How to Redeem American Airlines Miles for Flights to Europe

Europe is one of the most popular travel destinations for many of us living in the United States, and there are many flight options. On the other hand, there is competition for desirable flights, and award availability is dependent on multiple factors, including specific origin and destination airports, travel dates, planning horizon, types of points and miles available, number of travelers and desired class of service.

For individuals who want to use American Airlines AAdvantage miles to book travel between the U.S. and Europe, there are options for flying on American Airlines or on partner airlines, which include Oneworld alliance airlines and non-alliance airlines. For flights between the U.S. and Europe, airline options are American Airlines or three partner airlines: British Airways, Finnair and Iberia. The Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus is a limited American Airlines partner, but it’s not possible to redeem AAdvantage miles for Aer Lingus flights now.

It’s important to understand that the AAdvantage program uses different approaches for American Airlines and partner awards. Region-based award charts with fixed rates apply to partner flights, and award rates for American Airlines flights are dynamic. If a single award contains both American Airlines flights and partner flights, it’s considered a partner award.

How to Obtain American AAdvantage Miles

Although American Airlines previously was a transfer partner of Bilt Rewards, it currently isn’t a transfer partner with any of the major flexible rewards programs, but there’s speculation about a future partnership with Citi ThankYou® Rewards. 

Marriott Bonvoy points can be transferred to American AAdvantage at a 3:1 ratio. This means that every 3,000 Marriott points becomes 1,000 AAdvantage miles.

You can earn AAdvantage miles through flights, other partners and credit card welcome bonuses and spending. Opportunities exist to earn AAdvantage miles through multiple activities including online shopping, dining, hotel partners, car rental partners, cruises and vacations and experiences.

Citi issues American Airlines co-branded credit cards.

The following Citi credit cards earn AAdvantage miles through spending and welcome bonuses:

• American Airlines AAdvantage® MileUp® Card​
• Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®
• Citi / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard
• Citi® / AAdvantage Business World Elite Mastercard®

How to Search for Awards

The primary way to search for AAdvantage awards is through American Airlines channels, but other tools also may be useful. We’ll demonstrate:

• American Airlines website search: The same search engine is used to identify and book awards on American Airlines and partner airlines.
• Third-party search: If you have significant flexibility with travel dates and locations and are seeking the best award rates, third-party search tools may help identify options more quickly.

American Airlines Search

To begin an award search on American Airlines website, select “Book flights” under “Plan travel” and enter parameters on the search page. Steps include:

• Select the type of search (round-trip, one-way or multi-city) from the dropdown.
• Enter the origin and destination airports and desired travel date.
• Check the box for “Redeem miles.”
• Enter the number of passengers.

The default option searches all airlines, but you can choose to restrict results to American Airlines flights on the advanced search page.

You also can choose to limit the search to business class on this page, or you can specify a particular class of service in the calendar view.

The following example is a search for a one-way flight from Philadelphia to Rome. American Airlines operates nonstop flights between these cities, and partner flights have connections. We’re searching for flights in January 2026, which is 10 to 11 months in advance.

Results for the selected date show relatively high award rates for premium economy and business class.

If you have some flexibility with travel dates, American Airlines has a calendar view that can be used to find award availability over a range of dates quickly. To view a month of award availability, select “Calendar” from a specific date’s search results. 

In the calendar view, dates displayed in green are the lowest award rates for the month. Unless you selected American Airlines and/or business-class-only options previously, the award rates displayed for each date are the lowest rates for flights on all airlines, with any number of stops and in all classes of service.

You can use filters to refine results by number of stops and class of service. In the example below, we’re limiting results to nonstop flights in business class. This filtering excludes partner flights and connecting options for this city pair, and you can see the lowest award rate available on Jan. 26, 2026.

