Tag Archives for award redemption.
A reader asks about the safety of their miles, and if some of the smaller airline currencies they have aren’t as safe whether it would be a good idea to book travel now using those miles to fly on one of their partner airlines (that’ll still be flying)?
Here’s what you need to know.
Yesterday we learned that Marriott is going to let former Starwood hotel brands limit award redemptions on high demand dates during the year, matching what legacy Marriott brand hotels could do.
There’s been a lot of misinformation spreading since the change became public (on blogs, Marriott still hasn’t told its members) so I wanted to correct these misimpressions.
Marriott doesn’t have blackout dates. Award redemption is permitted on all dates. However hotels are allowed to have significant capacity controls for a handful of dates each year. Marriott is increasing the number of hotels that are allowed to limit award redemption at their busiest times.
Marriott made a change to its terms and conditions and it’s no longer only Marriott brands that can declare high demand dates where award redemption is limited. These redemption controls are now available in 2020 to all hotels within Marriott, including ex-Starwood properties.
American AAdvantage has eliminated close-in booking fees. They used to charge a $75 fee for awards booked within 21 days of departure, waived for all AAdvantage elite frequent flyers. They no longer charge this fee effective today, January 15.
American only just introduced online redemption of Etihad awards in May and it was a surprise to see at the time, since American has been in a political war with those two airlines, despite their partnerships, for the past four and a half years – and even terminated codeshares with both. I’m glad to see American continuing to invest in getting online redemption for Etihad and Qatar right.
For many of you French Polynesia is about the destination and not how you get there. But a whole new way of getting there has been opened up to AAdvantage members. Up until now there’s been no competition for premium economy award space – it was available only to Club Tiare members. We’ll see how long availability remains this good now that so many more people can book it.
I’ve been a frequent critic of American Airlines, and that’s largely because I believe no U.S. airline has greater potential to be better than it is today than American. I’m also frustrated with many things about its loyalty program, AAdvantage, but when I sit down to compare AAdvantage to the programs offered by United and by Delta it actually comes out ahead. Here’s why.
For the past few months there been a glitch with certain awards booked on the American Airlines website, where baggage allowance information wasn’t being added to tickets. The airline doesn’t have a solution yet, but they’re taking action to avoid spreading the problem.
Customers at a certain value (in this case buying the most expensive fares when other customers tend not to be doing so) should be able to use their miles any time they wish without penalty. And it’s worth letting them do so even if the flight they might book onto would otherwise be full.
Back in January when American Airlines introduced award redemption for premium economy they did it through a new award search tool. That new tool was not ready for prime time. After half a year that tool still lacked the ability to filter results, and the availability calendar still hadn’t been launched.
American has a new availability calendar. It still isn’t as useful as the old one. Here’s what to watch out for to get the best award deals.
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 »
