How to Redeem British Airways Miles on American Airlines Flights
American Airlines is one of British Airways’ partners and your British Airways Executive Club Avios miles can be used for travel on American Airlines flights. Since British Airways has a distance-based award chart where short flights are very few miles, we can often save loads of miles by using British Airways miles instead of American Airlines. This allows us to leverage the American Airlines extensive North American flight network that includes Canada, the Caribbean, Hawaii and Mexico, through the British Airways miles program. In this post, I will explain the advantages of booking flights with British Airways miles, how to search for award availability and, finally, how to book your award ticket.
Update: With US Airways joining oneworld and American Airlines and US Airways moving toward merger, the American Airlines website now shows US Airways availability as well. You can also use British Airways miles on US Airways flights. Just follow the exact same steps below to find award availability for US Airways on the American Airlines website and book your ticket.
Saving Miles By Redeeming British Airways Avios
British Airways has a distance-based award chart where you are charged for each segment based on how many miles you fly. There is no fuel surcharge when using British Airways miles within the US (unlike travel to Europe on American Airlines or British Airways). American Airlines just charges miles based on region. According to the American Airlines Award Chart, if you’re flying from the US, you will be paying peak season prices of:
- Within the US: 12,500 each way in economy; 25,000 each way in first class.
- To Mexico or the Caribbean: 17,500 each way in economy, 30,000 each way in first class.
- To Hawaii: 22,500 each way in economy, 37,500 each way in first class.
This does not take distance into account and long multi-leg itineraries cost exactly the same as short one-hop flights. Comparatively, British Airlines will charge you as few as 4,500 Executive Club Avios miles for flights under 650 miles and up to 10,000 miles for flights up to 2,000 miles. If the flight you want happens to be short, that’s a big miles savings!
With British Airways, you are paying based on distance per segment and each segment is charged individually. So if you fly from New York to Miami and then Miami to Grand Cayman, you are going to pay 7500 miles for the segment from New York to Miami and 4500 miles from Miami to Grand Cayman. That’s a total of 12,000 miles, which is actually better than the 17,500 miles that American Airlines will charge.
Some Great Use Examples of British Airways Avios
American Airlines’ route network is very clearly displayed on their interactive route map. You can just select your city and see where you can go.
A few examples of some good low-cost economy redemptions on American Airlines flights with British Airways miles:
- New York to Montreal or Toronto for 4,500 miles each way (vs. 12,500 with American Airlines miles)
- Miami to Grand Cayman for 4,500 British Airways miles each way (vs. 17,500 with American Airlines miles)
- New York to Cancun for 10,000 British Airways miles each way (vs. 17,500 with American Airlines miles)
- Los Angeles to Maui for 12,500 British Airways miles each way (vs. 22,500 with American Airlines miles)
I only included economy flights in my examples for comparison, but miles savings on business tickets can be, of course, sizeable as well.
Redeeming miles always takes two steps:
- Searching for award availability: We can search for American Airlines award availability on the American Airlines website. It’s much easier to use than the British Airways website and has a convenient calendar view. We can book any seats at the MilesSAAver level we can find.
- Booking the award seats. To book the award seats, we go to the British Airways website and book online.
Searching for American Airlines Award Availability
The best place to search for American Airlines availability is on the American Airlines website. As a bonus, British Airways miles can be redeemed on Alaska Airlines as well. So if you inadvertently come across a really good Alaska Airlines flight in your search, you can book that with you British Airways miles too!
For my example, I am going to try to find flights from Miami to Grand Cayman in December.
First, I go to American Airlines and type in my cities and dates.
On the next page, I get a calendar view of all my available flights. I can even narrow down to the non-stop flights (since those are the ones that will cost only 4,500 British Airways miles). I can book with British Airways Avios any flight in light green or light blue. These are the MileSAAver level. Dark green and dark blue are off limits and will not be available with British Airways miles.
When I choose a day and click ‘Continue‘, the next page gives me the individual available flights. At this point, I just want to write down the flight number since I am not going to book them on American Airlines. I am going to book them on British Airways. Pay no attention to American Airlines’ price of 17,500 miles. We are not going to pay that many miles! I will choose flight 1007 at 7:30 pm.
You also want to find a return flight, write it down and then move on the next step… booking the flights with British Airways miles!
Booking the American Airlines Award Seats
Although you can search for American Airlines award seats on the British Airways website, I find the American Airlines website much friendlier and easy to use with its convenient monthly calendar view. On British Airways, you have to click on each day individually. That’s why I find it best to be prepared with flights from the American Airlines website before even visiting the British Airways website.
Once on the British Airways website, go to Spending Avios under Executive Club and you will be asked to log in.