If your flexibility extends beyond one month, you can use the arrows on the sides of the calendar to see availability over many months. We looked at the entire calendar from mid-March 2025 to mid-February 2026 and found:

• The lowest one-way award rates in January are 19,000 miles for main cabin—any class results usually display main cabin award rates—39,000 miles for premium economy and 54,000 miles for business class. These rates also are the least expensive award rates for the entire calendar period.
• The highest award rates observed for the entire calendar period are 110,000 miles for economy, 145,000 miles for premium economy and 400,000 miles for business.

The difference between the lowest and highest rates is significant. The range of award prices and the multiple—calculated by dividing the rate for most expensive award by the rate for the least expensive award—for each class of service are:

• Main cabin: The range is 91,000 miles with a multiple of about 5.5.
• Premium economy: The range is 106,000 miles with a multiple of about 3.7.
• Business: The range is 346,000 miles with a multiple of almost 7.5.

We counted the number of days during the booking window of 331 days with at least one award seat available at rates that might be considered reasonable given the current environment. This assessment is subjective, but we assigned a top rate for each class of service to distinguish between more affordable and less affordable awards.

• Main cabin: Award availability for main cabin—at rates up to 35,000 miles per person per direction—had the highest percentage of award availability with about 64% of days having awards available for between 19,000 and 35,000 miles. This is expected, given the significantly higher number of main cabin seats.
• Premium economy: Award availability for premium economy at rates up to 65,000 miles per person per direction was much lower than economy and slightly better than business class. About 8% of dates had award availability between 39,000 and 65,000 miles.
• Business: Award availability for business class at rates under 100,000 miles per person per direction was extremely limited with only six days available under this threshold during the entire booking window. Three dates with award availability at 54,000 miles were for travel near the end of the schedule.

Results at one point in time for a single route shouldn’t be extrapolated to other routes, and dynamic pricing means this could change anytime. Findings above are consistent with general trends we’re seeing for higher dynamic award rates on American Airlines and other U.S. carriers nonstop international flights in business class.

Third-Party Tool Search

The following example utilizes the free version of PointsYeah, but other award search tools have similar functionality. Our guide for searching Oneworld availability provides more details about different tools and use. For someone who is willing to travel from or to multiple airports and/or consider a wide range of dates based on award availability, these tools can be useful as a starting point for a broad search.

For travelers with a lot of flexibility, using discovery or exploration functionality will facilitate looking at many different airport combinations. In PointsYeah, this functionality is available under “Flight Deals.”

One caveat with using this approach is that the award options presented are from saved (cached) results from other users’ searches. This contributes to less accurate results compared to searches that use real-time award availability because awards may have already been booked by other travelers. It also means that if others haven’t searched for awards with your criteria, available awards might not be displayed.

Let’s look at an example for a traveler who is flexible about beginning a trip in the United States, flying to any airport in Western Europe and traveling during October.

The starting point for this broader search is the “Flight Deals” tab, not the live search page. 

When searching for flight deals, you can choose from / to options as inclusive as “Anywhere” or as narrow as a specific airport. Regions available include continents, parts of continents, specific countries, regions within selected countries or specific U.S. states. Typing in the search box will reveal available choices, and you can enter up to three options as both origin and destination selections. 

For this search, the selected parameters are from the U.S. excluding Hawaii to Western Europe, and the date range is the first 16 days of October. We chose the broader United States area, but other options include selecting regions within the U.S. (such as the Northeast), specific states or specific airport codes. Once search criteria are set, use the “Yeah” button to begin the search.

Results can be filtered and sorted on the results screen. Some important filters to set include:

• Cabins: The options are economy, premium economy, business and first. The default option includes all cabins. For this example, the filter is set to business only.
• Airline programs / bank programs: These two filters allow specifying the types of points and miles to use for the search. For this example, we’re limiting results to availability using American AAdvantage miles.
• Number of seats: For this example, we’re using one passenger to get the most results.
• Stops: If this is important, set it, but we’re using the default of any number of stops.
• Max points: We chose not to set this initially. Many results were shown at 57,500 miles with taxes and fees around $750. These likely are British Airways flights.
• Max duration: If this is important, set it, but we didn’t for this search.
• Max taxes: We set the filter here to $500, to eliminate British Airways flights with high taxes and fees. Unfortunately, that eliminated all options, so we removed the filter to see all results.
• Premium cabin %: This filter can be useful to avoid mixed-cabin options with any or long flights in a lower class of service. The default option is 60%, with options for any, 80% or 100%.

