In the miles and points community and among my family and friends, one of the biggest complaints I hear about American Airlines is the lack of MileSAAver award flight availability. What good are airline miles if you can’t use them? And because of this, folks are reluctant to go out of their way to earn AA miles.
Back in 2017, American Airlines promised to improve MileSAAver award availability. And, by most accounts, AA did just that. However, many of the MileSAAver awards are connecting flights instead of nonstop flights.
A few months ago, I was trying to help a friend book some award flights on AA. She said there were no flights for her desired dates. When I looked, I found plenty of MileSAAver availability. When I told her that I found some, she said “Oh, those don’t count, they’re not nonstop flights.” To her, paying cash for a nonstop flight was preferable to using miles for connecting flights or not going at all.
For families traveling with kids, are connecting flights on AA a deal breaker? Or does a “free” connecting flight using miles trump the convenience and speed of nonstop flights paid with cash?
The Trouble with Connecting Flights
There are so many reasons why people avoid connecting flights. The #1 reason is time. No matter where the connection is or how brief it is, it always adds time to get to your destination. When you’re traveling with kids, that extra time can be the difference between a smooth trip and a meltdown.
For families traveling with small children, the extra transition in a new airport and aircraft can be a huge pain. Not only do you have to lug the car seat/stroller to a connecting gate, you must wake up your kids and gather all their stuff twice during a trip instead of once. You have to determine not just how to entertain the kids on flights, but also during the airport layover time.
Luggage is more likely to get lost during a connection, and connecting in another city adds another layer of risk for flight delays and weather cancelations.
My Take on Connecting Flights
For me and my family, connecting flights are usually a minor inconvenience. But sometimes, they are a blessing.
On my recent spring break trip to Arizona, I used AA miles. Phoenix is a popular spring break destination due to baseball spring training, and cash tickets were running $350+. Using miles, I could only get connecting flights at the MileSAAver rate, but I had several different connections as options. I chose flights that had a 2-hour layover in Roswell, New Mexico going each direction. I had never been to Roswell, but I hoped the airport would have some interesting alien stuff.
About 3 months before my trip, AA notified me that it had changed my flights. We now had a connection in El Paso of just 30 minutes each way. I thought our connections would be stressful, but it turns out our connecting flights were on the same planes. We deplaned, used the restroom, and then got right back on. Our trip to Phoenix was only an hour longer than a direct flight. No big deal. (Of course, my kids are older. If I had an infant or toddler, I might feel differently).
Last year, when my family flew to Kauai, we had to have a connecting flight since AA doesn’t have a direct flight from DFW to Kauai. Having a few hours in Seattle was a good thing for us, as we got to stretch our legs and hangout in a Priority Pass lounge to refuel. On longer distances, my family prefers a connection.
Soon, I’ll be stalking the AA website for MileSAAver tickets for next year’s spring break. There’s a good chance we will have to have a connecting flight. If we were on my way to a cruise or another important event, we would try to avoid connecting flights. But unless the connection is very inconvenient and adds many hours to our travel time, connections aren’t a deal breaker for my family. I’d rather have a free flight on miles, even if it’s a connecting flight, then pay cash for a nonstop flight.
Getting Around Connecting Flights
The great thing about booking with AA miles is the flexibility. As long as your origin and destination remain the same, you can change the date of your ticket and change the flights for no additional cost. So, if you book a connecting flight on miles and you see a direct flight on miles open up, you can call AA and get moved to the better flight with no charge.
Also, in the months leading up to your trip, look for an email from AA about a schedule change. If your flight time changes more than 90 minutes, you can call and ask to get re-booked on a direct flight. This happened to my family a few years ago on our first trip to Oahu. We were booked on connecting flights, but then our first flight got moved out so that we would miss our connecting flight. Originally, AA tried to re-book us on another connecting flight with a horrible layover in the middle of the night. I pushed back, and we were ticketed on a direct flight between DFW and Honolulu.
Ways to Load Up on AA Miles
Lucky for all of us, two different banks (Barclays and Citi) offer credit cards that earn AA miles. Both the personal and business versions of AAdvantage Aviator cards by Barclays currently have 60k sign-up bonuses. See my post 120,000 AA Miles For Buying Two Packs of Gum for more info.
The Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite Master Card currently has a public sign-up bonus of 60,000 miles. The business version currently offers a 70,000-mile sign-up bonus. Both versions have an annual fee that is waived the first year. See this post on Doctor of Credit for potentially better links for these Citi cards.
Are connecting flights a deal breaker for your family? Have you shied away from AA miles due to lack of MileSAAver availability or connecting flights?
Click here to view various credit cards and available sign-up bonuses
Author: Nancy
Nancy lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband and three kids. Her favorite vacations include the beach, cruising and everything Disney.
Your article is misleading at best: there is a systematic and deliberate effort to prevent you to use the miles to get the normal flight you would have selected of paying. If you try to go from A to C, where the two airports have direct flights, the system will propose A-B-C flights. If you try B to C, it will come up with B-A-C.
It is not that A-C is valuable while A-B and B-C are not. Try any combination that is offered as a connecting flight as standalone and they will magically not show it but propose a new connection.