You then want to select the option to Book Flights with Avios on the left hand side. On the next page, you can enter your destinations and dates. At this point, even if I want to plan a round-trip, I prefer to search for flights one at a time:
- British Airways has a glitch where it sometimes does not show flight options if you search round-trip. (This nearly drove my cousin Diana insane when she was trying to visit me in NYC).
- If I want to make changes later on, it’s easier to have the flight as two separate legs allowing me to adjust a single leg.
Since I already searched the American Airlines website for award availability, I expect the exact same three flights I found on the last step to be available now. And, of course, those are the exact flights that show up!
And, finally, on the very last page, I see the final price. It is 4,500 British Airways Avios from Miami to Grand Cayman as this flight is under 650 miles. That’s a great deal! Remember how the same flight was 17,500 American Airlines miles? There’s even the Avios and Money option to pay part of the cost with cash if you value your Avios highly. Of course, you’ll need to do the same for the return flight (expect to pay around $50 in departure taxes from Grand Cayman).
Earning British Airways Executive Club Avios
- Transfer from Starwood Preferred Guest at 1:1 or get 25,000 British Airways miles for every 20,000 Starwood Preferred Guest points transferred. These can be earned with the Starwood American Express card.
- Transfer from American Express Membership rewards at 1:1.
- Transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards at 1:1.
- The British Airways Visa Signature® Card co-branded credit card.
Summary
- With British Airways’ distance-based chart that charges per segment based on miles flown, we can save lots of miles by booking short flights on American Airlines using British Airways miles.
- We can book flights we find at the American Airlines MileSAAver award level (light green or light blue) only and it’s best to search on the American Airlines website for award availability.
- American Airlines flights can be booked online by visiting the British Airways website.
Other posts you may like:
West Coast to Hawaii for 12,500 British Airways Avios Each Way!
This is a super helpful post and I am going to try out some searches later on British Airways. I will be back with more questions.
Great! Enjoy your planning :)
Hi Professor,
One question I have after looking at several AA reward flights on the BA site…I have never seen more than 7 seats available. Even in your screen shot, each flight shows “only 7 reward seats left.” Do you know if that is the maximum number they allot for reward tickets, or is that the max number they will show despite having more? I have a family of 4, so the idea of taking more than half the reward seats for just us seems preposterous.
Great blog by the way.
cheers,
Jim
Glad you like the blog! British Airways’ code just works that way. It will display 7 to mean there are at least 7 seats in award inventory. Normally, when I look at inventory on other sites, it will display 9 to mean there are at least 9. I always take 7 on BA to mean “plenty of space for now”!
Thanks.. helpful.
Now that BA/Qatar is partnering, more chances to earn or redeem Avios points.
Yes, very true! I flew Qatar and loved it :)
Very well done, see you tomorrow at TBB.
Great info as always, thank you. A small glitch however. The interactive map link for AA actually leads to Alaska Airlines.
Thanks! I caught that this morning and fixed, but I think the emails and feedly have the Alaska link on there!
Great post, very well explained! No mailing it in like so many other bloggers. With all the traffic from TBB tomorrow go get yourself a LV bag, you earned it :-)
Thanks! Though Balenciaga may be next… I may have a few bags, but I don’t need a car so I’m probably ahead on (bags + car) costs :)
There are pricing anomalies for BA Avios. Sometimes it takes fewer miles to fly segment by segment rather than nonstop.
Say you want LAX or SFO to Sydney. That takes 50K Avios.
But if you fly LAX or SFO-HNL, you’ll pay 12,500 Avios. HNL-SYD is another 25000 Avios, for total of 37,500 Avios.
So you save 12,500 Avios by breaking up your flight.
Add in transfer bonuses from Amex (like the recent 35% bonus), and you can really get great deals using Avios.
And since you can get 2x at grocery with PRG and then transfer (with occasional bonuses), Avios can be a very useful award currency, especially for those of us on the west coast (as you can redeem on Alaska, which has lots of flights).
I like to use Avios up to ~3000 mile segments. After that, their award pricing is (usually) too high (except instances similar to above).
Would you recommend Avios from ORD? Getting from ORD seems to be far away…except Canada..
This depends on where you are trying to go!
Does this work if you are a UK Passport holder in the US with a US registered account? I can never get flights to show and have over 600,000 BA Miles I could get rid of on internal flights!
Thanks for the post.
I must be doing something totally wrong. I look on American’s website for flights from Atlanta, find a number of them per your info, go over to British Airways, but they never have any flights available, same for most other destinations.
For instance, I’m trying to find a one way ticket from Atlanta to New York the week of April 20. AA has tons of flights available, but there isn’t one when I look for those flights on British Airways using avios.
Any idea what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks!