A portion of the results are displayed below. The default sort in this type of search is “Latest update,” but you can change it to sort by number of points or date.

Despite this search failing to find the needle in the haystack of a partner business-class flight without high taxes and fees during a popular travel period, it provides a reality check on the situation.

Given these results, let’s look at premium economy options. Besides updating the selected cabin, other parameters changed include:

• Stops: One or fewer
• Max Duration: 10 hours
• Sort order: Points low to high

Results show both American Airlines and partner flights. British Airways flights have lower taxes and fees for premium economy compared to business. The result for Dallas (DFW) to Frankfurt, Germany (FRA), is an American Airlines nonstop flight with taxes of only $5.60. The one-stop flights from New York (JFK) to Paris (CDG) and Newark, New Jersey (EWR), to Frankfurt (FRA) are on British Airways, and fees are about $528.

Changing the cabin to economy provides additional flight options, and British Airways economy flights also have lower taxes and fees, as shown below.

When you see an award option that you want to explore further, click on the icon, which will open a pop-up window and show details for that flight and related flights. For the Oct.1 flight from Boston (BOS) to Paris (CDG), the first option below has both segments on British Airways. The award rate is 30,000 miles, and taxes and fees are $238.90.

The second option is a combination of American Airlines and British Airways flights. The award rate is the same, but taxes are much lower at $52.90.

There are links to take you to the real-time search. Some things to keep in mind when moving to the live results are:

• Some of the filters selected previously will need to be selected again. For example, the program choices will default to all programs.
• The results will show other options over a multi-day period that might be better options than the one you were checking. For this example, the real-time search showed availability on the British Airways flights, but it also showed American Airlines options at 19,000 miles with $5.60 taxes and fees on the following day and Iberia flights at 30,000 miles with $105.50 taxes and fee on the same day. The original flight is at the top and outlined.

If you’re interested in booking a flight, you need to go to the American Airlines website or app and search for available flights and book there.

American Airlines Awards

American Airlines operates multiple nonstop flights between the U.S. and Europe. Some routes are seasonal and others change over time, so we’re noting some examples, rather than providing a comprehensive list of routes.

From Philadelphia (PHL), American’s nonstop European routes include the following airports: Lisbon, Portugal (LIS); Barcelona, Spain (BCN); Madrid (MAD); Nice, France (NCE); Rome (FCO); Naples, Italy (NAP); Athens, Greece (ATH); Milan (MXP); Venice, Italy (VCE); Zurich (ZRH); Paris (CDG); Amsterdam (AMS); London (LHR); Dublin (DUB); Edinburgh, Scotland (EDI); and Copenhagen, Denmark (CPH).

Other American hubs and focus airports with multiple nonstop routes to and from Europe include Charlotte, North Carolina (CLT); Miami (MIA); New York (JFK); Chicago (ORD); and Dallas (DFW).

If your nearest U.S. airport doesn’t have nonstop flights to Europe on American Airlines, you can add connecting flights within the United States. In some cases, awards with a domestic connection have better award availability and lower award rates because airlines with dynamic award pricing often have higher award rates on nonstop flights due to high demand for these flights.

