I had previously posted about American Airlines reduced mileage awards by having a CitiAAdvantage credit card and want to go over another mileage saving option which is the American and US Airways off peak economy awards. These are designated times during the year to select regions in the world where it will cost you less points to travel to your destination in economy. Here are the regions where you can find off peak awards which are boxed in red:
And here are the dates of the off peak awards:
Hawaii: January 12 – March 13, August 22 – December 15
The Caribbean and Mexico: September 7 – November 14
Central America, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela: January 16 – June 14, September 7 – November 14
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay: March 1 – May 31, August 16 – November 30
Europe: October 15 – May 15
Japan and South Korea: October 1 – April 30
As you can probably tell, off peak may not be the most favorable time of year to go because many places are colder or it is the rainy season. But if this doesn’t faze you, then this can help your award points stretch further. Also as a reminder, if you hold a CitiAAdvantage credit card, you will get 10% of your redeemed points back so this is even more of a savings.
As an example, say I wanted to go to Hawaii in late August. I did a search on the American Airlines website and I see plenty of availability from IAH-OGG. The below chart shows the one way cost, so this means that it will cost me 35k miles roundtrip per person instead of the 45k it would cost the rest of the year which is a 10k point savings.
Since I have the credit card, this award will effectively cost me 31,500 miles. Those numbers look pretty good to me and will help me stretch my points for other great vacations. Thanks to MileValue for reminding me about these off peak awards.