dartsndeacs
THE quintessential dwarf
Just as a note to their first suggestion, I have a shitton of British Airways points because I've taken advantage of some transfer bonuses to them, and I wouldn't count on british airways points to be available for award flights on american all too often. A few years ago it seemed to work better. Nowadays, anytime the flight is $400/$500, it's unavailable to be redeemed via BA from my experience, and often times there isn't anything available when you look at nearby days.never done it but there are some chase point workarounds for AA: https://millionmilesecrets.com/guides/american-airlines-flights-with-chase-ultimate-rewards-points/
For example I just flew from Philly 2 weeks ago, and one leg of the flight was only half booked and I could see why the price one way was only like $150 and I was able to use BA points to book, but the return flight was packed and $400/$500 one way and I checked for months to see if I could snag it with points before finally just paying cash.