Can I maximise the AAdvantage free stopover from PER to YVR/SEA/similar with a stopover in HNL?

Flights & Airfares
, ,
1

Hi there,

I’m currently planning a trip from perth to Vancouver, Canada. We want to stop in Hawaii on the way.

My original plan was an AA redemption of PER-SYD-HNL or PER-BNE-HNL for 65k points in business. The PER-SYD/BNE leg is Qantas; the SYD/BNE to HNL leg is Hawaiian Airlines. From HNL I plan to visit a couple of other islands, so would likely book a cash ticket from OGG or LIH to YVR.

I’ve been researching whether it’s possible to instead use HNL as a stopover and another city on the mainland as my final destination using AAdvantage’s free stopover. It doesn’t appear that flying to YVR would be possible with this, but potentially SEA is.

Looking at this article: The Five Cardinal Rules of American Airlines Awards - MileValue - it seems to fit within the rules, but I could be wrong. ExpertFlyer has a HA flight from Perth to Seattle. MPM is 11,678 (+25% extra allowed = 14,597) and total distance of PER-SYD-HNL-SEA is 9,784.

Is anyone able to help validate whether this is a valid routing at 65k points? And if so, how do I go about booking it? All searches on the AA website end up showing this as two separate flights. If this does turn out to be a valid routing I’m aware I’d have to fly back to HNL from either OGG or LIH. Whilst a bit inconvenient, I don’t see a way around this.

If it’s not a valid routing, any other suggestions to maximise the free stopover?

Thanks
Josh

2

Hi Josh,

I had a quick look at what you are proposing and it is not possible. Great idea but not possible.

You generally cannot transit through a third region

Australia (South Pacific region)

Canada (Canada, Alaska region)

As this route is not an exception, it would be counted as more than 1 award redemption if you do AUS-Hawaii-USA or AUS-USA-Canada

Max you could do is PER-SYD/BNE/MEL-LAX-SEA for example because PER and East Coast Aust is the same region  and LAX and SEA is the same region. Provided that is satisfy all the other requirements of cause like MPM.

For anything you can’t book online, you would have to ring up and book.

 

These are more up to date websites. You would want to pay attention to the “routing rules” section.

http://milecards.com/1588428268/american-aadvantage-routing-rules/

3

Thanks. Looks like I was thrown by some old articles before AA changed the program and prevented stopovers in 2014. I appreciate the response!

4