Even if you're not flying American – and given the lengthy delays lately, we don't blame you – American AAdvantage miles can be insanely valuable. You can fly great partner airlines like Japan Airlines, Qatar Airways, Etihad, and more, getting huge savings on first and business class.
But some recent changes at American Airlines has made it a bit trickier. The airline is slowly rolling out a new award search engine, which can be frustrating, to say the least.
For starters, it doesn't allow you to filter your results to only display nonstop flights. And though it finally introduced a month-long calendar view – a must when you're searching for hard-to-find award availability – it's still a downgrade from its predecessor.
But don't fret, the older, superior search is not gone forever. Bookmark this link and head here before starting any award search with your AAdvantage miles. Every time, it will pull up the older version with more features.
Not only does this older search engine allow you to filter for non-stop flights, but you can also select which awards you want to display within the calendar view. So if you're focused on finding a business class MileSAAver award for that non-stop flight to Hong Kong for 70,000 miles, this version of the AA award search is clearly more powerful.
Some flights, like domestic trips within the U.S., still automatically default to this older search engine even when you simply navigate from AA.com. But bookmark the link to be sure you always get the better view.
Bottom Line
American might eventually kill off this backdoor way to search for awards using its better, older engine. But until it does, make sure you use this link to have more powerful features at your fingertips.
The link you provided does not take me to the old award search engine; it goes to the new award search engine.
Hi Mary, this story is a few years old. Unfortunately, American has since removed this old search engine altogether https://thriftytraveler.com/news/airlines/american-kills-off-powerful-award-search-engine/