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Royal Jordanian award space is now searchable on aa.com. You can now search the following airlines’ award space on aa.com:
- American
- Alaska
- British Airways
- Hawaiian
- Qantas
- Royal Jordanian
- Finnair
- airberlin
Because aa.com is very easy to use for searches up to one month at a time and has a pleasant interface, this is great news.
Where does Royal Jordanian fly in the US? How is the award space picture?
Royal Jordanian flies three North American routes.
- Detroit-Montreal-Amman
- Chicago-Amman
- New York-Amman
All of the routes have near-perfect availability in economy and business class. The calendars I’m about to present all show space only on the nonstop Royal Jordanian flights. I used Bill’s trick to get the calendar to display only nonstop space.
For all routes, the economy award calendar is shown, then business. None of the routes is daily. They range from 2-5x weekly. Space is available almost every day that they are flown.
New York to Amman, October/November 2013
Chicago to Amman, November/December 2013
Montreal to Amman December/January 2013/4
One thing you may notice is that these flights are expensive at 45k/67.5k each way per person in economy/business. You may be able to lessen the price and get a stopover in Europe at the same time. See Anatomy of an Award: Saving 60k Miles by Combining Avios and American Airlines Miles.
Beyond just flying to Jordan, Royal Jordanian is a great way to use American Airlines miles to the entire Middle East and India. Royal Jordanian has an extensive route network in the area–see its destinations–and award space is solid.
Don’t forget that American Airlines has a unique routing rules that you cannot route through the Middle East to Africa on one award, and you cannot route through East Asia to India. See Five Cardinal Rules of American Airlines Awards. But the good news is that the Middle East and India are all one region, so you can connect in Amman to any destinations in the region.
Recap
American Airlines has added the ability to search Royal Jordanian award space to aa.com. This is awesome news because it is now much easier to search for and find the gold-mine award space that Royal Jordanian offers between the US and Jordan, the Middle East, and Indian Subcontinent.
This is also big news because American Airlines does not waive the phone fee on award bookings that are not possible online–unlike its competitors–so you should be able to save $25 per ticket on your next Royal Jordanian booking with American Airlines miles.
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67.5k in biz on an average airline… ouch… 🙁
They might have plenty of award space scattered around but it is usually never more than 2 seats in business. Unfortunately I belong to a small minority who is looking for 4-5 award seats and for that, my choices are so limited but still doable with some advance planning and Royal Jordanian does not fit well in to my scheme of things. Did anyone had luck grabbing 4-5 award seats with RJ ever?
What is the RJ business product like? Where would you rank it in terms of AA and BA? Thanks.
I’m curious as well. I’m flying on 2 RJ flights next year but RJ trip reports are few and far between.
Never flown it. Crown Class has 83″ pitch, angled lie flat. Economy has 33″.
I would say that Crown Class sounds like a big step up from economy, but not great as far as business class. Economy pitch is a nice 1-2″ more than US-based airlines, so that’s solid.
Hey Guys, RJ is actually quite a decent airline. I’ve flown them several times out of Chicago to Amman in Economy and my father goes yearly in Business on the same route. I’ve also flown them from IST to AMM and AMM-BOM. The service in economy has always been quite decent for me. My dad has had pretty good experiences in Biz as well. Anyway, I keep hearing that business has Angled Lie Flat seats but this isn’t true on all of their metal. He just flew AMM-ORD 3 days ago on an A340 and insisted the seats were 180 degrees fully lie-flat… Same thing last year. This can be confirmed on their site: http://www.rj.com/en/A340.html.
Anyway, hope this info helps some people out!
Thanks for the report.
I am curious to know if I do DTW to AMM or back AMM – DTW, will Detroit get counted as free stopover? I ask because one of ur posts (A List of All Possible International Gateway Cities When Using AAdvantage Miles ) mentions RJ as the only airline out of DTW. But the search result shows YUL as a stop!
American Airlines no longer allows free stopovers on awards, so that post is now useless. See #3: https://milevalu.wpengine.com/17-changes-to-us-airways-and-american-airlines-loyalty-programs-ranked-by-importance/