You may be wondering about the range of award rates for American Airlines flights between the United States and Europe. It’s hard to provide an absolute range of award rates because of the high variability. Our previous example for a nonstop flight from Philadelphia to Rome had an award rate ranges during the booking window of 331 days:

• Economy: 19,000 to 110,000 miles
• Premium economy: 39,000 to 145,000 miles
• Business: 54,000 to 400,000 miles

The more relevant question for many travelers is what’s a reasonable award rate for an American Airlines flight between the U.S. and Europe? There are some guidelines you can use, but the answer is situational. Some things to keep in mind are:

• AAdvantage program award rates for partner flights between the U.S. and Europe reflect rates that many points and miles enthusiasts consider good rates. Before the AAdvantage program implemented dynamic award pricing on American Airlines flights, the lowest (called SAAver) award rates for American Airlines flights were the same as partner award rates.
• If paying in cash or using flexible rewards points through a bank portal is an option, another way to look at this is to compare award and cash rates to see if you’re getting sufficient value using AAdvantage miles. An easy calculation is to divide the sum of the cash ticket price and taxes and fees for the award ticket by the number of miles used for the award ticket. If the result times 100 is greater than your personal valuation of American Airlines miles (in cents), the award ticket provides sufficient value. International cash tickets are often more expensive for two one-way tickets compared to one round-trip ticket, so you may want to compare round-trip rates if applicable. 
• It’s important to recognize and account for differences in options. For example, many travelers prefer a nonstop flight compared to a route with one or more connections. Some travelers are willing to pay more for the convenience of a quicker trip. Also, taxes and fees can vary significantly, so a flight requiring slightly more miles but significantly lower taxes and fees might provide better overall value.
• Lack of flexibility in travel plans often has a cost. Individuals who need to travel on a specific date during a popular travel period often will face higher award rates with dynamic pricing.
• In some cases, lower award prices are available when booking flights far in advance or close to travel dates. In particular, American Airlines’ booking window is 331 days before travel, and lower award rates sometimes are available when travel dates first become available for booking 10 to almost 11 months in advance. Sometimes, last-minute award rates (for travel within 14 days) are lower.

We discussed award rates above for an American Airlines nonstop route, but let’s look at a connecting route. For this example, we selected a route, Pittsburgh (PIT) to Paris (CDG) that doesn’t have nonstop service on American Airlines or its partners. American Airlines has flights to Paris from several U.S. airports, so choosing Paris as the destination provides more routing options.

We used the American Airlines calendar to look at one-way award rates to Paris for the entire booking window, which includes dates from mid-March 2025 to mid-February 2026. We’re not addressing premium-economy availability here because premium-economy awards aren’t 100% premium economy as flights within the U.S. are in economy.

Main cabin findings are:

• The lowest award rate was 19,000 miles.
• The highest award rate was 83,000 miles.
• About 91% of dates had award rates between 19,000 and 35,000 miles.

Business class findings are:

• The lowest award rate was 54,000 miles.
• The highest award rate was 400,000 miles.
• About 12% of dates had award rates between 54,000 and 100,000 miles, with most being either 54,000 miles or 62,000 miles. The pattern of lower award rates was distinct. Four dates were within 12 days of travel, eight dates were in July 2025, 16 dates were in August 2025, and 12 dates were in the first half of February 2026. The results for close-in and end of schedule periods weren’t surprising, but the July and August availability was somewhat unexpected because summer months are peak travel times to Europe. A reason for summer availability may be that there is additional capacity with extra flights added for summer travel.

Partner Awards

There is good news and bad news when it comes to partner awards.

Key positive aspects of American Airlines partner awards are:

• Award rates usually are reasonable (in terms of the number of miles required for a flight). Partner award rates in effect in early 2025 haven’t changed since 2016.
• Fixed rates make it easy to plan how many miles you need for a trip. 

One-way award rates between the U.S and Europe are shown in the table below. You can check partner award rates by entering the regions you’re traveling from and to here.The United States is divided into three separate regions: the 48 contiguous states and Canada, Alaska and Hawaii. Award rates vary for travel between Europe and these areas.

