Best Avios Strategies for Domestic American Airlines Flights

0:09 Today we're diving into how to use Avios points, specifically how to use Avios to book onto American Airlines domestic flights. We'll talk about when it makes sense to do this, as well as what to look out for. Welcome back to Points for Normal People. I'm Katie and I'm here because I know that travel costs add up, especially for a family, but I believe travel isn't just for the rich. That's why, on Points for Normal People, I share the tips and tricks that our family has been using for over a decade to help you use your everyday expenses and credit card welcome offers to supercharge your travel points so that you can pay for entire vacations every year.

0:50 We're in season three of Points for Normal People and we're talking all about how to book US domestic flights with points and, of course, how to do that for the best price. Last week we talked about how to use American Miles to book onto American flights, and that method has a lot of pros. The website is easy to use, pricing can be great, cancellation policies are excellent, but it's hard to easily earn a lot of American miles. So today is about an alternate way to book these flights where the points are much easier to earn.

1:22 So American is in the One World Alliance and through the One World Alliance they partner with a whole bunch of other airlines. Not only can you use your American miles to book onto those other airlines, you can also use the points from those other airlines to book onto select American Airlines flights Now, it's not every flight, but it is an option for a fair number of them. And there's this whole group of airlines that share a currency called Avios, and all of these let you use Avios to book onto those select American Airlines flights.

1:56 The really good news here is that Avios are arguably one of the easiest kinds of airline miles to earn. So the biggest pro for learning to use Avios for your American Airlines flights is that these Avios are going to be very easy to come by. And another big pro is that sometimes the pricing will be cheaper than even using American's own miles. But the biggest con is that they are a little bit of a pain to book and the cancellation fees are definitely higher, and sometimes it's going to cost more points.

2:27 So it's not a slam dunk here, but it's still worth knowing about so you can evaluate your own situation. So let's dive into the details. This is intermediate level stuff today and if you've been following along with the podcast since season one, I think you're ready for it. But if anything I say doesn't make sense, let me know so I can clarify it later on in season three. Avios are the shared currency of the following airlines British Airways, iberia, aer Lingus, qatar Airways and Finnair.

2:58 The number of airlines that use Avios has continued to grow in recent years, so we might see more added in the future. That use Avios has continued to grow in recent years, so we might see more added in the future. What's unique about it is that all of these airlines allow you to transfer any Avios you hold with them to any of the other Avios airlines. This is pretty unique among airlines. If I have United Miles, I can't transfer those to another airline like American or Delta or even any United partner like Air Canada, but with Avios I can move Cutter Avios to British Airways Avios to Aer Lingus Avios.

3:32 So if you have one kind of Avios, you essentially have them all, and this is great because each of these Avios airlines has its own award charts with specific sweet spots and pricing and, of course, quirks. Now you might still be thinking but I don't have Avios at all. But if you have any of the bank cards that lets you transfer points any of them at all you could have Avios. That's because they all Chase, city, american Express, capital One, built.

4:01 They all transfer to at least one of the Avios airlines. Even the smaller bank or transferable programs like Wells Fargo transfers to Avios airlines. There are so many credit cards that can earn points and then transfer those points to Avios. You can even open cards that earn Avios directly through different airline co-branded cards and because there are so many options, I'm actually not going to spend a lot of time here helping you strategize on how to earn these points.

4:30 If you follow my three-year plan, you're going to earn a lot of points that can transfer to Avios. You could also pick up additional Citi cards or Amex cards or Capital One cards that earn points that can transfer to Avios, or you can open these airline cards directly and then sometimes you can take your bank points and even get a little extra bonus. So these bank points that transfer to Avios, they usually transfer at a 1 to 1 ratio, but pretty frequently at least one of the banks is running a 20 to 30% transfer bonus.

5:00 That means if you transfer 1,000 points to Avios, you get 1,200 or 1,300 Avios, depending on the transfer bonus. That means if you transfer 1,000 points to Avios, you get 1,200 or 1,300 Avios, depending on the transfer bonus. Transfer bonuses are a pain to track if you have a lot of cards, but now there is an easier way to do that. What I personally use is I signed up for free transfer bonus notifications from your best credit cards, and I'm going to link down in the show notes how to sign up for those.

5:23 Then they'll just send you emails anytime there are new transfer bonuses, so that you don't miss them. Now, moving your points from one Avios airline to another might take a few steps. Right now, pretty much all transfers have to go to British Airways and then from there can move to the other airlines. But even if you're moving from Qatar to British Airways and then to Finnair, each of those transfers should pretty much be instant, so it's going to go fast and, for our purposes, today, even though there are six airlines that have Avios as their currency, we're only going to look at two.

