I had a dream last night that American Airlines was on the verge of announcing that all of their international flights would either offer either:
- 3 business class award seats, or
- 2 first class award seats
The rule was going to be that each aircraft’s forward cabin would guarantee to offer some premium cabin award space.
American Airlines Boeing 787 Business Class
I woke up ready to blog about this, and talk about how it’s similar to the move that British Airways made with their huge 2015 devaluation, guaranteeing at least 2 business and 4 economy seats per flight that year when schedules loaded, and United’s guarantee that ‘every flight to every destination’ would have award seats when they devalued in 2006.
American had promised a year ago that we’d be seeing more transatlantic and transpacific business class award availability (right away) but that hasn’t happened, outside of momentary glitches or dumps of space that are removed as quickly as they appeared. And of course the change was just a dream.
I woke up and things were… the new normal.
Since American’s award search calendar is broken (and has been for months), you can’t search for American flights only anymore. So if you want to see what availability looks like on American’s flights and not British Airways flights then you need to search non-stop availability on routes that BA doesn’t serve. That rules out most of American’s London Heathrow routes and it rules out New York – Paris.
There is not one single business class award seat from today through end of schedule, eleven months, on:
- Raleigh Durham – London Heathrow
- Dallas – Madrid
- Dallas – Paris
- Dallas – Hong Kong
- Los Angeles – Sydney
- New York JFK – Milan
Not a single business class saver seat. And this isn’t “cherry picking” routes, these are the first routes I selected at random.
American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER Business Class
I don’t want to suggest there’s literally no business class award space on American metal, just very little. For instance searching the entire year New York JFK – Barcelona had a business class award seat on May 13, 30; June 3, 10, 18, 24, 25, 30, 31; November 24, 25, 26 (12 out of 331 days).
Thank goodness for secret partner Jet Airways.
American used to offer the best award availability of any US airline. Now it offers the worst. To some extent the change began before the US Airways merger. As American brought new business class products into the fleet they became careful with availability. I expected things to worsen with the merger because US Airways was always tight-fisted with awards, though the one unique thing about US Airways was that they were generous with domestic first class awards — and American is no longer even good there.
At what point does the liability of unused outstanding miles cause an airline to release award space?
Biggest devaluation I’ve ever seen. Miles and upgrade benefits are worthless if they don’t let you use them – I’ve got plenty of miles and plenty of SWUs, no need to collect more because I can’t use the ones I have, so I fly other airlines now.
It is equally as pitiful on domestic routes as well. I am not sure what “AAdvantage” there is to be an Elite tier flyer with AA any longer.
Its pretty sad that the largest US airline has the least amount of award space. Keep post shaming them and maybe they’ll open up some space over time,
People need to cut up their AA credit cards. But most won’t. And it will never get better.
I wrote about this on MilePoint. We were lucky (and grateful ) to score FC for us and BC for our friends from US to Buenos Aires. Trip is Feb 19th and got those seats about 10-11 months ago. Started searching for a friend and could not find Business Class seats for about one year out.
So if people say they are waiting for a devaluation, I say it already happened. When you force people to pay for Standard Awards, you have de facto devalued their miles.
Oh, they’ll keep selling miles and giving them away with credit cards but this behavior is maddening.
Gary, MLK’s dream will become a reality lot sooner than yours.
it’s not just international F/J. domestic Y is horrendous. out of JFK to pretty much anywhere only has saver awards if you are willing to take connecting flights on a Tuesday at 2pm (being flippant, of course, but it is often the case). I no longer have any cards that accrue AA miles, it’s pointless to accumulate.
I disagree @Max remember that Citi and Barclaycard re-upped at a higher price per mile even after AA’s devaluation and reduction in availability. AA miles are still good for partner awards [albeit transatlantic options to Europe are limited], and the cards are good for benefits if you fly AA but don’t earn status — just not for *spending*.
@Robert though some programs base decisions on accounting fictions, balance sheet liability SHOULDN’T drive costs from a business standpoint… the worry OUGHT to be the long term income stream off a program that makes it tough to get value from its miles.
EXP for the last 10 yers. no more
I believe AA realized that premium cabin awards offer a disproportionate value and are trying to push people into coach redemptions. Unfortunately, with ever-decreasing fares, coach redemptions typically offer poor value too.
These patterns suggest that the bubble is bursting, and we’ll encounter a recession in the airline sector soon enough.
I couldn’t find a single saver business award for USA to NRT or HND when looking recently. Definitely makes me not want to bother with flying AA and earning miles when I have the choice.
Same situation for me recently. I was looking for saver business availability to SCL on AA metal and found nothing over the course March 2017 to end of calendar. There was a very small number of close in departures available. Pathetic.
I have no expectation of using AA miles for AA premium classes at all. These days, I only hope to find AA coach space on connecting flights to long-haul flights on international partners. In December, I flew EBL-DOH-PHL-MSY in biz for 70k, and that was a fantastic value even with the AA domestic leg in coach, and I’ll continue to collect more AA miles for similar experiences.
