Value of AA miles vs UA miles - One Blogger's Perspective

SEA-ICN-HKG-BKK-FRA-SEA for 90,000 miles on US in C, with stopovers in HKG and FRA, and maybe $150. I could probably book one today with sufficient US miles, LH F blocking notwithstanding.

Not bad if you ask me.

Lucky is focused on the F cabin (and I suppose if I was a twentysomething travel blogger cum mileage consultant who could generate EQM and 6-7 digit mileage balances seemingly effortlessly I would be as well). I don't have that luxury. I'll likely never travel 100,000 miles in a year on paid tickets (and I don't really want to), or hit top elite on AA/UA/whoever.

One of the biggest problems for oneworld for me is that the longhaul presence out of SEA is in the form of BA (read: bend over for $1000 in YQ). *A gives me LH, OZ, UA and soon NH and BR, or a quick hop to SFO/LAX for pretty much everyone else, compared to ORD/DFW/JFK, and very limited longhaul out of LAX (that can't be used on a oneworld award, since AS isn't part of oneworld).

Well we've been talking UA vs AA and not really focusing on US to be honest. Yet add a handful more miles to that total and you could take 11 more business segments on that itinerary over a one year period with unlimited stop overs with AA miles. My recent 15 segment C OW explorer award redemption only cost me $210 in taxes and fees since I stayed off BA and has me stopping in HNL, ORD, KUL, HKG, BOS, NRT, FRA, BER, JFK, AMM, and AUH.

I'll still take the OW explorer award.

SEA and the west coast in general is awful for AA. I'd be gathering on AS most likely if I lived out there. I really don't think AA is that awful for partner space out of LAX though. BA, IB, HA, CX, JL, TN, AB, FJ, LY, LA, QF, WS and soon MH. Granted they can't all be used on a oneworld award, but AA's award partners out of LAX aren't much lower than UA's. Even for OW awards, the flexibility allows you to connect SEA-XXX-LAX/SFO if you need to, which is not ideal admittedly.

US has very nice routing rules that allow RTW routings that make them a very underappreciated option (and a lot of ways to acquire miles that don't involve actually flying on US ). And I could easily combine a handful more miles to add in de-facto stopovers. In fact, that is exactly what I did last year.

(The award was a US award for SEA-SFO-NRT-HKG(dest)-ZRH-FRA(stop)-SEA with another CO award daisy-chained with it: HKG-SIN-DPS(dest)-BKK(stop)-HKG. I didn't do an award in Europe because it would be silly to do it in Germany with easy train access and cheap AB flights.)

I don't doubt that oneworld Explorer awards are neat, though.

I'll be reading your trip report before I head to bed now.

I'm taking my first AB flights on the OW explorer I just booked, Y class FRA-BER and then BER-JFK in J.

Total agreement and for people that are positioned correctly (e.g. ORD with MKE near by) one could get three LH trips out of the OWE without going to much out of the way. At this point this is probably the best value around.