The Maldives is made up of almost 1200 small islands in the Indian Ocean. If you’re flying from the States there is no way to get there directly, so be prepared for the long journey!
There are several airlines that fly into Male Airport and depending where you’re flying from will depend on which airline makes sense. I recommend using google.com/flights and searching incognito to see what the flights look like and then searching on your carrier.
For us flying from Austin, it made sense to fly on Qatar from either Dallas or Houston, connecting in Doha and then Doha to Male.
The flight from Dallas/Houston is 15 hours going to Doha and 16 hours coming back. So we REALLY wanted to fly business class. From Doha to Maldives is another 5 hours and if we couldn’t fly that leg on business class, we were ok. (I think 7 hours is our limit 
for how long we can fly in economy for)
You can redeem AA miles for Qatar airways directly on the AA site. In order to find the best availability searching for as far out as possible, you’ll be able to find more availability to book the whole thing with 140K miles.
When we searched for the new few months, our only options were paying 140K miles for Houston to Doha, then 60K miles for Doha to Male, so 200K miles total.
Flying qatar airways
Flying in business class on Qatar Airways means you’ll likely have a Qsuite. If you’re traveling with someone try and choose odd numbered seats in the middle of the cabin. When you lie your seats down, they’ll turn into one big bed for you to share. So romantic!
Earning Points
The most obvious way to earn AA miles is by opening up an AAdvantage account and flying on AA. The second way/fastest way is by opening up a new AA credit card and using the bonus applied. You could get 50K-65K miles just from the credit card.
For us we prioritize American Airlines and that gets us status. With our Executive Platinum status we earn more bonus miles when we fly, so earning AA miles is not as challenging for us. This is why we value airline loyalty.
Another way to earn AA miles is through their shopping and dining portal. By linking your frequent flyer to the portals you can earn additional miles.
You can also transfer points from Marriott Credit Cards over to American. American doesn’t have as many transfer partners as other carriers do through Chase. If you can’t earn the American miles. UpgradedPoints does a great job of explaining how else to earn miles to fly Qatar Airways.
https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/airlines/best-ways-to-earn-qatar-airways-qmiles/