Thanks for posting this. It’s been bad for a long time. Hopefully AA will actually notice and get a clue how much this is royally pissing off their loyal customers. I’ve written to their customer service (I know it won’t do anything, more just for fun to see what lame response I’ll get) that on 4 routes (PHL-Europe) I found 0 award seats for the entire 331 day availability. So pathetic.
worse than using BA miles and paying the bogus fuel surcharge ?
it stinks that miles do not retain the value they were earned at
Experienced the same both intl and domestic – hard to find anything. Burned all of my AA miles recently.
EXP for a decade. Have my company on AA as well. Quickly shifting to other providers.
UA has also become poor on the availibllty front as well unless you book 1-2 days out. Think it is because of all the worthless Chase miles that have been given out in the last 24 months with Chase Reserve launch.
Game is over. Just pay to play and take the best carrier on a given route.
I see it’s not just me. I see the odd 2 or 3 stop itinerary on BA to Europe for $$$. These miles are good for some partner awards and maybe some off-day(as someone opined Tuesdays at 2 PM) domestic coach stuff. Otherwise, gift cards. No longer collect these crap miles.
The other maddening thing is when you search for AA award seats (business class) and think you’ve found one. Then you look at the details and its only business on one leg, the other is in economy, but they are still trying to get the full business miles out of you. I am really becoming disenfranchised with AA. I thought it was me not doing something right in searching.
Good post Gary.
The sad remains of a good airline. Empty promises or the alternate fact of using your earned miles for an award ticket.
@Steven S You were very lucky to get those. Try finding anything to South America now when looking 11 months out. They have saver seats for tomorrow and the day after.
If a program promotes a reward (MileSAAver) but never offers it, it should be considered unfair business practice, or at best bait and switch.
A reward touted as having a cost of up to 150,000 miles routinely shows up at a cost of 195,000 miles which is not shown on the reward chart.
I get how they can set the rules at we have to take it, but they have total disregard for what they advertise and what they offer.
Previous attempts (old miles v. new miles) to bring the program in-line with some level of playing fair were not successful, but it seems they have reach a new levels of audacity by completely ignoring their own terms of service.
As they are still operating under a FTC anti-trust order, I would love to file a unfair business practice complaint and get them to live up to what their program offers.
Realistically that’s on the order of $25-35k so I’ll just sit here and fume with the rest of you
While we’re at it can I say how pathetic UA award space to Hawaii is? There is not a single first class saver seat from SFO to any island for anything past the immediate next few weeks to EOS. What’s crummy about this is a just need a “B.S.” date far out in the future to grab so I can then employ a wait listing strategy. There’s nothing to use even as a placeholder!
Gary
Can you get a comment from them?
It is actually even more devious. When searching for flights from West Coast to Australia, a very few Business and/or First Class saver seats appear to be available. However, when you click through, the business and first class seats are on one hour connector flights and the trans pacific flights are all in economy….pretty pathetic…
It’s seeming like a distant memory, but it was not that long ago – two or three or four years? – when American offered great upgrade and mileage redemption opportunities. (Sigh.) Regardless, Gary, keep beating this drum. It’s a real service to the many readers who don’t know any better when they naively assume that it is easy to use their American miles, and in some very small ways helps to hold the airline accountable.
As you’ve repeatedly and wisely pointed out, the tables may be turned on American and other domestic legacy carriers come the next recession (which the new administration in DC unfortunately may expedite). Lack of loyalty cuts both ways.
AA will respond to this post by releasing some space on all routes and then the pundits will laud this and forget about it how bad it is for another year or two when we rinse and repeat.
Problem is there’s not enough competition domestically so there’s no incentive to improve this program.
You don’t even mention the phantom Finnair space, or the fact that BA has access to Iberia space that AA doesn’t see. I just closed my Bank Direct account and will move all my revenue flying to UA. AAdvantage is now a program for suckers.
Gary, you should refrain from mentioning aa cards without clearly saying that they are a bad deal, as well as using as many words to explain why as you do use touting.
Such a policy would be consistent with being a credible source.
I hope that you can promise to do so.
Thank you
@Adjusted as my comments above highlight I disagree with you that “aa cards..are a bad deal”
I am pretty clear (and perhaps more nuanced) in my analysis of the products — good signup bonus, good for benefits, not great for spending (except in some limited cases, eg it makes sense for me to put $50k spend on the Barclaycard Aviator Silver).
I guess we should forget now about Saver awards at all. Standard awards is a new reality.
Gary your title is misleading. There is award space just not at the lowest level. The company has had multiple award levels for years, you know this but admittedly you don’t like it. And remember that by offering less award space you can use your systemwides more easily which can be waitlisted and confirmed up until departure time or better yet the company can sell the seat. You don’t understand how RM works.
I have been mentioning soe of this for a while. DFW to HKG they have open space. I have seen open space yet they will only give them up at high level, not saver. Delta always gets bashed yet I have been able to score many top awards at low level. I think there are sweet spots on all the major programs overall.
Routes that used to be available like MIA to LHR are now either British Airways with fuel surcharges or crappy routings with stops along the way adding extra legs both ways.
