AA mile award increase

We've been collecting miles to send our son and his wife (as a honeymoon present) chicago to cabo. We were close to the 60,000 mark needed for both, now I checked and dec 17 chicago to cabo has jumped to a 60,000 award for one ticket. Im new to the program and had no idea the award allotment would change. Could it possibly change back to the 30,000? The return cabo to chicago still says 30,000.

Frequent flyer ("FF") free seat awards are capacity controlled. Thus, when an airline has given away as many of those low mileage (30,000 miles) seats as it has allocated, it is often willing to give away additional seats, but only at a higher cost. In your AA situation, the cost for your particular flights has gone up to 60,000 FF miles. If one way shows 60,000, it’s 60,000 for the trip, even if the other shows 30,000.

Is there a chance that AA will open up more seats at the lower cost? Yes, but probably not until a few weeks - or even days - before the flight date. Thus, your choices are to pay the additional miles, if you can, pay for the tickets or wait. Waiting is not something I would recommend. You could wind up with no seats available at any price - for either FF miles or money!

Next time, do what we always recommend here. When seeking free FF seats try to plan the travel far enough ahead so that you can reserve those free seats when they first become available - usually 330 or 331 days before the flights. (That's what this post within the past hour was for - to determine when the 331st day in advance would be). Finding FF free seats is difficult these days, because the airlines aren’t making many available. It’s a case of “If you snooze, you lose!”