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American Airlines offers some of the most generous off peak awards in the world. Off peak awards are discounts (ranging from 20-30%) on economy awards with MileSAAver award space, the capacity-controlled space that we like to book.
To Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Central America, American Airlines charges just 15,000 miles one way seven months out of the year. Two roundtrips cost only 60,000 miles.
Right now the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® MasterCard® comes with 50,000 bonus American Airlines miles after spending $3,000 in the first 3 months. Just meeting its minimum spending requirement puts you at 53,000 miles. A little more spending gets you to 60,000 miles and two roundtrips.
When are Off Peak Awards Available
Off peak awards are available to the Central America and northern South America for most of the year, including most of winter, spring, and fall.
What Do They Cost
If you fly between January 16 and June 14 or September 7 and November 14, you can take advantage of a 20% discount on MileSAAver awards and pay only 15,000 miles one way or 30,000 miles roundtrip to Central America and Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.
Where Does American Fly in the Region
American has the strongest route network to Central and South America. Here are the flights from Miami to cities in the off peak region.
Here are the flights from Dallas. There are no destinations served from Dallas that are not served from Miami.
Unique to American Airlines, you can usually book off peak awards on either American flights or its partners flights. By contrast US Airways off peak awards require booking on US Airways flights only. See Master Thread: Off Peak Awards for more information.
One exception to American’s largesse is off peak awards to Central America, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Off peak awards to these countries must be booked on American Airlines flights.
That means that adding on a connecting segment on a partner will increase the price to the normal MileSAAver price of 17,500 miles one way. For instance, adding Lima to Cuzco in Peru onto an American Airlines award that would otherwise cost 15,000 miles makes it cost 17,500 miles. It still might be worth it to pay 2,500 miles to get the segment onto your award, but be aware of this rule.
You can connect from your home airport to Miami or Dallas to start the award for zero extra miles as long as the connecting flights have award space in MileSAAver economy and are operated by American Airlines. If they are operated by US Airways, the price jumps to 17,500 miles that direction.
How to Search for Award Space
Nothing fancy here. Search on aa.com for award space from your home airport to your destination. There shouldn’t even be a need for segment-by-segment searching because aa.com is pretty good at displaying even long layovers on awards like these if necessary. Here’s how to search aa.com.
Award space is generally excellent to these destinations during off peak dates. If it isn’t available on the dates you want, don’t despair, American Airlines open a lot of MileSAAver and off peak economy award space one month before departure.
Getting the Miles
Right now the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® MasterCard® comes with 30,000 bonus American Airlines miles after spending $1,000 in the first 3 months. It also comes with a ton of other benefits like free checked bags, priority boarding, a 10% rebate on awards, two lounge passes, and more. See my full review.
If you open the card and meet the minimum spending requirement, you’ll have 31,000 American Airlines miles.
With 60,000 miles, you can book two roundtrip (or open jaw) tickets to Central America or northern South America during off peak dates.
You’ll even get a 6,000 mile rebate a few weeks after the booking from the 10% rebate that comes with the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® MasterCard®.
Take your friend on a dream trip. Open one card, collect 60,000 miles on it including the 50,000 mile sign up bonus. Then book you and a companion an award trip to Central or South America. Head to Ecuador to see the Galapagos, Peru to see Machu Picchu, Colombia to trek to the Ciudad Perdida, Guatemala to see Semuc Champey, or wherever your dream trip is.
Is there an easier way to get two tickets to an exotic destination? Share it in the comments.
Just getting started in the world of points and miles? The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best card for you to start with.
With a bonus of 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first 3 months, 5x points on travel booked through the Chase Travel Portal and 3x points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), this card truly cannot be beat for getting started!
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Since you get the 10% bonus back, it looks like you would need to spend only $4,000 on the card vs. $7,000 more (total of $7,000 spend vs. $10,000) for this trip, since American Awards can be booked one way for half the round trip price. Thus, if do your initial spend you will have 53,000 miles. Then book the two outbound tickets for 30,000 miles. This leaves you with 23,000 in the bank. The program then rebates you 3,000 miles (10 percent of the 30,000) and brings you up to 26,000 – leaving you only 4,000 away from the 30,000 needed for the other segments.
You could do the trip with even less overall spend if after hitting the 53,000 mark you bought three of the four segments needed, for 45,000 miles, and got a 4,500 mile rebate, putting you at 12,500 (53,000-45,000=8,000; 8,000+4,500 rebate =12,500), only 2,500 away from the amount needed for your final segment. The downside to this strategy is if you don’t book both tickets together I’m not sure your companion would get the free checked bag.
I realize that since you travel so much, the 6,000 rebate after you have enough to book the whole thing is just a start toward your next trip, but for people who travel less frequently, might not otherwise have a use for the miles, and have low spending habits, this might be appealing. I guess the danger would be that if you book two of the segments (or three) and then the other segment you need ceases to be available while you’re waiting for the rebate to post that could foul the whole thing up.
Anyway, thanks for this post!
Wow. This was probably the best analysis I’ve ever seen in a comment. I want to hire you, but I see from your email address you’ve probably already got a pretty good job 😉
Thanks for this tip.
Does the 10% rebate on award flights count for the calendar year that you redeem the miles or the calendar year that you fly? I’ve already maxed out my rebate for 2014, so if I book a flight today for sometime in 2015, will I get the rebate?
https://milevalu.wpengine.com/up-to-10k-free-american-airlines-miles-each-year/
I got my miles 6 weeks after reservation and date was listed as reservation date. I flew the next calendar year. That makes me think it is by reservation date.