Tag Archives for aadvantage.
A former senior loyalty executive with extensive knowledge of United’s MileagePlus program told me that yesterday’s elimination of award charts was “the day United died.”
United has now followed Delta in ending transparent award pricing, leaving American and Alaska as the only major US carriers with award charts.
American Airlines purchased a stake in China Southern. The Chinese carrier will be leaving SkyTeam this year.
Several months ago they announced that frequent flyer benefits would be coming. Travel on China Southern now earns American AAdvantage redeemable miles (but elite qualifying miles only in American Airlines codeshares) and AAdvantage miles can be used for award travel on China Southern.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce welcomed Royal Air Maroc CEO Abdelhamid Addou into the oneworld alliance this afternoon at the Royalton Hotel in New York.
This is a big win for AAdvantage frequent flyers. Award travel on the carrier is abundantly available and with the addition of Miami service in April they’ll offer non-stop Boeing 787 travel from 4 North American cities to Casablanca with connections beyond.
With China Southern leaving the SkyTeam alliance next year American Airlines — which owns a $200 million stake in the Chinese carrier — will be expanding its codesharing relationship next year. Along with that will come reciprocal mileage-earning and redemption and reciprocal lounge access.
Ultimately this will be a huge net add for AAdvantage members looking to travel to Asia, unless dominoes fall further and eventually push Cathay Pacific out of oneworld. That would not be a worthwhile tradeoff.
This is literally the opposite of “hang up, call back.” It’s almost like a Yakov Smirnoff Russian Reversal joke, “In Soviet Russia, American AAdvantage calls you!”
I’ve never had an agent check for award space after a call and proactively follow up before. That’s amazing. Has an agent ever gone above and beyond like that for you?
Two weeks ago American AAdvantage launched award ‘web specials’.
American has loaded several routes into web specials. This includes longer haul travel, and even includes Hawaii, at a variety of discounted prices.
American AAdvantage has launched a promotion through end of year with the opportunity to earn 50,000 AAdvantage miles. And frankly it’s complicated.
I’ll probably earn 2000 miles but anyone buying miles with the current offer at under 2 cents a mile can earn a lot more.
I appreciate that American still has an award chart that they are willing to publish. I appreciate that they mostly stick to it. However they stick to it only as long as there isn’t an exception, that they do not tell customers about.
American AAdvantage has an uncompetitive million miler program, recognizing lifetime loyalty, and they’ve made it worse over the past few years. There are two higher elite levels than there used to be, and lifetime elites are now at the bottom of the upgrade list. That’s easy to fix.
Meeting customers where they are and want to be is important. I’m looking forward to giving this a test drive, to see if the same options are offered in the app as online, once my own app updates on my phone. That said booking ease isn’t among the top five challenges that the program faces.
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 »