5:54 That's because there are only two that as of now March 2025, have award charts that are good for domestic US redemptions, and those two are Cutter and FinAir, and so today we'll discuss both when to use them and how to find availability. It used to be that British Airways was a really good Avios partner for domestic American Airlines redemptions, but they recently really increased the number of Avios needed to book onto American flights, and it just doesn't make sense anymore.

6:23 It also used to be that Qantas, which is not an Avios airline but is in the One World Alliance, was another really good option for booking American domestic flights, but that, too, has changed and is changing even more this year. So instead we're left with Cutter and Finnair. The reason that there are two is that these airlines use different methods of pricing their award flights, so Cutter uses a distance-based chart and Finnair uses a zone-based chart

6:55 distance-based chart and Finnair uses a zone-based chart, so Cutter ends up being cheapest for shorter, non-stop flights and Finnair is going to be cheaper for connecting flights or longer flights. In episode two, we walked through my process for researching routes, and in that we looked at how you can find non-stop options as well as how many miles a flight is between two places. You would need that information to determine if it was better to book with Cutter or Finnair.

7:18 So if you have an American flight that is under 651 miles and it is bookable with Avios, which we'll talk about that later. How to know that it would cost 9,500 Cutter Airways Avios. Now, this is probably more than booking with American miles. Last week I shared that a lot of these shorter American flights might be just 6,000 miles each way. But if you got a transfer bonus and if you have access to more Avios, it might be worth it for you. So as a quick caveat here, it can be hard to book regional flights with Cutter Avios, but there is a workaround that Dan's Deals has used and I will link that as a reference in the show notes.

7:56 Actually, all of the Cutter award charts are unpublished and Dan's Deals is the one who really tested enough of the routes to determine what the rates are. So if you have an American flight also that is between 651 and 1,151 miles, it would cost 13,000 Cutter Avios to book. These do have to be nonstop flights to be bookable with Cutter Airway Avios, but if you were able to transfer points during a 30% transfer bonus, those 13,000 Avios flights would work out to be 10,000 points each way.

8:27 So this Cutter Airways sweet spot has pretty limited use. If you can take advantage of a transfer bonus, it might make even more sense. But it really only makes sense if one, you don't have American miles to book direct or you're saving them for something else. Two, you're going on a nonstop American flight that is under 1,151 miles and three, you also don't have any Alaska miles. So this episode is about Avios, but I want to do a quick sidebar for using Alaska miles on American flights, because this is part of that decision tree for booking American flights with partners.

9:02 Now I'll do a whole episode on Alaska miles. But just as a point of comparison to the Cutter Avios Redemptions, if you have Alaska miles, you can book an American flight that's under 7,000 miles for just 4,500 miles, so that's less than with Cutter. Or a flight from 701 to 1,400 miles is 7,500 Alaska miles, again substantially cheaper than Cutter. Even flights up to 2,100 miles are $12,500. So using Alaska miles is cheaper than using Qatar Avios if you have Alaska miles, if those guidelines I listed before apply to you.

9:37 If you don't have American miles and you want to book a nonstop American flight under 1,151 miles and you don't have Alaska miles, the nice thing is that these Cutter flights can usually be booked online on Cutter Airways website. Now, as a slight con to this method, if you have to make any cancellations to an American flight that you booked with Cutter Avios, it's going to cost $25 per ticket. And one more drawback that came up a few times when I was looking at comment sections of people who've done this is it seems like Cutter often requires you to enter a passport number before booking, even for domestic flights.

10:13 So if you don't have a passport, this method might be more of a headache to book. But again, for the shorter non-stop American flights, when you don't have American miles and you don't have Alaska miles, cutter is probably going to be your best option. If you want to book a longer American flight, an American flight with connections or even specifically, a flight to Hawaii, finnair Avios is going to be a much better option. That's because Finnair is using a zone-based chart, not a distance-based chart.

10:42 For American flights, finnair charges $16,500 Avios each way for any flight within the continental US and Canada. It's actually even cheaper for Alaska Airlines flights, but we'll get to that in a few weeks. Now, $16,500 Avios is often more expensive than that same route would be if you had American miles, because usually with American you can book those longer cross-country flights for 12,500 miles, but with a 20% transfer bonus. You'd only have to transfer 13,000 points to Finnair, which is about in line with what a lot of those American Airlines flights cost.

11:19 And again, avios are much easier to earn. It's an even better price to Hawaii and this, I think, is the true sweet spot. So American typically charges $22,500 for a flight to Hawaii and this, I think, is the true sweet spot. So American typically charges $22,500 for a flight to Hawaii at its lowest levels. But Finnair prices tickets from North America to Hawaii at just $15,000 avios, even from the East Coast, even on a connecting flight. You can get this price if you find the availability.

