I have written extensively promoting flexible points currencies, due to the numerous ways you can successfully redeem them for value with airlines and hotels. But there are certain programs where flexible points aren't as useful, and one of those is American Airlines. Their points are hard to come by, thus making them valuable in and of their own. So when a trip plan arose that required American Airline miles, of which I had few, I had to use all the tools at my disposal, as well as get a little risky, to pull it off.
The plan
I decided to plan a trip to St. Kitts in January, because.... Cleveland winters! I want to check out the Park Hyatt St Kitts, where I will use 135K World of Hyatt points instead of $5030 for 4 nights, a splendid 3.7 cents/point redemption.
But this is not a(nother) gushing Hyatt post, instead the tale of finding award flights. There are not many options when flying to Robert L. Bradshaw International Airport (SKB).
Of those, American has the most options. In fact, American has a bit of a stranglehold on the Caribbean. They offer over 800 weekly flights to 35 Caribbean destinations. Here's the extent of the routes from Miami and Charlotte.
So as award flights go, finding something on American was the goal. I found some availability to and from Cleveland on limited dates for 10K points per person each way. This helped me narrow down my dates.
One problem, I only had a remnant of American Airlines miles earned from limited past flights, about 7,000. So how was I going to come up with the 40K points needed for 2 round trip tickets?
The Solution (kind of)
American Airlines is a recent transfer partner of Bilt Rewards, but no other transferrable currency. This makes their points highly coveted. They can only be earned through flying American, spending on their co-branded credit cards, and some ancillary options I will touch on below. I had none of those options at my immediate disposal.
Now I know what you're thinking, having read my post about airline alliances previously. "Why don't you just book the flights through British Airways, a One World partner, which you can easily transfer points to from Chase, Amex, and others?" Well, because British Airlines prices award flights by segment, my one stop itinerary would be double the points if booked through BA.
The allure of using 40K miles instead of 80K was too desirable, so I decided to roll the dice. I applied for two credit cards. The Barclays AAdvantage Aviator Business Mastercard, with a sign up bonus of 60K AA miles when spending $2000 in 3 months at the time and the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Business credit card with a sign up of 65K AA miles when spending $4000 in 4 months. These bonuses would give me more than enough miles to use for my St. Kitts trip as well as build up a miles stash in this currency. With British Airways showing 7 award seats left on both legs of my itinerary, I now just had to hope the seats would be there when my bonus points hit in about 30 days.
The waiting is the hardest part
Weeks went by with no issue. The awards still showed on AA and on BA with 7 seats on both legs.
Until they didn't. With about 10 days to go, the return flight dropped to 5 seats available on BA, and subsequently the AA miles required for that leg increased from 10k to 12.5K. Not the end of the world. I started to get antsy, though, so I decided to put two seats on hold for this return flight that was starting to see decreased availability. American will allow you to put award flights on hold for 5 days at no cost, so my intention was to do that x2 to hold the flights for 10 days until my points posted.
Alternative point earning
At about this time I was exploring another unique way to earn AA miles, AAdvantage shopping. This shopping portal allows you to earn bonus miles for your online purchases, and sometimes they have outsized bonus offerings. I decided to try signing up for Blue Apron, the food meal subscription service. By just subscribing, I earned 5000 AA miles for $26. As those points posted, I was approaching the time to "renew" my hold for the stretch run. That's when I checked in on my flights, and the return flight was no longer available on BA, and a disappointing 37,500 points on AA. I needed to pivot, and come up with about 10K miles before my hold ran out.
Back to AAdvantage shopping I went, where I subscribed to Motley Fool for $89, which earned me 6,200 points. I then transferred 3K points from Bilt to AA and also bought 5K AA miles for $160 to give me the necessary 25K I needed to complete my held booking. Whew.
Conclusion
Although securing my return flight required some creativity, the outbound flight went off without a hitch, booking for 20K points for 2 people using the points that posted from my credit card sign up bonuses.
Here's what my final tally looked like. It's a testament to weighing your options and uncovering all the necessary rocks to get the deal done.
All told, as you can see, I ended up spending $435 and 28,800 points for this round trip booking for 2 people. Comparing to to the what the full cash fare would be ($1668) and the British Airways alternative, I think I did pretty well, getting 4.2 cents/point from my American miles (1668-435/28800)
I wasn't thrilled about having to buy the 5K AA miles at a terrible rate, but all told for flight and hotel, I'm going to St Kitts for 5 days for $435. I'll take it.
This booking is just another case for having multiple points and miles currencies to meet your travel needs as well as familiarizing yourself with the multitude of ways to earn said points.
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