Notes:

* Main cabin off-peak dates apply Jan. 10 to March 14 and Nov. 1 to Dec. 14. “N/A” in the table indicates that off-peak awards aren’t available.

** Business / first class applies to first class on domestic flights with two cabins and business class on international flights.

*** First class applies to the highest class of service on planes with both business-and first-class cabins.

There are some challenges with partner awards including:

• Availability is limited to what each partner airline makes available to American Airlines. It can be extremely difficult to find desirable partner awards—especially in business class or first class—at popular travel times or for multiple travelers.
• Some awards have significant taxes and fees. For Europe, the highest fees are on British Airways flights. There are two components:

1. Fuel surcharges: Due to a joint venture between American Airlines and British Airways, using AAdvantage miles to book British Airways flights incurs fuel surcharges similar to booking through British Airways’ program. Fees are higher in higher classes of service.
2. United Kingdom Air Passenger Duty (APD): For flights departing from London or other airports in the United Kingdom, including connecting flights in the U.K., passengers also pay the APD. The fee varies based on class of service and time spent in the U.K. prior to departure.

American Airlines partners that operate flights between the United States and Europe that can be booked with AAdvantage miles include British Airways, Finnair and Iberia. Among these airlines:

• British Airways operates the most nonstop flights between the U.S. and Europe, serving about 25 U.S. airports with nonstop service to London and connecting service elsewhere in Europe from London. Because of the large number of flights, most partner awards are on British Airways. Most U.S. routes are to London-Heathrow (LHR), but there are some flights to London-Gatwick (LGW).
• Finnair flies between its base at Helsinki (HEL) and New York (JFK), Miami (MIA), Chicago (ORD), Dallas (DFW) and Seattle (SEA). Like British Airways, Finnair has connecting service to other European airports.
• Iberia flies nonstop between several U.S. airports and Madrid (MAD), with more limited nonstop service to and from Barcelona (BCN). Iberia has connecting flight options within Europe from these airports. U.S. airports with Iberia flights include Boston (BOS), New York (JFK), Washington (IAD), Miami (MIA), Chicago (ORD), Dallas (DFW), San Francisco (SFO) and Los Angeles (LAX). Iberia nonstop flights between Orlando, Florida (MCO), and Madrid are scheduled to begin in late October 2025.

Let’s take a look at some award examples on each partner airline, focusing on nonstop flights between the U.S. and each carrier’s primary airport.

British Airways Flights

We searched for Cincinnati, Ohio (CVG), to London (LHR), which is a British Airways nonstop route. Overall award availability between mid-March 2025 to mid-February 2026 was:

• Economy: About 20% of dates had award availability.
• Premium economy: About 23% of dates had award availability.
• Business: About 27% of dates had award availability.

On Feb. 4, 2026, there was award availability in all classes of service except first class, which wasn’t available for any date on the schedule. Award rates are consistent with the partner award chart with main cabin rates reflecting off-peak award rates. Taxes and fees are in the low $200s for economy, low $500s for premium economy and low to middle $700s for business class.

Taxes and fees typically are higher on return flights to the U.S., and that’s true on this route. From London, taxes and fees have less variation among the three classes of service with a range of $448 to $774.

Finnair Flights

We looked at Finnair nonstop flights from New York (JFK) to Helsinki (HEL). Overall award availability between mid-March 2025 to mid-February 2026 was:

• Economy: About 42% of dates had award availability.
• Business: About 3% of dates had award availability, and all were in March 2025, December 2025, January 2026 and February 2026.

Only economy and business-class awards were available on this route, and award rates corresponded with the partner award chart, with $5.60 in taxes and fees in either cabin.

While our search for the flight back to New York only identified connecting flights from Helsinki to London to New York with the segment from London to New York on British Airways, a search for Helsinki to Miami identified Finnair nonstop awards with taxes and fees of $38.11.

