Difficulty redeeming miles for business class flights to Europe with AAdvantage - what are my options?

Hi there,
I have 210,000 miles with American Airlines award program and I’m wanting to book 2 x one way business class flights Melbourne to London for 13 June next year.
When I search on the website, a couple of options come up (QF/AY via SIN & HEL) but when I select these to book, I receive an error message.
I then phoned AA reservations who told me that there is no availability at all in business class which “may be because it is so far in advance that seats haven’t been released yet”. I find this hard to believe as 30 minutes prior I had booked flights LON/MEL on SQ for July 2018 using my Velocity points.
Has anyone had any luck booking business class flights to London (or anywhere in Europe) with AA? My dilemma is that my miles expire in January and I’d like to use them before then.

Hi SwissMiss,

AA redemption to EU is definitely doable. Try other days if you are flexible.

To keep your AA miles from expiring, you only need to earn 1 mile from Advantage eshopping mall from online shopping. I used that previously to extend my AA miles expiry for another 12 months.