By the end of this post, I will show you how to get off-peak prices from Hawaii to the US, even when it’s not off-peak season, and more.
As mentioned in my Cheapest Miles to South America post, AA has more off-peak prices than most people know about. Most people just look at the OneWorld award chart, which makes sense in many ways. Most of the time the OneWorld award chart has all the AA award chart data, plus a ton more info.
AA’s OneWorld award chart (which I still have a version of here) lists off-peak prices for three regions; “Europe”, “Asia Zone 1”, and “South America Zone 2” (aka southern South America). Yet, there are a few other off-peak prices rarely talked about.
Off-peak prices also exist for:
- Hawaii – 17.5k
- Caribbean – 12.5k
- Mexico – 12.5k
- Central America – 15k
- South America Zone 1 – 15k
Plus the Europe, Asia 1, and South America Zone 2 off-peaks will apply to this list as well. Let me explain what this is, why it matters, and then some cool tricks.
Explaining the difference between the two off-peaks
Let me start with the basics. The two different lists are for the two different award charts.
The OneWorld award chart, that lists only 3 regions with off-peak, is for using miles on all OneWorld partners. The other list with 7 regions as off-peak is supposed to be for American Airlines flights, and now US Airways. Both charts are for using AA miles, but which chart you use is determined by which airline you’ll fly with. (That’s the purpose at least, but I have noticed other airlines showing up in the routes we’ll discuss with the off-peak price that shows up only in the AA award chart).
The OneWorld award chart is more helpful than the AA award chart simply because you can get to so many more places and have so much more award availability. For example, you could fly AirBerlin to Zakynthos, Greece for 20,000 miles in off-peak (although you should go in the summer). AA’s reach in Europe is quite limited otherwise, if you’re using only AA flights.
Or with the OneWorld award chart you could connect on LAN to go to Cusco, but if you’re trying to get the off-peak price you’ll only be able to fly on AA, which only goes to Lima.
Simply put, if you want access to the extra 5 off-peak regions you need to actually fly on AA, despite the drawbacks of doing so.
Despite not always wanting to go to AA destinations, 12,500 miles is one of the cheapest prices to the Caribbean outside of the Southwest Companion Pass. In fact, off-peak prices to nearly anywhere are incredible deals.
Real Quick: the nitty-gritty details
It has to get boring before it gets interesting.
The award charts clarify that off-peak to anywhere… like Europe, would also apply if leaving from Canada or Alaska. But what you may not know is the other region combinations that off-peak applies to.
Off-peak to Hawaii for 17,500 miles
- Dates:
January 12 – March 13,
August 22 – December 15 - Price also applies to flights from:
Caribbean, and Mexico
Off-peak to Mexico/Caribbean for 12,500 miles:
- Dates:
September 7 – November 14 - Price also applies to flights from:
Mexico/Caribbean
Off-peak to Central America/South America Zone 1 for 15,000 miles:
- Dates:
January 16 – June 14,
September 7 – November 14 - Price also applies to flights from:
Hawaii, Caribbean, and Mexico
Off-peak to South America Zone 2 for 20,000 miles:
- Dates:
March 1 – May 31, August 16 – November 30 - Price also applies to flights from:
Hawaii, Caribbean, and Mexico
Off-peak to Europe for 20,000 miles:
- Dates:
October 15 – May 15 - Price also applies to flights from:
Hawaii, Caribbean, and Mexico
Off-peak to Asia Zone 1 for 25,000 miles:
- Dates:
October 1 – April 30 - Price also applies to flights from:
Hawaii, Caribbean, and Mexico
The Europe, Asia Zone 1, and South America 2 info applies to the OneWorld award chart as well.
What does all this mean?
This section, as boring as it looks, will be the backbone of this post going forward. What this tells us is which regions you can combine to get that particular region’s off-peak price.
Take for example Hawaii’s off-peak price which is listed first. You can get the 17,500 Hawaii-off-peak price even when starting from Mexico. But what’s important to know is that isn’t the only off-peak combination in which Hawaii is involved. Hawaii is also listed in Europe’s off-peak price, but that’s exactly what it is: Europe’s off-peak price. Hawaii and Europe can only be combined for Europe’s off-peak price, and only during Europe’s off-peak dates. In other words, we’d be playing by the Europe off-peak rules.
