American Airlines allows one-way award travel

American Airlines is letting its 60-million-plus AAdvantage members book award travel on a one-way basis, which can save miles and open up more seats. Each one-way segment can be booked for half the miles of a round-trip award.

American is not the first airline to do this. Alaska Airlines, for instance,  allows mix-and-match awards. But American, with the largest mileage program in the world, is by far the biggest.

Tim Winship, editor and publisher of FrequentFlier.com, said American’s action wasn’t “a game-changer,” but it was a “welcome step in the right direction” that can help frequent fliers circumvent some award bottlenecks.

“My hope is that it will light a fire under other airlines,” he said.

Rob Friedman, president of AAdvantage marketing programs, said the change “gives our customers a lot more options and a lot more control when booking award travel.”

How it works: Under  “One-Way Flex Awards,” phased in over the weekend, you can,  for instance, use 12,500 miles  to fly outbound on a restricted domestic MileSAAver award and 25,000 miles to return on an AAnyTime award. That’s helpful if  MileSAAver seats aren’t available for the return flight. Under the old system, you would have had to use 50,000 miles for a round-trip AAnytime award for that trip.

You can also pamper yourself with a pricey Business or First-Class award seat on the way out and return on a more miserly economy-class award.

The downsides: Extra choices can add extra steps to booking award travel.  And think twice before booking a one-way award flight and a paid return; one-way fares are often more than half the round-trip fare. As for overall availability of award seats, Friedman said a record 9.7 percent of American’s seats last year were flown on AAdvantage awards.  But he declined to give figures for this year, saying “that’s not something we typically share, except annually.”

The bottom line: “American will be giving away more free tickets as a result of this policy change, and that’s good for consumers” Winship said.

—Jane Engle, assistant Los Angles Times Travel editor

[Photo: Rick Gershon / Getty Images]

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 11, 2009 at 8:17 pm by Jane Engle and is filed under Airline travel, Alaska, Business Travel, Deals, Frequent Flier, Global, Luxury Travel, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.