This past week American Airlines launched an update to AA.com that let frequent fliers use miles to book one-way awards for half the miles of a round trip. That itself is great and AA flyers have been waiting for this for a while, but here's the kicker... American will also let flyers redeem miles to fly one leg of a round trip in first-class and fewer miles to fly in coach on another leg.
So now when you're searching for your AA awards on ExpertFlyer, you can now search for your MileSAAverawards one leg at a time. More importantly, this allows you to better leverage EF Flight Alerts to be notified when the one flight leg that you couldn't get as a reduced miles award, or in the class you wanted, becomes available.
Combined with the recent trend of airlines to make an unprecedented amount of awards available due to the downturn in travel, hopefully this should go a long way to help us to actually make use of all those miles we've been accumulating. Just in time for summer vacation. Safe travels!