Maximizing Regions
The practical application of the non-sense above is that you can combine more than you think. For example, off-peak to Europe for 20,000 AA miles can not only start from the US, Alaska, and Canada… but even starting from Hawaii, Caribbean, and Mexico will give the lower 20k price.
Almost all off-peak prices are the same for Hawaii, Caribbean, and Mexico.
If you really wanted to maximize this you could hop a flight to the Caribbean before heading to Europe. If you have a Southwest Companion Pass, take a flight down to Aruba and then go to Europe or Asia for off-peak.
Instead of doing a roundtrip to Aruba and Europe, do a oneway to Aruba (or anywhere in the Caribbean) and then keep your roundtrip to Europe, but just starting from the Caribbean. And this Europe example is available on any partner, and same with Asia Zone 1.
When prices start to look… odd
Hawaii has off-peak prices to Central America and South America that are 15,000 miles. All flights from Hawaii to anywhere in Latin America or the Caribbean have to route through the US.
Yet, off-peak from Hawaii to Central America via the US is always cheaper than Hawaii to the US. I’ll give a real example.
This is an AA award ticket from Hawaii to Miami on November 9 for 17,500 miles.
This is an AA award ticket from Hawaii to Peru via Miami on November 9 for 15,000 miles.
So far I’ve been able to knock the low off-peak price down to 15,000 miles from 17,500 miles.
I’ll admit that this would be more appealing if we all lived in LA, Dallas or Miami. But there are some awesome concepts still to come.
When prices start to get… even more odd
Hawaii’s off-peak price is 17,500 miles, but when it’s no longer off-peak for Hawaii the savings go up.
Here’s an award ticket from Hawaii to Dallas for 22,500 miles on June 1
Here’s an award ticket from Hawaii to Peru via Dallas for 15,000 miles also on June 1.
The thing about June 1st is that it’s simply not within Hawaii’s off-peak time. Off-peak for Hawaii ends March 13. But June 1st is within off-peak for flights to Peru.
When an award combines two regions that have different off-peak prices, which ones does it choose?
When I first started playing around with this I got excited thinking I found a way to get off-peak to Europe most of the year. After all, the 20k miles off-peak price to Europe is available from the Caribbean, Mexico and Hawaii as well.
The problem is that Europe lists the Caribbean on its off-peak award chart. BUT, Europe is not listed on the Caribbean’s 15k off-peak prices. Therefore the 20,000 mile option is indeed available from the Caribbean to Europe during the 20k Europe off-peak times. But the 15,000 mile price or time is not available to Europe.
It’s a matter of “whose off-peak price is being honored?”, and that’s usually based on the price listed. 20k seems to always be the Europe off-peak price and 15k seems to always be the Caribbean off-peak price.
Provided that both regions are within their own off-peak window, it should pick the lowest price, but I found a few examples where the same route on two different days proved two different prices. YMMV.
Even with no off-peak it’s a good deal.
Off-peak to Lima made the price from Hawaii 15,000 miles instead of a regular ticket from Hawaii to Dallas being 22,500 miles, a savings of 7,500 miles. Almost worth the trip down to Peru! You’d save 7,500 miles by going… It’s basically a free oneway down and a discount on the ticket back up. Consider the roundtrip to Hawaii full price and the roundtrip to Peru at a discounted price of 7,500 AA miles. An incredible deal!
And on a side note, it’s best to reemphasize that these are all concepts, and in the boring section I laid out all the info to do this yourself with a number of regions. And with the example I keep using, it’s not just Peru but anywhere in the “South America Zone 1”.
Regarding the 7,500 AA miles discount, even if you aren’t doing off-peak times, returning from Hawaii via a ticket to Peru is still way cheaper. The regular price to South America Zone 1 and Central America is only 17,500 AA miles, which is still a 5,000 mile savings over the regular Hawaii price, but the same as the Hawaii off-peak.
