage miles per calendar year, with no limits on the actual number of transactions you perform. The rack rates start at US$64.50 for 2,000 miles to US$6450 for 200,000 miles (3.225 US cents per mile). You’ll notice that it doesn’t normally get cheaper when you buy more miles.
But when there is a promotion on, you tend to get bigger discounts on higher purchase amounts. That’s when buying a big stash of miles could be advantageous.
We value AAdvantage miles at 1.70 cents (AUD) each. When purchasing and using AAdvantage miles, we’d suggest you try and exceed this value per point. It shouldn’t be too hard for Business and First Class redemptions.
Note that the transaction is run by points.com, which is based in the US. You’ll get charged an international transaction fee since the purchase amount is in USD.
Where can I go with AAdvantage miles?
Turns out, plenty of places! Here are some of the sweet spot awards for travellers from Australia and NZ:
| Example redemption | AAdvantage miles required | Base cost with a 45% discount |
|---|---|---|
| Any Qantas domestic Business Class flight | 20,000 | $352 USD |
| To New Zealand in Qantas Business Class | 25,000 | $440 USD |
| To Fiji in Qantas or Fiji Airways Business Class | 30,000 | $528 USD |
| To Asia in Qantas/Cathay Pacific/Japan Airlines Business Class | 40,000 | $704 USD |
| To Asia in Qantas/Japan Airlines First Class | 60,000 | $1056 USD |
| To the US in Qantas/AA Business Class | 80,000 | $1408 USD |
| To Europe in oneworld/Etihad Business Class | 85,000 | $1496 USD |
*All redemption prices are in USD, one-way, and don’t include booking fees, taxes, and other charges
Using AAdvantage miles for Qatar Airways
If you want to fly Qatar Airways Qsuites from Australia to Europe or the USA, then AAdvantage miles are a great option, thanks to low pricing from Australia to Europe.
Also consider that Sydney-Doha-London would cost 159,000 Qantas Points, or only 85,000 AAdvantage miles. You’ll also pay significantly less in carrier charges and taxes – we’re talking hundreds of dollars per passenger. It’s a true win-win.
Using AAdvantage miles for Qantas
Let’s loop back to our Qantas Sydney-Perth Business Class example.
- Say you’re planning two return trips, so you buy 80,000 miles for US$1,419 when there is a 45% discount.
- Since each flight requires 20,000 miles, the base cost is US$354.75 per one-way flight.
- Taxes are US$18.20 each way.
So in total, you’re only spending US$372.95 (~AU$521) for a flight worth AU$2,572. Taking taxes and currency exchanges into account, you’re getting an incredible 12.73 cents (AUD) per AAdvantage mile!
Why should I purchase AAdvantage miles?
- For oneworld partner redemptions: American Airlines is a member of the oneworld alliance, so you can redeem AAdvantage miles across any oneworld airline, including Qantas, Cathay Pacific, British Airways and Qatar Airways.
- Very helpful award hold policy: with AA, it’s possible to hold award bookings for up to five days (if booking more than two weeks from departure) or 24 hours (if booking closer). You can pencil in plans and then confirm the ticket once you’ve bought or transferred the miles into your account. This policy makes it super easy to make risk-free redemption holds while you re-confirm the total cost of making your booking and buying the points.
- More generous point promotions than Qantas and Velocity: AAdvantage offers the option of purchasing miles with frequent bonuses and discounts. With Qantas Frequent Flyer and Velocity, points purchases are expensive.
Buying AAdvantage miles vs earning miles
The most common way to acquire AAdvantage miles for Australian and NZ travellers – outside of flights – would be to either:
- Purchase them (the purpose of this guide).
- Earn them through hotel stays, car rental or the AAdvantage online shopping mall for purchases from US retailers.
Marriott Bonvoy is also a points transfer partner.
Purchasing miles directly from American Airlines is usually the most cost-effective method if you have a specific flight you’re targeting.
We only recommend purchasing miles for topping up an account or buying the full chunk of miles if you have a specific redemption in mind, but not to purchase speculatively. Your preferences may differ though!
Factors to consider when purchasing AAdvantage miles
Just like any miles purchase deal, you’ll need to consider the following factors:
- The cost of the miles required for your intended route.
- The US$30-40 phone booking fee for some partners.
- The AUD/USD exchange rate, which is always in flux.
- The taxes that accompany the booking.
- The time taken to research award availability and make the booking.
