For our series Award Success I just completed another great value redemption with American Airlines AAdvantage miles, booking a Qatar Airways Business Class ticket from Frankfurt, Germany to Delhi, India.
American AAdvantage redemption rates between Europe and South Asia are very favorable and you can fly that route for only 42.500 miles in Business Class (20,000 in Economy).
At the moment it’s rather difficult to find proper award options for India. Through United, it would have been possible to book Air India or on very few dates a connection with Vistara. No Lufthansa/Swiss options were available for a very long period.
It looked a little bit better when searching oneWorld connections as those would return options on British Airways, Finnair as well as Qatar Airways with the latter obviously being the best option of the pack.
After selecting the suitable option on the AA website I went ahead with the purchase. The reservation was pending for a few minutes before the ticket got issued.
Following that I went to the Qatar Airways website to select seats and obtain my reservation confirmation as pdf:
I do like the scheduled times of this particular flight pair a lot as it certainly beats arriving at Delhi Airport in the middle of the night.
The pricing for this ticket was extremely reasonable, 42,500 AAdvantage miles plus an even $145 in airport taxes and some fees:
The prices for paid fares for attractive flights are rather high at the moment so using miles was the logical consequence in this instance. While there were some low-priced Business Class options with Air India I’m feeling a lot more comfortable with Qatar Airways.
Passengers seeking to use their miles might find it rather difficult right now to obtain any award seats at all as the high demand for air travel makes it almost impossible to redeem awards. This is mostly due to a shortage of flights and an overall reduced capacity while the carriers are suffering from staff shortages both internally and at airports. The most infamous airports that simply can’t cope with passenger numbers anymore are Amsterdam, Dublin, London, and Toronto, all of which have been making headlines for all the wrong reasons in recent weeks.
Conclusion
I’m very happy that I was able to ticket this reservation for the fall at a rather reasonable rate and with excellent times for both departure and arrival.
I always compare cash prices and the required amount of miles and surcharges for award flights and this was one of these instances where using my AA miles was definitely worth it.
