Days after Virgin Atlantic announced that they’re increasing the price of awards on their U.S. partner for traveling within the U.S. and across the world – except for travel between the U.S. and Europe – British Airways has gone ahead and imposed its own unannounced devaluation for travel on American Airlines and Alaska Airlines.
One of the best uses of British Airways Avios has been short haul travel, especially in economy, that doesn’t add fuel surcharges. A few examples:
- Short distance flights within the U.S. on Alaska and American
- Short distance travel within Australia on Qantas
- And some intra-Asia travel (though some does involve surcharges)
American Airlines Economy
For years the British Airways distance-based pricing approach, which first went into effect a dozen years ago, has given members outsized value on short trips. That’s been true even after they excluded U.S. flights from their cheapest prices.
Here’s the British Airways distance-based partner award chart:
| Distance | Coach | Premium Economy | Business | First |
| 1 – 650 | 6,000 (7,500) | 9,000 | 12,500 | 24,000 |
| 651 – 1151 | 9,000 | 12,500 | 16,500 | 33,000 |
| 1152 – 2000 | 11,000 | 16,500 | 22,000 | 44,000 |
| 2001 – 3000 | 13,000 | 25,250 | 38,750 | 51,500 |
| 3001 – 4000 | 20,750 | 41,250 | 62,000 | 82,500 |
| 4001 – 5500 | 25,750 | 51,500 | 77,250 | 103,000 |
| 5501 – 6500 | 31,000 | 62,000 | 92,750 | 123,750 |
| 6501 – 7000 | 36,250 | 72,250 | 108,250 | 144,250 |
| 7001+ | 51,500 | 103,000 | 154,500 | 206,000 |
The shortest flights within North America incur a surcharge, costing 7,500 Avios instead of 6,000. Now this pricing has changed.
What Tyler Glatt identified was several awards pricing more expensively than expected based on the standard British Airways Executive Club pricing model. For instance,
- Dallas – Denver has gone from 7,500 Avios to 8,250 Avios (American)
- Miami – Cozumel has gone from 7,500 Avios to 8,250 Avios (American)
- Dallas – Cancun has gone from 9,000 Avios to 11,000 Avios (American)
- Los Angeles – Liberia, Costa Rica has gone from 13,000 Avios to 16,000 Avios (Alaska)
- Los Angeles – Honolulu has gone from 13,000 Avios to 16,000 Avios (American, Alaska)
American Airlines Economy
These represent increases of 10% to 23% for American Airlines and Alaska Airlines award travel. It’s also now tougher to use American and Alaska miles to travel on BA itself, as BA is restricting the first four business class award seats on a flight to its own members.
Horrors! Lions and Tigers, oh my! The inhumanity of it all! 😉
I use AS for BA awards. And BA for QR awards.
Any indication that this also applies to Aer Lingus and Iberia?
The devaluations will continue until morale improves.
Airline loyalty programs have become a joke. Not sure how long before people realize that the sign-on bonuses and card spending is going to get them peanuts and that they are better off putting that spend on a cash back card and be a free agent. Looking at booking an award on AA.com over the holidays. When I search CMB-DFW it takes me via DAC and when I search DAC-DFW it takes me via CMB but wont let me book a direct flight. Getting anything reasonable out of DFW requires a overnight connection somewhere.
It’s worse than a devaluation as BA charges cancelation fees and forfeiture of miles not canceled less than 24 hours in advance
I stopped using the program after 20 plus yesrs
Not happy about the BA miles devaluation. But what I find interesting was how suddenly I am finding more domestic AA flight availability using BA miles than was the case before — and this is even as BA is asking for less miles for the space than AA wants using AA miles for the very same short-haul flights. Maybe it’s a coincidence and nothing more, but not sure at this point.
@Cabal2222 In general, I agree. I only use for international business class where I can get better value, and even then the main advantage is that I can cancel/change award tickets so easily. I’d use spend to collect airline miles, but credit card miles are more flexible and often you can convert them for cash back if you wish.