11:44 This is an amazing price for those flights to Hawaii and it's even better with a transfer bonus. But there are a few drawbacks. The biggest con to Finnair is first of all the cancellation fee. It is a 50 euro cancellation fee and that's going to add up really fast for a family. So you only want to book this if you're really sure you're taking that flight. And then the next drawback is that it's kind of a pain to book. It's not too bad. It could be worse, but you do have to book via chat.

12:14 But for all the people who don't like phone calls, that actually might not be too bad. The chat is pretty easy and straightforward. It can just take time for your turn in line to come up. But of course, the biggest asterisk here is as to whether you can find these flights as bookable with points. So let's dive in now into how to find the availability. Learning how to run these searches in order to find which flights are bookable with Avios is going to feel a little convoluted at first, and it is a little bit hard for me to explain.

12:42 If you're just listening to the podcast, because it's a visual process when you're searching, I'm going to do my best to explain. At first, when I start explaining, it might feel actually really confusing because it's like we're circling around the information, but I'm going to go over it a few different ways so that hopefully by the end it makes sense. And don't forget that there's also blog posts that I have linked below. We also have videos that I'm gonna have linked below, and all of that will make it easier for this to come together.

13:11 So if it feels confusing for a minute, stick with me and keep listening. So there's a lot of points aggregator sites like seatsaero and pointscicom and a bunch more I won't mention because there's so many of them, but none of them show you the American flights that you can book on Qatar or Finnair. They don't show British Airways either, so they aren't able to pull these specific flights, these sweet spots, up when people want to book them. That means it's going to take you a few extra steps to find them, but, as I mentioned in a previous episode, I think this is actually a good thing right now in some ways, because sometimes when it's kind of a pain to book something, it means the sweet spots might last longer.

13:51 So let's talk about how you can find flights that are bookable with Finnair and Cutter Airways. Now it used to be that some American flights had a really clear designation as saver awards, and then those were the ones that American released to partners to let them book. But with its switch to dynamic pricing, american no longer clearly marks awards as saver awards for someone searching their website. Now there's still some way in their system that they're notating if award is being released to partners to book or not, but we can't see it on the front end of the American Airlines website.

14:23 So instead we're going to have to use a few backdoor methods to search for this, even more so with Finnair, where the site doesn't have a way to search for these directly on Finnair's website, and I'm going to recommend that you use at least two methods, and it's going to involve some duplicate work to double check your work before you transfer any points over. Broadly speaking, the most accurate method that has some degree of efficiency will be searching on American's own website and then cross-referencing what Qantas is showing, and you can do that by using a tool like Seats Arrow or pointscom or directly on Qantas' website.

15:02 So normally I would go straight to seatsarrow and look for the Qantas awards. But when Sadie, who's a writer on our team, was researching and testing for our Finnair post, she found she actually had better luck, first by finding dates with low prices on American Airlines and then later confirming those with Qantas and Finnair. What's tricky here is that American has a lot of different price points for domestic flights. It's not always clear which price point they are releasing to partners.

15:30 Is it anything below 12,500 miles? Probably not quite that broad For Hawaii it does seem to be. The ones that cost $22,500 each way on American are the ones that they're releasing to partners, but for a lot of other US routes, it's less clear what those formerly saver awards would be. That's why you might find it faster to head to a points aggregator site, but occasionally that method might give you some false positives, since Finnair and Cutter don't show up on any of the aggregator sites.

16:02 Here's some ways where you could proceed. So here's an example of the walkthrough. You're going to use your growing knowledge of airline alliances and you're going to play the system and it's going to feel good because you're going to kind of work it. So Finnair, cutter and American right, they're all in the One World Alliance, and so is Qantas, and Qantas actually appears in the points tools that you'll be using. So if you want to use seatsarrow, what you'll actually be searching for is Qantas awards.

16:28 Now, you're not going to be booking through Qantas and you're not going to be flying Qantas. You're just using the information on their website as a reference point. To be honest, I can't really recommend searching using pointscom or pointme for this, because I just did some test searches and some of the Qantas routes just didn't come up, even though it had just come up on American Airlines and seatsaero and on Qantas directly. And again, this doesn't seem to be a perfect method.

16:55 Sadie found some flights that showed as available on Qantas that Finnair agents couldn't find. But it's your best start. That's why it's going to help to have a few different dates and routes researched when you go into the chat with Finnair to book. It's going to save you time to have a few backup options ready to ask about. And remember that we don't recommend transferring points until you've confirmed availability with an agent. Transfers should be instant so you could do it while you're on the chat with the Finnair rep.