I have 155000 BA Avios and am looking to go from BOS to SFO on May 22 and return the 26th. I checked the AA Economy Anytime rewards. Of course there is no availability. Can I spend more miles and get availability in business?
You can only redeem British Airways miles on AA SAAVer awards (light green and light blue). The light blue, which are business class, will cost 3 times as much on British Airways, unfortunately… while 155,000 may be enough of the availability is there, it’s questionable whether you’d want to spend that many miles for the trip.
Hello TMP,
Do you know if BA changed the way to check AA availability? I know any light green or light blue on AA website you can book with BA pts; but I’m checking AA website and I see light green for April 14th from LAX to NYC but on BA website it’s not showing up as available. any advice? Thanks again!
I’m finding the same problem. I’m .looking at LAX to Maui(OGG) on Feb. 4. It’s available on the AA website for Economy MileSAAver, but not on BA. Just as a test I tried MIA to Grand Cayman and it still works. So I’m somewhat confused.
I figured out what was going on. You’re going to have do more work now. Even though AA is showing the green light for their MileSAAver awards it doesn’t mean that those flights are on AA. They could be on partner airlines which BA is not associated with. I searched a few flights to Hawaii and saw the MileSAAver flights were booked with Hawaiian Air. To book on AA required a higher award level. So I had to keep searching AA’s site until I found a date that flew on AA with MileSAAver, and then I was able to book it on BA.
Yes, that’s correct. With British Airways miles, you can only use them on British Airways partners and, for Hawaii, those are American Airlines, Alaska Airlines and US Airways. Hawaiian Airlines, sadly, is not a partner of British Airways… so the British Airways miles can’t be used there. But glad you were able to book your award! I just went to Maui in December and had an amazing time :)
Hi. Im trying to book award ticket from CID to OGG roundtrip on 5/24 to 6/1 for 2 passengers. Need some advice. I have 75K+35K AA miles and 15K+30K BA miles on 2 different accounts. Want to use as less miles as much as possible. Sometimes when Im searching I do get 22.5 AA miles saver tickets one way .But those are not available when I try to really book it.Also Im planning a stopover @ SFO while returning just for a day 6/1. My search dont return any flight on BA :( pls help. Thanks. DM
Hello Professor!
Excellent post, thanks a lot!! I am moving to miami from Europe soon and was asking myself this question, as I have neither BA, not AA for the moment.
The is only one info that I cannot find: is there a calculator for earning miles with american airlines, as there is for British?
Actually, what I’m trying to find out is:
– What is faster to get higher status ? AA or BA
– What is faster to earn service miles that we can use for flights ? AA or BA
Thanks again
the site will definitely be one of my favorites.
I want to book flight from Clevelan to Montreal with BA, however there are 1 connecting flights or 4 legs (round trip). So, if I checked first awailability on AA and then went booking say 2 legs, but say 3-d leg (return flight) is not awailable on BA site, what is the recourse? I guess to refind my already booked 2 legs? How offten this can happened?
I been having trouble booking an award flight from KOA to BOS with BA. American’s site will show milesaver awards with 3 conecting flights for 22.5k/37.5k for economy/business class. Twice when I called BA and gave them the flights it prices out at 180k miles plus a fee of about $60. I assume it’s because it’s booking it as 3 different itineraries? Hope you can help, thanks.
One other thing, one of the times on the phone with BA they told me American could book the flights using my BA miles, but American said no way. It’s frustrating getting different stories.
American definitely has no way to access your BA miles so they definitely cannot book with them. Unfortunately, agents are not very knowledgeable about using miles at all so the best approach is to just flat out ignore what they say about miles and try to find answers elsewhere :)
British Airways miles will charge on distance per segment. So if you have three flights, you’re charged for each segment separately. The sweet spots in the British Airways program are amazing for shorter one-segment flights, but terrible for any long-distance itinerary with multiple connections. As an example, you’ll be charged 4,500 British miles to fly from Boston to New York, but any other program will charge you 12,500 for the same American Airlines flight.
Hi,
I’ve been able to book AA flights through BA’s site with Avios without any problems in the past, but now I’ve seem to run into one. I’m looking at flying from SEA to Juneau from July 3-July 11. AA’s website shows award saver seats for those dates. However, BA gives me an error, “BA and its partners do not fly that route.” Am I doing something wrong here?
Thanks.
You’re doing everything right, but those flights are operated by Alaska Airways, which you cannot book directly on the British Airways website as it will not even show those flights. You will need to call British Airways customer service for that space, unfortunately.
But isnt it true that when you book on British Air, you can only get seats 24 hours before flights (like Southwest), until you get a few BA flights under your belt and move up a level, and then it is 7 days before?? Any way around this?