Booking other layovers in the US
Throwing away the last segment to South America is not something I want to encourage, but I did look into trying to make a layover in DC instead of Dallas and you definitely can not do it online. You may be able to do it over the phone with a kind agent and provided it doesn’t backtrack too much, but I havent looked into the rules too much.
Conclusion
The biggest take away is that off-peak prices aren’t just for the US to the listed region, but there are other route combinations as well. I listed the possible off-peak routes in the second section. There you can find listed what routes can be had with each region’s off-peak pricing and dates. Europe’s off-peak prices and dates can be had even when starting from the Caribbean or Hawaii.
You can get Asia Zone 1’s off-peak price even when starting from the Caribbean. Or you can get South America Zone 2’s off-peak price even when starting in Hawaii.
All kinds of interesting and very cheap routes can be had using AA’s off-peak prices. And the crazy thing is that the only off-peaks I ever see mentioned are Europe, Japan, and South America Zone 2. And yet all these other off-peak regions, and off-peak combinations exist!
If this isn’t more proof that AA miles are some of the most valuable miles for redemptions, I’m not sure what is. AA off-peak is bigger and better than we can know. And if you know what you’re doing, it can include more dates than they’d know.
Awesome!
The strange thing is AS. It’s supposed to price out the same as AA, but sometimes it charges me 30 1way when I go from HI to S.A. 2 with a stopover in L.A. when the lax-SA2 segment is during SA2 off peak.
It is probably worth mentioning that with Avianca Lifemiles, you can get a roundtrip from Lima to Cuzco for only 3000 miles each way, or round trip for 3000 miles + $45 (Cheaper than avios!). That could be very useful in combination with this deal. Fly down to Lima on AA for 30,000 miles and to Cuzco for 6000 miles, you are still saving yourself 4000 miles (Although I would probably use the miles+cash redemption with the 3000 miles). Peruvian airlines like to charge a lot to foreigners on the LIM-CUZ route, so if you are thinking about doing this, I would stock up on miles during the next Lifemiles 2×1 sale.
Nice find! I love reading ya’lls helpful posts..which are pretty much all of them 🙂
Let’s just hope this doesn’t all become an eventual casualty of the merger. Thanks for the good information, and I also appreciate that you don’t encourage throwaway award ticketing, which I believe to be unethical as it deprives some other traveler of the opportunity for an often-scarce award.
“Consider the roundtrip to Hawaii full price and the roundtrip to Peru at a discounted price of 7,500 AA miles. ”
Sorry for being slow, but are you saying you can stopover in US so combine two trips in one award?
I live in CLT which is US airways’ hub, is it easy to take advantage of the tricks you mentioned?
Thanks.
Yet another terrific piece on hacking these. It’s a bit mind-bending, all of these combinations, but there are tangible benefits for those that take the effort! Thanks!
This was much better when you could have a free stopover.
What I wonder is how closely Alaska mirrors some of these pricing things, since they allow stopovers, even on one-ways (although I don’t know if they allow this within the US).
Alaska’s website tells me that in addition to the 3 oneworld off-peak prices, Alaska also follows AA’s off-peak prices for Central America and South America 1. Obviously, since they don’t mimic the Hawaii or Caribbean prices, that loses most of the magic that you pointed out in this post, but I still think there’s an opportunity here.
After a quick test, it looks like you could get year-round 20k prices to Europe with Alaska miles on AA as long as you live in an AA hub and take an earlier trip to Hawaii. (Easy, right?) I priced a multi-city award on Alaska: HNL-LAX on May 13 (off-peak) and then LAX-LHR on Oct 13 (peak), and the whole thing priced at 20k + $24.
Drew, I know you don’t like free one-ways (which this basically is), but combined with the off-peak awards, this has potential. Although I didn’t test the Caribbean yet.
Drawbacks of AS for AA awards are: you need a RT, and you have an opportunity cost of using these miles for something like the A380 Shower. That last part is only a big deal because relatively speaking AA miles are real easy to come by.
You need a RT using AS miles???
I’ve searched, and you don’t need rt.