17:23 Okay, so the way that I'd approach this personally is first I'd go to the American Airlines website and search for the route I want to take. I'd look at the 30-day calendar view and, if it makes sense, I'd filter for non-stop routes. If I know it's a connecting flight, then I just keep it as is Now. I'd search through the calendar to get a sense of pricing and ask what pricing is typically coming up as the lowest and I'd make a note pricing and ask what pricing is typically coming up as the lowest and I'd make a note Is it 10,000?

17:51 , is it 12,000.5? Is it 6,000? Then I'd start narrowing down based on precisely what I'm looking for. Maybe I'm looking from Des Moines, iowa, to Seattle. So I just did a test based on this route. So I'm looking at the calendar and I can see a few days for 10.5k each way, but a lot more days for 12.5k roundtrip. So my thought process is that 12.5k might be the saver and maybe 10.5k is the web special. Now, this isn't a nonstop, but maybe I want to then filter for one stop or less and instantly I could see that the dates at 12,500 dropped down when I did that.

18:23 But that's ok, maybe I really want one stop. So then I found one of these for July 30th. I'm taking notes of all of these things that I'm finding on the way, just like on a piece of paper. It doesn't have to be fancy. Now, since I already found a specific date with American's website, I'm going to cross reference that on Qantas's website. If I can find it on Qantas's website. It's not 100% guaranteed that Finnair agents will see it, but there's a decent chance since they're both partner airlines.

18:48 But there's a decent chance since they're both partner airlines and usually if American is releasing it to Qantas, it's releasing it to all the One World partners, including Finnair. Qantas, thankfully, is really easy to run that secondary award search on. You don't even have to be logged in. So I'm going to search that date and that route on Qantas' website If I find it great. If not, I'm going to look for some more dates on American's website and then, once I see the availability, I'm going to double check on Qantas.

19:14 So once I have a date that I see on American and Qantas, I'm going to go ahead and try chatting with Finnair to book this flight. I'm still not transferring any points. In our article on booking via Finnair, we do have screenshots of the booking process so you can see it and follow along. Again, I'd recommend that you confirm the availability with the Finnair agent before you transfer any points, unless you already have a bunch of Avios, in which case you already have them.

19:38 You could also do the same search a little bit faster with seatsarrow, but you'd really need the paid version to be able to see a full year out and to be able to sort through the information more quickly. If you missed it, I hosted a webinar with a long tutorial on how to use seatsarrow and that has been added to my free course. It is the most efficient and quick way to search availability like this, but it does cost for the pro version. I think it's $8 a month or something like that.

20:03 In this case, for obvious flights, you could use the routes feature on seatsarrow to look up a year at a time, or you could search and filter the results with flexible dates. Both are really powerful search options and in both cases, for the obvious flights, you would be searching for what is showing as available on Qantas, since Finnair isn't going to ever show on seatsaero. If you find it on Qantas, there's a good chance a Finnair rep can also find it too.

20:28 All right, so let me review those two methods and I'm also going to add a video in the show notes of me walking through it as well. If you want to do this the totally free way to find American Airlines flights you can book with Avios. You're going to go to American site and look up your route, search one way at a time, go to the calendar view and find the cheapest dates and then click in to see if flight times and connections are decent, write down the times and flight numbers and then go plug in the same date on Qantas's website to see if you can find that same flight as bookable there with points.

21:02 If you can't go back to AmericanSite and find some more options. If you can find it on Qantas, pull up a chat with Finnair and confirm they can see it too, and if so then you're gonna transfer points and book it, or you can use seatsero, but that again it only works really well with the paid version. So this week has a lot of information. So I'm not going to go even more in-depth on how you can earn a lot of obvious miles but again, broadly speaking, there are a lot of ways that you can do this with credit card welcome offers.

21:33 That's because you can earn in any of the major bank programs and transfer to an Avios airline. Later in the season we are going to talk more about Amex membership rewards programs and some of the increased opportunities that there are there to maximize earning through Rakuten Shopping's portal. I feel like I should have taken some more breaths during that episode, because it's a lot of information and I know it goes fast and that's why we have blog posts about these things, because it is a lot to just absorb, like just if you're listening to this, even if you're watching it on YouTube.

22:03 Either way, it's a lot to absorb For action steps this week. I'd encourage you to check out the Seats Aero webinar. If you missed it before, there's a link in the show notes and it's housed inside my free course. If you want to start searching for more flights, this is a really great tool to learn how to use. It's going to save you a lot of time. If you think you might be using this Avios method, or even if you just want to look at it more and do some testing, you'll want to sign up for a FinAir loyalty account.

22:31 You could also sign up for a British Airways account, as most transfers for Avios will have to go through there. You can also check out the video in the show notes where I'm just going to be walking through this process with a sample route. As I know a lot of people find that the easiest way to learn. Thank you so much for being with me today. I look forward to seeing you next time. We will continue to unlock these secrets of travel points together.