Video Demo of the new AAdvantage Award Map
Yesterday I wrote about a really cool new AAdvantage Award map that was just released by American. Well this afternoon American posted a video to YouTube that gives you a demo of how it works.
It was officially announced today and it turns out that it’s the result of an interesting project to recruit technology talent at American. From the press release:
“Award Map is specifically designed with our customers in mind to help make booking flights with miles easier than ever,” said Suzanne Rubin, President – AAdvantage Loyalty Program. “The intuitive layout and simple navigation of Award Map offers customers a robust, easy-to-use tool that makes searching for and booking award tickets much more convenient.”
American is committed to technology innovation, and Award Map is a direct product of the American Airlines Development Program for Technology (ADEPT) initiative – a college recruiting program created to develop a technical talent pipeline for Information Technology. More information can be found at www.aa.com/ADEPT.
Of course, rather than watching the video, it’s more fun to just go play with the award map at www.aa.com/awardmap!
I know you’re an AA fanboy (or most likely an aa employee) and the tool seems like a good idea but out of the 5-6 searches I did they all had phantom awards in the map tool that could not be booked. Until (unless) this is fixed the tool is worthless. Until you/AA fix this you should probably stop plugging it.
They’ve still neglected the most important thing I think, and that’s displaying how much in taxes you’ll pay as you are selecting flights. Miles + $700 in sticker shock is an extreme waste of time. I agree that it was nice and easy to use, but I don’t care how easy something is to use if I can’t see how much it is going to cost me. And that’s the ultimate in usability.
Too bad it only seems to work in usa, not worldwide.
Yes I also noticed that it tended to only show higher award levels…another move by AA to force us into using many more miles.
I found on a few trips international trips that 20K award was gone and had to use $60K. So I bought a ticket. The flight was only 40% full! Does this make sense? I think AA would have been better off burning my 20K miles than what they got for my ticket.
Wait until Fall and we will really see fireworks!
sorry this is a bit off topic here. appreciate it if you can help with some info. I am looking for a TPE-AUS one way on aa.com & found a JL-SQ-AA deeply discounted ($3200 for J). is there anything we need to watch out for? I mean i know no miles will be earned, can we select our seats? has anyone did this before? thanks!