Iberia Flights

We checked for Iberia nonstop flights from Washington (IAD) to Madrid (MAD). Overall award availability between mid-March 2025 to mid-February 2026 was:

• Economy: About 35% of dates had award availability.
• Business: About 5% of dates had award availability with all but one date in January or February 2026.

Like Finnair, searches showed award availability in main or business cabins only. Award rates are consistent with the partner award chart. Taxes and fees of $87.40 in economy and $120.10 in business are higher compared to American Airlines and Finnair flights, but Iberia fees are significantly lower than British Airways.

For flights from Madrid (MAD) to Washington (IAD), Iberia taxes and fees are about $33 more than flights to Europe, which is a similar difference as for Finnair flights to and from Europe.

Choosing Airlines for Flights between the U.S. and Europe

Choosing among award options on American Airlines, British Airways, Finnair or Iberia involve some trade-offs and considerations.

• Origin and destination points: If your travel starts and ends at airports with nonstop service on one or more airlines and you can find nonstop flights with award availability, the convenience of a nonstop flight is a big factor for some travelers.
• Preferred airlines and airports: If you don’t have viable nonstop flight options available, you may want to consider choosing an airline based on connecting airports. For flights entirely on American Airlines, connections will be at a U.S. airport. On British Airways, connections will be in London, typically at Heathrow (LHR) but possibly at Gatwick (LGW), and occasionally require an airport change in London. Finnair flights will connect in Helsinki, and Iberia flights will connect in Madrid or possibly Barcelona. Besides airport logistics, it’s important to consider the availability and length of connecting flights to your final destination in Europe.
• Award availability: Award availability can be challenging, especially for business- or first-class awards at reasonable rates, considering both miles and taxes and fees. For some dates, awards might be available using AAdvantage miles on American Airlines flights only. Booking 10 to 11 months in advance sometimes is effective for securing high-demand partner awards or lower rates on American Airlines flights. Additional award availability or better award rates may materialize later, sometimes within 14 days of travel.
• Award rate in miles: If you have a choice of an award flight on American Airlines or a partner airline, it’s worth comparing the fixed award rate on partner airlines to the dynamic award rate on American Airlines. There will be some situations where American Airlines award rates are lower and others where they’re much higher.
• Award taxes and fees: British Airways has the highest taxes and fees by a large margin, and these fees are a dealbreaker for some travelers. Flying in business class to Europe, taxes and fees on British Airways are about $750 per person on British Airways, compared to about $120 on Iberia and $5.60 on Finnair or American Airlines. For premium economy and economy flights, British Airways taxes and fees are less than business class but still significantly more compared to business class on American Airlines or other partners.

Final Thoughts

For travelers planning to use AAdvantage miles for travel between the U.S. and Europe, options include flights on American Airlines or several partner airlines.

Award availability and award rates vary significantly depending on specific travel plans. American has region-based award charts with fixed rates for partner flights. Award rates for American Airlines flights are dynamic and highly variable. In our sample searches, we saw the following range of one-way award rates:

• Economy: 19,000 to 110,000 miles
• Premium economy: 39,000 to 145,000 miles
• Business: 54,000 to 400,000 miles

The percentage of dates in the booking window with award availability at reasonable award rates—defined as up to 35,000 miles for economy and 100,000 miles for business—across routes examined also showed significant variation.

• Economy: The range was 20% to 91%.
• Business: The range was 2% to 27%.

American Airlines and third-party search tools may save time and identify better options for travelers with some flexibility. It may be useful to use:

• American Airlines monthly award calendar to find dates with award availability and identify specific dates with cheaper award rates on American Airlines flights.
• Third-party search tools to identify award options for travelers who are open to considering multiple origin and destination airports.

Travel dates, origin and destination airports, degree of flexibility and personal preferences are important factors in determining which airlines are the best options for a particular trip. Personal preferences include class of service, specific airlines and specific airports. In choosing among award options, travelers may need to balance cost vs. time and using less miles and paying higher taxes and fees vs. using more miles and paying lower taxes and fees.

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