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Cathay Pacific awards have always been a bit of a pain to book with American Airlines AAdvantage miles as you had to call American to book the flights.
That changed yesterday as Cathay flights can now be booked on American’s website making it easier to book those awards.
American Airlines changed their website recently which makes searching for award flights a miserable experience. If it displays the new search results screen, you might need to keep scrolling down and clicking for more results. For example, a search for award flights from Washington D.C. to Hong Kong initially displayed 10 of 113 flights on one of the dates I checked. Those first 10 flights were all on American metal.
Clicking the ‘Show More’ button repeatedly eventually displayed flights on airline partners including Cathay Pacific. Award availability varied, with some itineraries in economy only, although there was some business and first class availability too.
To filter for Cathay results more easily, OMAAT had a tip that clicking on the ‘Advanced / Multi-City Search’ and doing a search from there displays awards using the old results format.
Sure enough, the old search results screen is what appeared.
Clicking through to a specific date will then allow you to filter that day’s results to only display itineraries including Cathay Pacific flights.
On the one hand, being able to book Cathay Pacific flights on American’s website is a great development as it makes it much easier to redeem your AAdvantage miles.
Making it easier for you though means it’s easier for everyone. That increases the number of people who might be looking at the same award space as you, potentially making it harder to find availability.
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[…] example, American just recently added the ability to see and book award availability on Cathay Pacific via AA.com. Until then, you had to search for availability via the British Airways or Qantas site and then […]