I recently wrote about the free one way options using American Airlines, and in that I referenced just 6 major hubs where this works on. Brian, a reader of the site pointed out that it could be done on more than just those, so I started digging a little to see what other options were available and struck gold.
It turns out, that when you start including travel booked on the One World Partners of American Airlines the options are a lot wider that I first thought, here is a list of airports and valid gateway cities for them based upon the partner that you are flying on.
Let me know if you have any questions on how to use this, and if you have any other airports or airlines that I missed, and I will update accordingly. Read more on how to get these free one ways here:
Getting the Magic Dashes on AAdvantage Reservations
Matt, I also wanted to add Fort Myers to the list. Air Berlin flies non stop to Dusseldorf, so that gateway city should work as well. I was just thinking about doing the same type of post, darn it!
I will link to you instead.
Great – thanks! Sorry to have ‘pipped you to the post’
No worries, i am glad you “pipped me to the post”, whatever that means! Glad you added Fort Myers, maybe more can chime in to make it a comprehensive list. I will try to do a post and link to your site at some point, good stuff. I would like to make my site a sort of “Saverocity for dummies”. Not to say, that my readers are dummies, though! 🙂
Leana
How about Honolulu as a gateway? That will work for sure.
Yep – great point- should work for JAL, Qantas, Hawaiian and Air Pacific will update.
Alaska Air cities (e.g., SEA) won’t work?
Don’t think so – the airline needs an international destination, does Alaska fly any route outside of the US (including Hawaii, Canada, Mexico and Carribean)?
Great! Should be useful in the future! Thanks!
hope PDX comes soon!
So for Raleigh/Durham does this work for any other flights other than AA174 from LHR? I was under the impression that the final destination had to be the gateway city – meaning if I come into ORD and connect to RDU I wouldn’t be able to book a free oneway…
Hi Wolfgang,
Yes, you nailed it, the gateway city matters. But if you can think outside the box, adjust your gateway to somewhere close like NYC and tie in Avios to shuttle you between RDU-NYC you can get some interesting results.
Look forward to hearing more questions from you or others.
Cheers
Matt
There must be some restrictions on these though. When I go stl-yvr-dus it works but when I do stl-yvr-mad I get charged separately.
Hey Mike,
Yes, the restrictions relate to the route – if there is an official oneworld route from A-B then you can book it as one, but if not then you cannot. I’ve always come at it differently from you here in that I live in a hub (NYC) and therefore I would fly to somewhere and onto somewhere with lots of availability, but you are leaning on the intermediary airport (YVR) to provide you with the onwards routes for the free one way.
As such, check the YVR line and you will see your routes are limited to the carriers of:
BA, Air Berlin, Qantas and Cathay.
If you look at that list, note the absence of Iberia on it and you can start to figure out why your route to Spain didn’t work, there is no routing provided by a carrier from A-B here. Whereas the DUS one works as it leans on the route maps of Air Berlin.
If you change YVR to something else where Iberia operates you might find success…
Let me know how you get on!