One bit of good news for members in the AAdvantage program changes that I haven’t seen get any play is that mileage upgrade award charts don’t appear to be changing.
Delta made upgrades a lot more expensive this year. United has many more upgrade price levels, including some more expensive than AAdvantage. But American hasn’t changed their upgrade prices.
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An American Airlines flight from Cancun to New York taxied to a gate at JFK set up for domestic arrivals this past Friday.
American flight AA1671 arrived about 8:30pm on Friday night, and passengers simply got off and left the airport without going through immigration or customs.
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In some ways what American didn’t say about their devaluation is even more interesting than what they did say.
United made major changes to their award chart ten years ago … they made this bitter pill go down a bit easier by promising “saver awards available on every flight to every destination.”
When British Airways announced a huge devaluation at the beginning of the year which went into effect in April they softened it in a similar manner.
A Facebook friend writes, “Since [redeemable miles] are going to be harder to earn in the future with my flying patterns buying cheap tickets and American is going to start awarding miles based on ticket price rather than distance flown in about a year, does it make sense to load up on miles with the current purchase promo?
For the last couple of weeks the American Airlines website has intermittently been having problems with booking awards. Sometimes it will just error out, or it will be slow.
Also recently American’s call center agents haven’t been able to see Etihad award space correctly. Search for the awards correctly on the Etihad website, American generally does have access to the same saver (“Guest”) award space Etihad offers to its own members, call American agents and they will say they don’t see the space.
Here’s how to snag the award space even when American’s call center agents do not see it.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Marriott is buying Starwood and Starwood Preferred Guest members are nervous.
Marriott’s CEO spoke directly to members in a new video, and says “Devaluing points or member benefits is not the way to preserve and strengthen these programs.” With due respect to the Marriott’s distinguished CEO, I do not think he’s familiar with the Marriott Rewards program.
Two parables from frequent flyer history tell us a lot about the AAdvantage devaluation that was announced this week: that the fault for it lies with you (mass noun) and why American doesn’t take as much heat as programs that devalued earlier and thus gets away scot-free.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
