American Airlines SAAver awards can be difficult to find in premium cabins to many destinations like Europe. This often means that you’re forced to book with partners like British Airways that often thrown on huge surcharges of $1,000+ on your awards. But right now there is some fantastic award availability in both business and first class flights on AA flights from DFW to LHR. The dates range from late fall to early spring though most awards are open in February 2019.
American flies their 777-300ER on this which comes with a first class cabin of eight seats. Note that they also fly their 777-200 which does not come with a first class. Keep in mind that things could change if you book way out in advance, too.
Availability
It’s rare to see so much blue and purple when searching for SAAver awards but as you can see there’s a lot of availability, especially in February. Some of these days have multiple awards open so you might be able to find something for the fam. I’ve checked most of the dates in February to make sure these aren’t BA awards and I’ve found tons of AA flights.
Note that AA can show phantom award availability (especially for Finnair) so sometimes you need to take it all the way to check out to make sure that these are bookable. You can also check the Iberia website to see if the AA flights are showing up and use the British Airways website to verify Finnair availability.
How bad are the fees?
London is one of the most expensive cities to fly into with award flights. But the fees aren’t too bad. For a roundtrip business class ticket, you’re looking at fees just under $300. (Fees going from DFW to LHR one way are only $5.60)
Note that if you connect to another city you can get the fees dropped down a lot. For example, the below flight is for a roundtrip in business class to HEL via American, British Airways, and Finnair and look how low the fees are — under $100. You can also add AA connections in the US to get you to DFW as long as you can find SAAver availability.
And just for the sake of comparison here are the fees for a roundtrip on British Airways using AA miles!
Final word
These awards are wide open but this is not going to last very long. If you’re thinking about jumping on this don’t wait too long because these open awards will be gone very soon. If you’re interested in learning more about how to use AA miles check out my recent article on AA award chart sweet spots. And if you want to figure out how to earn more AA miles then check out my article on all of the different AA credit cards you can choose from.
Cover photo by LoadedAaron.
H/T: VFTW
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
