Do not buy American Airline miles unless you are ready to immediately book something or you're very familiar with the rewards program or are looking to top off your account because your a few thousand miles short of a redemption you've been eyeing. Always remember that award space available right now could be gone in 5 mins, or it could be there for the next 5 months. And just because you see the price on an Award Chart doesn't mean it will be available to book, AA only puts out a limited about of seats to be sold with miles, heck the plane could be empty and not have any seats available to be booked with miles. I would NEVER purchase American Airlines miles in order to book a trip in the future. (I have my AA miles from credit cards, so I have a little familiarity with their program and have used the miles before. Luckily I'm single and have very flexible travel dates so I was actually able to use some of those miles!)
ETA: missed your second update, saving for 2 years from now, in your shoes I'd be looking at hitting up CitiAA cards for the bonus miles. I wouldn't be buying miles, not yet. AA runs mile "sales" fairly frequently.
Wow. I'm an idiot. Thank you for catching!No, the poster is going in July and has been saving for 2 years. I know you will have better advice once you reread it - I know nothing about AA, just familiar with SW. But, they may still have time to get a CC bonus....again not familiar with AA booking so back to you, @gottalovepluto
First thing, check if your ticket class qualifies to be upgraded with miles to find out if this is an option. (If you buy your ticket with miles you cannot upgrade it.)
That isn't really upgrading per se when talking to airline geeks. That is just exchanging your economy ticket and purchasing a new biz class award ticket. Had those three seats been available when you first were searching you would still have paid the same 57,500 per ticket one way.Actually, you can upgrade award tickets to the next class and pay with miles for the difference in fare IF there are available awards.
I just did this with our return trip from Europe coming up this summer. I redeemed SAAver Econ tickets one way for our family, miles came out of DH's account (3 x 30K AAmiles). Then I stalked the AA website daily for Business SAAver tickets with the same origin AND destination (you can change AA award tickets dates & times with no fee as long as the origin and destination remain the same). One day I was lucky and found Business SAAver tickets (3 x 57,500 AAmiles) available and called Customer Service to make the change. I was able to upgrade us to Business class (difference of 3 x 27,500 AAMiles), but was short a few thousand miles and had to buy them then and there over the phone. AA was running one of its bonus mile sales, and I bought the lowest amount that earned bonus miles, paid for it on the Aviator card (which incidently earned 2x miles on the purchase). The taxes and fees were about $15 more on this itinerary so that got paid too - the original amount paid got credited back to the Citi card used originally and then the new taxes and fees were charged to that Citi card. It did take about a week for all the changes to be official, and a phone call to Citi to approve the new charges (I don't know why they flagged them, I mean c'mon it was a Citi AAdvantage card used to make a purchase at AA).
I would think you could use this for AAnytime awards too, since those are always available but also very pricey awards tickets, so you'd need to see if the math makes sense.