Of course you taking more flights than necessary is more expensive for AA, but the point is to make you give up and not use the miles.
Now this is not just for the AAsavers. The lower level redemption will require one or two needless red-eye and one 23 hours layover, the higher one will still sport unnecessary stops. I have seen LAX-MIA-LHR with 2 red-eye, or double connection to some forsaken city. But if you want to do MIA-LHR, they will promptly do a MIA-LAX-LHR.
Then you have the other horrible redemptions pushed whenever possible through British Airways, with terrible service and “fuel surcharges” as high as a normal ticket for sale.
The AAdvantage miles are really useless, unless you use them with a few partners or don’t mind the nonsense.
I stare at the poor FA that are pushing the credit cards, which will get you x thousand completely useless miles.
The only hope is that, when the next recession comes, they will have to undo all of this once again.
@Vik, I disagree that my article is misleading. I used AA miles this past summer to fly nonstop from DFW to Sydney. I also used AA miles for a spring break trip next year to Costa Rica with one stopover in Miami, which really isn’t unreasonable. Decent MileSAAver awards exist, but you have to book them early and be very persistent about looking for them every day. I stalk AA’s site every day for weeks when I’m ready to book award flights. Most “normal” people won’t go that far, they will look at award availability on one day and throw their arms up in despair and curse AA. But then there are those of us miles and points people who will keep searching and searching to find the redemption we need.
I really can’t stand connecting flights…my little one does not do well with the pressure in planes so having her change planes can be a nightmare. We have done it a few times, and it’s not worth it IMO. So I paid cash for one-way flights on AA to MCO (nonstop) and what do you know, AA emails me 3 days before our trip to tell me they changed our flight to a connecting flight and I was out of luck of getting on the 2 non-stop flights they had since they were booked. I was so annoyed to say the least but changed our tickets to at least connecting flights with the quickest flight times. I am not happy with AA at the moment.
@Stephanie Oh no! AA should at least give you a partial refund for having to move to connecting flights. That sucks. I’m guessing this is because of the Max airplane recall?
I have friends like that who want me to give them links to credit card offers that would assure them they could fly non-stop with saver awards?!! Plus they didn’t want a minimum spend over 1k. They finally settled for the Barclay AA cards, but aren’t happy about having a connection. Haven’t received the phone call yet to help them book. Do people think this is so easy for us or we always get the exact flights we want?!
This is why I don’t even discuss this hobby with friends. Many of us have been in this for a while, or at the very least spend lots of time reading/researching it becomes old hat. But if you step back for a minute, the learning curve for a newbie can be steep. Frankly, I don’t have time for that.
Right – my son doesn’t discuss with friends or at work. Hubby says I shouldn’t care what others think of our very frequent travel because they really don’t want to do the work or research that this takes anyway. I’m quickly learning that very few of us really are cut out for this!!
@Lynn It’s so true that when using miles we can’t always get the ideal flight we’d like. I don’t hear about that a lot on blogs. And because of that, some people are shocked that booking award flights isn’t a walk in the park.
I have noticed that in the past year or so there is more sAAver availability, but the schedule is usually ridiculous. It’ll be a really long 8-hour layover or some overnight layover or even two or three stops when it doesn’t make sense to have that many. I don’t mind a layover if it makes sense. But some of the flights I checked had us flying all of the place at crazy times. I searched for months before I found a decent flight for our TPA to BZM flights and snatched them up immediately. I imagine most people would not be quite so patient or persistent.
@Jennifer You’re right, patience and persistence are key when it comes to finding the right AA flights on miles. I stalk the AA website in the days leading up to my booking window, and I check multiple times a day. My husband will verify that I’m quite persistent (or crazy!) when it comes to booking award flights. 🙂
I have a lot of AA miles! I have not found a flight worth using them on yet. I don’t mind one connection but most of the trips I’ve researched have had multiple connections or overnights. My kids and I could handle it, my husband could not. He likes to get to our destination as quickly as he can. Now that our son is going to college outside Atlanta, I’m sure I’ll find a use for them. LOL.
@Michelle Maybe I’ve been lucky using DFW for a starting point. Have you tried searching at 11 months out? I hope you find a good use for your miles.
I really don’t like connecting flights. In fact, even though our home airport is CVG we will often drive to surrounding airports (CMH, IND, SDF) if it means a non-stop. Even with the extra drive it’s a wash when you factor in the time needed to connect, and often a time saver. Not to mention the ease of travel.
In the case of AA miles… well, it’s another currency to collect for free travel. Free with a connection beats non-stop with cash any day. I do draw the line at two connections though, that’s just irritating. I guess an exception would be a long international trip but generally I avoid it at all costs.
@projectx I draw the line at two connections as well.
For our flights on AA to Sydney this summer, we had the option of connecting flights or direct DFW to Sydney. I actually would have preferred a connecting flight to LA to stretch our legs and make the overseas flight not as long. However, we would have been at LAX between 10 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. central time, and with kids that’s a horrible time to be trying to stay awake and stretching. So, we went with the 17 hour nonstop flight instead.