I’ve written before about how I am finding American Airlines AAdvantage miles to be the most valuable miles for us, especially when flying domestically.
(SEE ALSO: Is American AAdvantage the best loyalty program for domestic flights? (I think it is))
As long as you’re willing to connect (and living where I do, connecting is almost always in the cards no matter what), I am regularly seeing AAdvantage redemptions even for long cross-country flights for 10K AAdvantage miles or even less. I just had another booking and this time we got 4.6 cents per mile for our AA miles redemption.
Booking A Flight For My Son To Come Home
My son is off at college and a summer job, and I’ve been trying to find a ticket for him to come home to stay with us for a few weeks before he starts his fall semester in September. Unfortunately he can’t be flexible with either his date or his location, and even worse it’s on a Saturday, which feels like a peak time for travel. I have been checking on flights for him for awhile, and there has been nothing good. I couldn’t find anything under 25K miles (one way). Delta has a nonstop flight but they wanted 42K Sky Miles for it.
American had a flight for 11K on the day he needs to travel, but it left early in the morning, and he can’t leave until the afternoon. I eventually booked him a flight on United, connecting in Denver, for 31K United miles. I made myself a reminder to periodically check flights on his travel dates to see if anything better opened up. Since most airlines now offer free cancellations (yay!), there’s no downside to booking something that might work and trying to get something better.
Getting 4.6 Cents Per Mile With American AAdvantage
And today when I did, I hit the jackpot! I’ve written before about getting 3 cents per American Airlines AAdvantage mile on domestic flights, but today as I reviewed his ticket, I found a deal where I got 4.6 (!) cents per mile on a ticket.
And this is not just one of those “fake” CPM calculations where you count the cash price of a first class ticket as $20,000 or whatever, even though most people would never pay that much for a ticket. This is a legit 4.6 cents per mile redemption on a needed travel date where there weren’t a lot of great other options.
The Bottom Line
By carefully gardening my travel reservations and checking back for better (cheaper) flights to open up, I was able to pull off an American Airlines AAdvantage redemption where I used 12,500 miles to book a ticket with a cash price of $578. That’s a 4.6 cents per mile redemption!
Got any good redemptions to share? Leave them in the comments below
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
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