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A few months ago, I mentioned planning a trip to the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Queens, New York on miles and points. I successfully booked three nights at a nearby hotel using points, saving us around $1350 compared to booking with cash. Now, it’s time to figure out flights.
Saving on Flights to the U.S. Open
Since we’re traveling over a holiday weekend, cash prices for flights aren’t great. The cheapest flight in economy is running around $400 round-trip per person. Southwest Airlines flights are even more expensive. Ouch. Even using my Capital One miles (approximately 40,000 per ticket) is not a great option.
So, I turn to American Airlines. And lo and behold, even on a holiday weekend, I see some Web Special awards for 6500 miles each way. Yay!
Unfortunately, these are not nonstop flights. But, several departure times and layover cities were available. I found return flights for the same price. The total is 13,000 AA miles + $11.20 in taxes round-trip per person. My husband and I each opened Bask Bank savings accounts that give us AA miles instead of interest, and those accounts are our main source of earning AA miles right now.
The great thing about AA Web Special awards is that I can cancel them and get my miles refunded. So, if we find a better deal on nonstop flights in the future with cash or with miles/points, we can book those without losing our miles.
Are you finding any great deals with AA Web Special awards lately?
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Author: Nancy
Nancy lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband and three kids. Her favorite vacations include the beach, cruising and everything Disney.
I recently had a bad experience with a AA web special. They changed the flight I booked to arriving 4 hours later. If it was a normal flight I could just call and get it changed. But since it was a web special my only choice was to accept the change or cancel and pay a higher price for the earlier arrival I needed. If your plans are flexible and you are OK with getting changed to leaving or arriving several hours earleir or later, or changing from a non stop to a 1 or 2 stop flight, then I guess these are OK. Something else I noticed was there was no option to choose to book some of the flights at a normal price. It’s almost like they were forcing you to accept the web special which leaves you at their mercy. I am a bit of an over-planner/control freak when it comes to travel, so these web special make me nervous.
Oh no! I’m sorry you had to deal with that. And you’re right, these web specials do replace the normal sAAver rates, which makes it harder to use partner airline awards like BA Avios.
I actually had a positive experience, albeit in a roundabout way. I booked a web special in First Class for my family at 30k person non-stop. AA cancelled the non-stop and gave us some routing with connections on a red-eye. I called and said I disagree with it and wanted a better routing since they changed this and they moved us to an afternoon flight. I originally booked my non-stop at the end of January (before the gas price surges). All first class is now 55k and up and they moved us without issue.
The reason this was a roundabout way was because the I noticed the non-stop was changed to connections in late Feb and I booked a single non-stop in economy with for 12.5k per person with AA miles on JetBlue. As luck would have it that non-stop was also cancelled yesterday. When I found out, I was able to get the AA routing changed at no additional cost and refund the JetBlue in miles.
Seems like the JetBlue partnership isn’t really ready yet since all flights don’t come over but if that routing would have held 12.5k for a cross-country non-stop is a great value in AA miles.
@jkered I’m glad you had a positive experience at a great rate!