If you happened to open an Alaska Summit card and you have already earned the 100K companion ticket offered after $60K in qualifying purchases, now is your time to shine: As flagged by Upgraded Points, American Airlines is currently offering terrific availability for business class awards between New York, Miami, or Dallas and Buenos Aires, Argentina. This can sometimes be a tough route to snag, but we are currently seeing many dates available for four passengers via Seats.aero. Since Alaska charges just 50,000 miles each way in business class, this could make for a great use of a 100K companion certificate for a round-trip award.
The Deal
- American Airlines currently has excellent award availability between New York, Miami, or Dallas and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Your best options for booking this award space are:
- Alaska Atmos Rewards prices (each way, dependent on availability):
- 25K Economy
- 32.5K Premium Economy
- 50K business class
- American Airlines AAdvantage
- Prices are variable. Business class starts around 65K, but often costs more
- Alaska Atmos Rewards prices (each way, dependent on availability):
Key Terms
- Award space can change quickly.
- Both Alaska Atmos and American Airlines AAdvantage offer free cancellation, though the $12.50 per passenger partner award fee charged by Alaska Atmos is nonrefundable (that fee is waived for Atmos Summit cardholders)
Quick Thoughts
American Airlines offers one of the few options with flat-bed seats to Argentina from the United States. The price is certainly right, at 50K miles each way via Alaska, with no additional surcharges beyond Alaska’s $12.50 per passenger partner award fee.
You can alternatively book through American Airlines Advantage, though with dynamic pricing at play, it will cost you more. At times, that can mean much more. On the flip side, booking via Alaska Atmos is a great deal. If you happened to have opened an Alaska Summit card land you have earned the 100K Companion award after $60,000 in purchases, a round-trip ticket here could make for a terrific use of that companion award. That said, award availability is less plentiful on the return than it is on the outbound.
Even if you are unable to find a round-trip ticket, some people will find this space worth booking speculatively in the hopes that they can later work out a return. It just isn’t common to see quite this much availability on these routes, particularly during peak travel seasons.
Speaking of availability, your best bet for finding available space is to use a tool like Seats.aero, which allows for looking at a year’s worth of availability at a glance with the “Explore” tool for those with a premium membership.
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I checked, and there are very few seats available in business in February and March on Alaska. None are nonstops from DFW to EZE or EZE to MIA so they take more than double the time. Mostly there are refundable award seats in premium economy which is a very good deal compared to AA’s award ticket’s price. Their price in biz is in the stratosphere.
Good piece.
Is the 25K Global certificate eligible, too?
Allow me to answer my own question: YES!!
And, also: First on AA’s 773 is 75K; for JFK-EZE that’s Chelsea lounge access, too.
Huge thank-you, Nick. Had no idea about this until you mentioned it.
What dates were you looking at?
Same as what Nick posted; Alaska’s Flexible Calendar search with ‘Partner Business’ or ‘First Class’ should show you everything for each month at a glance, then you can select specific dates for details. YMMV.