Originally Posted by
bniu
aanytime awards are treated like full fare economy tickets (except for no upgrades). on domestic aanytime awards, you can check in two bags for free just like any other full fare economy ticket. Only pay for this if it's the only option available for you. Be sure to check if a saaver first class/business ticket is available. For domestic hops, they cost the same in mileage but how can you say no to what is essentially a "free" first class upgrade?
I fly alot on award tickets with both AA and UA and here's a few of my most recent experiences:
last year, I had to buy a ticket from austin to the bay area on the weekend after thanksgiving and return the weekend before christmas, peak holiday season. paying in cash for tickets was out of the question since I was looking at $800-$900 for a coach seat and since my dad had like 200K miles with United, I figured i'd burn some of those up. So i went hunting for a saver coach award at 25K miles. None Available. So the only option there was a Standard coach award (UA's version of aanytime awards) at 50K miles. I then decided to hunt around for a saver first class award, found one at 45K miles. So basically, UA gave me a first class upgrade for -5000 miles. That's right, they "paid" me 5000 miles to upgrade. How can I say no to that? I had actually anticipated the possibility of that scenario popping up and I purposely set aside 45K miles for that purpose. Sure, it still costed alot of miles, but still way better than paying almost $1000 for coach.
Another scenario from last month:
I had to fly to china this summer for a class that I registered for. Coach tickets were costing $2500 when I looked. saver coach awards at 65K miles were not available and they were asking 130K for a standard coach award. I took a look at BC and FC which were available in their saver versions at 125K and 145K miles. Since this was a UA 777 that had a BC section that was really just a glorified domestic FC product, I opted for FC at 145K miles. For 15K miles extra, I got a two class upgrade from coach. Now THAT is WELL WORTH IT!!! The premium for International First Class was just 11.5%!!!
Basically, my philosophy with miles is to use them exclusively for premium cabins since that's where you get the best value in them. The 25K coach awards aren't really worth it for me unless you're going like JFK-DFW-ANC which is essentially a steal since the distance is about the same as a TATL flight.
One of the best use of miles IMO in AA's system is to use miles to upgrade a DFW-HNL trip. For the roundtrip, it only costs 30K miles + $300 + cost of coach ticket if you get an award upgrade. Since the leg is operated by an intl configured 763, you get to fly in an international business class product for a 9.5 hour flight. The length of the flight itself is close to what LAX-NRT would be and for that long of a flight, I want to be comfortable. For short 25 minute hops, I could care less where I sit.
You make some good points. However, in the UA example you used, I wouldn't exactly say that they're giving you 5k miles to upgrade. The capacity controlled reward tickets are exactly what they are: capacity controlled. This means that in all likelihood, the airline doesn't expect to be able to sell them to anyone. However, anytime awards, like you even said, are treated like full fare economy tickets. Thus, they are offered as long as there is a seat available for sale. What this could mean is that, as an example, the flight is already oversold and could be showing as Y-1 (in other words, only 1 seat available for seat at Y inventory). That round trip could be going for something like $2k whereas the capacity controlled F seat could be doing for maybe $1k for the round trip. In this case, the airline would much rather sell you the F seat, even if it's for less miles because that's less risk on their part as they're not risking an additional VDB/IDB. In addition, if you pay them 50k miles for the Y seat, that means that they can't now sell it to someone who may be willing to pay full fare. So all in all, it's a win-win situation for them to get you to take the 45k F seat instead of the 50k Y seat.