- AAdvantage accounts under 30 days old aren’t permitted to buy or gift miles, so register for an account now to take advantage of future promotions.
- AAdvantage usually lets you purchase or gift 200,000 miles (not including the bonus miles on offer) per year per account. Ensure you’re buying into a deal when you have a redemption in mind or you think it’s a really good one.
- Be sure to get to the checkout page to see the full cost of your purchase, including all USD fees and taxes.
How do I book with AAdvantage miles?
You can book online using your miles if you’re looking to fly British Airways, Qantas, Qatar Airways and a few other airline partners. Otherwise, contact the (usually excellent) call centre for the region, which happens to be in Fiji.
From Australia, you can call them on (02) 9101 1948, selecting Option 2 for award travel.
Summing up
AAdvantage miles are great to consider if you want an extra source of points in addition to a credit card (or if you can’t apply for one). Anyone with an account can simply buy the number of miles needed and use them for great-value flights. Better yet, AAdvantage awards are quite reasonably-priced.
With a Business Class flight from Australia to Europe pricing at a flat 85,000 miles – and an annual purchase limit of 200,000 miles per account – a couple can buy enough miles for a return trip (when there are bonus points offers). Happy days!
Interested? See the latest ‘Buying AAdvantage miles’ promotions →
Qatar premium not currently visible on the AA website. May be a temporary glitch.
IME Qantas releases more award seats to its own QF FF members than can be accessed through partner FF programs such as American or Alaska or British Airways, etc.
So, if you are already invested in collecting QF points and your goal is to redeem those points for QF premium award seats you are sitting in the right place in terms of the availability of those award seats – QF points are you most powerful tool to optimise access to a limited resource of QF premium award seats. QF will also release award seats on QF further ahead of time than some partners, so you can enjoy more opportunity to book when seats are first made available approx. 11 months in advance.
This is not that unusual – Singapore Airlines makes more premium award seats available to its own KrisFlyer members than its partners, Virgin seems to get more access than United, and United more access than Avianca, etc.
Qatar appears to release the same number of reward seats regardless of partner airline. You are unlikely to find an advantage in availability by searching through American rather than Qantas or British Airways. (I have seen some exceptions to this with Alaska accessing more inventory for maple DOH-USA, but at a huge cost in Alaska miles).
The big issue with Qatar is the carrier charges. If you access through Qantas you are getting to get rightly royally hosed – by way of example redeem QF points for BKK-DOH-ZRH in first-class one way the surcharges approach AUD1000 each. The same same booked through American attract just a USD57 cash co-payment (also AA charges 90,000 miles rather than 149,000 QF points). If you are looking for multiple seats then those carrier charges can become huge!
If your focus is Qatar go sign up with British Airways. Then you can run awards searches. The output shows the number of award seats for any available flight. (Tick first class or else those awards won’t show).
Incidentally, there some amazing deals using Avios, the points fo BA and Qatar, as Qatar integrates into the Avios fold.
I have seen one way business class MEL-(DOH)-MAD for 70,000 Avios and SIN-(DOH)-MAD for 57,000 Avios plus a few hundred bucks in co-payment.
I cannot generally find want I on Qantas, so I’m having to look at non OneWorld options.
Getting in / out of Australia is a problem. So, for Europe consider a cheap flight to Asia (e.g. Scoot to Singapore and book card flights rom there, if you don’t have any Singapore points for Virgin points to kick start the journey.
From Asia it is also 40k business to the middle east (AMM/TLV/BEY – my focus). So for me I would happily spend 40/50k to anywhere in Asia then 40/50k to anywhere in the middle east then if Europe is my final destination just pay for a flight to the final destination. That way for pretty much the same 85k to fly direct to Europe I can spend a few days in 2 different locations on the way. Imagine seeing Ankor Wat and Petra included in the price of going to Europe.
Going to USA I think Alaska or Cathy are generally better as finding flights to the east coast is pretty hard on AA
To note that in some cases you could be better off purchasing Alaska miles rather than AA miles, depending upon the route and airline and relative costs of the points promotion. This is because for some premium award seats you need fewer AS miles than AA miles – thus 55,000 not 80,000 to cross the Pacific in business class, etc. There is the potential added bonus of a free stopover.
It comes down got how much the miles cost during the relative bonus offers.
Brandon – I’ll leave to expand on the details of such if you deem relevant to your readership.