American AAdvantage Introduces Award Booking via Mobile App

by Gary Leff

American shared that the new release of their mobile app allows for award booking.

Today, we continue to enhance the AAdvantage program by launching award bookings on the mobile app. This launch will give customers the opportunity to book award tickets on American and our partners while in the app. The partners that will be available on the app include: Alaska Airlines, Finnair, British Airways, Fiji Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Iberia, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, Hawaiian Airlines. The update to the app will begin rolling out today and be available to all users by the end of next week.

I don’t mind booking online using my laptop. I’d rather they focused on getting more of their partners online, they added two last month after accidentally rolling our more than that the month before. And I’d love for the app to offer a push notification when flights are boarding.

However they’ve made some real improvements to the app. Using it to book flights has gotten much easier over the past year. Last year they added rebooking and lost baggage tracking through the app as well as same day flight changes and standby.

Now customers can use it to book award travel, too. Meeting customers where they are and want to be is important. I’m looking forward to giving this a test drive, to see if the same options are offered in the app as online, once my own app updates on my phone. That said booking ease isn’t among the top five challenges that the program faces.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. It’s working. Got my update tonight. Looks similar to the online, and kinda similar to UA with a scrolling “banner” of dates across the top showing the mileage prices.

  2. Feels like something that should have been announced 10 years ago. Where is the embarrassment?

  4. What i’d really like fixed is when searching for premium class awards e.g. NYC-SYD and select business class saver, don’t give me options where i’m flying LGA-DFW in domestic first, and then coast DFW-LAX-SYD. Ridiculous.

  6. I’m really looking forward to finding no award Biz Class availablity on the app, the way I can on my laptop.

  7. My first search on the new app was PHN-ATL in Biz. Not the easiest OW booking. Showed me multiple options on MH and NH. So far pretty happy with the update.

  9. Jake: there is this new invention called the cellphone. The cellphone has these things called apps. Some people actually use the apps to book flights. Instead of needing a PC. Go figure?!? Some of us have been waiting for AA to fix this for about 10 years.

  10. Jim A: you could always use a mobile browser on your mobile device to book awards. No desktop needed

  11. Eric.Z that makes zero sense. And you could always use a dial up modem instead of Wi-Fi. Why would you bother, if you have a well functioning app?

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