………I second the above comment by Boly. “Gary-Can you get a comment from them?”
@Josh G I *do* understand how revenue management works, and it does work differently at American than at United, Delta, and most other airlines and differently than it used to in the past.
When you write “The company has had multiple award levels for years” they’ve had several levels of awards since 2014, before April 8, 2014 they had 2 levels of awards and frankly standard or rulebuster-style awards were far more reasonable than they are today.
Award space is colloquially used to refer to saver or capacity-controlled space. I’m obviously not talking about redemption for last seat availability awards.
Although you fall into the trap yourself that you criticize when you write “by offering less award space you can use your systemwides more easily” — I thought your critique isn’t that they’re ‘offering less award space’ but less saver space? Or perhaps the colloquialism that you and I both use is actually a reasonable one??
Of course even as (saver) award space has become more scarce, availability of confirmed upgrade inventory has become more scarce as well.
How many miles were redeemed per year in the last 5 years? If there’s a nice equilibrium between issues points and redemption AA will be just fine with the current situation. Expect to use 2X point on AA metal.
If you hand out miles as an incentive, claim seats are available by publishing award charts, but then effectively make it impossible to redeem them, then that sure seems close to a very purposeful fraud to me. This has always been a game, but the sheer magnitude now seems to skirt fraud in a way it hasn’t before.
Is this getting so bad now that we’re now sailing near class-action territory? What would it take for something like this to finally get slapped down? What could the recourse look like?
@Josh – The lower levels of award space, having no inventory, are phantoms meant to entice people into using the program.
You can claim our lack of knowledge in revenue management all day long but they need to offer the awards they promote at the mileage levels they defined on their award pages, remove them from the program or face the possibility of a disgruntled member who happens to be experienced in the nuances of FTC fair trade practices and with access to the resources needed to follow through.
The lack of AAdvantage saver awards it tantamount to doubling (or more than doubling in some cases) the cost of award travel on AA. It feels like a total rip off. I wish I hadn’t accumulated their miles over the past few years. I have no respect or loyalty for AA.
Domestic, international, economy, business, first – it’s the same story with AA unfortunately.
Skymiles are more usable IME recently – even if the absolute lowest mileage amount isn’t open the next level up sometimes isn’t all that much and can be better than the jacked up AAnytime rates. Mileage Plus still seems to work best for me though (out of the legacy domestic FFPs that is) at least for what I’ve been needing – far and away better than AA lately.
And really the bank points programs, coupled with a watchful eye on sale fares, etc., seem to be one of the best options these days.
We can blog and squawk about it all we want, I don’t see that AA cares or will change anything.
COMPLAINERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
just book the flights one day out that ARE available and call in sick for 10 days.
Then hope you can get back.
Seriously, if I were Delta , I’d have no incentive to give miles to anyone based in Atlanta. United, same for Houston and AA for DFW. I’m sure there are other hubs where business flyers will always take the non-stop flight and it doesn’t make sense to give ANY benefit.
Stop complaining and start flight school.
@ Gary – Does the recent lack of award space have anything to do with the twofold changes in the Advantage program over the last twelve months:
(1) Change to revenue earnings side which forces people to use miles if they want to completely bail on the program or rush earn a bunch in anticipation of the change.
(2) Change to award chart which forces to people to redeem prior to the change and book as many trips as possible with what they have.
I feel like both the items would have some affect on the award availability since this also occurred with both Delta and United (Don’t think anyone put 2 and 2 together on those, but I remember the posts after the award chart changes and you can pretty much turn back time and swap American out for Delta and United).
Even if the availability stayed the same, the short burst of redemptions because of the two factors would have drastically reduced award availability.
Payback time for all those (including employees) who enthusuastically suported Doug Parker and the US/AA merger – just like all those who voted for the unreal Donald
As an AA EXP, I have noticed that my EVIPs all cleared at the last minute – yet there were several gate uprades still being done for employees and other non-revs. So AA purposely holds back upgrade space, even when there is plenty of upgrade availability.
Bastards!
I was searching the DFW-HKG flight recently and also found no business or first availability to end of schedule. What makes this sad is that the 77w on this route has like 60 premium seats between business and first. Really not acceptable. AA needs to open this up some to keep loyal customer happy in the long run I think. Heck I’d be happy to find AA metal premium econ seats to Europe even.
using their web site for award space for san/bkk/san is a joke, if open , it shows over 36 hrs travel time.
call in to book on the phone flights on jal are open and just 21 hrs
( at the new buss rate though, up 35k miles from last year)
As long as AA keeps filling up (paid) seats like they are and people keep getting and using their branded credit card for miles, there is no incentive for AA to do anything about their saver awards. AA views them as giving up revenue. The miles are already “sold” so they can get someone to redeem them for higher amounts and people keep coming back for more, why change anything. I expect to see a change to the awards chart like Deltas before I see them open more space.
@thesilb : your ‘waitlisting’ strategy of booking flights you have no intention on taking only makes the minimal award space situation even worse.
please people only book the flights you can actually take and leave the others for those that can actually use those dates.