In my experience, customer service agents are not very good at
searching partner award availability so you want to rely on your own searches for this to make the process as smooth as painless as possible.
Not exact matches
As you
search for
award availability with
partners, you can reference the Oneworld and other
partners» AA
award charts to determine the number of AA miles you will need to book.
However, Air France / KLM's ability to
search for SkyTeam
partner award space is better as Delta sometimes doesn't show
availability when it actually exists.
Until recently, Korean Air did not provide a way to
search online for
award availability on any of its
partner airlines.
Before using Korean Air's website to
search for your
award, we recommend using Delta's website to
search for
availability on most SkyTeam
partners.
ANA's powerful
award search tool shows
availability on all Star Alliance
partner airlines.
(I didn't do too much
searching, since I was on a mission to book my specific flight, but presumably, you'd have more luck
searching all Avios
award availability, through more of the
partners — e.g. Aer Lingus, BA, and Iberia.)
Since other
partner airlines aren't available to be booked online, it makes it difficult to
search for
award availability.
The flights I was looking for were shown on united.com (not on the BA
award search, as mentioned in the previous post, since it's only for BA and not
partners), but in my exploring, I did discover the Avios.com site that would seem to have the ability to
search all Avios
award availability.
A lot of alliance
partners don't allow you to
search for
award availability for other
partners on their website and that's really annoying because that means you'll always have to call in to book and you're not sure what that airline is seeing in terms of
award availability.
The United Airlines
award search tool on United.com is useful but flawed, because it does not show
award availability for some
partners.
The Asiana website does not bring in
partners flights on
award searches, so you need to find
availability on another Star Alliance
partner's website such as United, and then call to book.
To
search OneWorld
partner award availability online you could use British Airways or Qantas websites.
US Airways»
award flight
search engine, for example, only shows
award availability for US Airways operated flights, and none of the
partner flights.
However, this region has its own issue when
searching award availability: Oneworld
partners Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines don't show up when
searching award availability on AA's website.
Between those 3
search engines you should almost always be able to find
award availability searching through dozens of
partner airlines.
You can still book
award flights on these
partners by
searching for
award availability on other Oneworld airlines» websites; via ExpertFlyer; or by calling AA and seeing what's available.
British Airways is not as easy to
search for flexible dates for
partner award availability.
* You can also use Delta's website to
search for
availability but keep in mind that in order to book a Delta flight with either of the Ultimate Rewards Skyteam
partners, there must be
award space available at the saver level on Delta.
So a trick you can do is to
search for
award availability on your route on a day you know BA doesn't have any
availability, and the site will ask you if you want to
search BA's
partners as well.