mgiv

I"m a rookie in "AA Miles" and when reading the MileSAAver's definition about that these awards are subject to special limitations on seating availability, what does that exactly mean? I know that is not flexible to changes but, does that mean that I'll be on standby?

Happy

Capacity Control.

Meaning the plane can have many unbooked seats, but the "availability for Saver Award Seats has reached the allocation."

You either has the confirmed award seat, therefore a confirmed award ticket, or you dont fly on award at all.

However, when you are holding a award ticket, you could possibly fly standby on an earlier flight, depends on how the Gate Agent handles it.

You cannot fly standby when you have never had an award ticket in hand.

It is called Saver Award because it costs LESS miles, versus the Anytime Award which as the name implied, has no capacity control. Of course it costs twice as many miles.

Such concepts work with almost all legacy airlines, not just AA.

miamigrad

MileSAAver awards are capacity-controlled ... meaning that only a limited number of seats might be claimed by using this award (if at all ... there is nothing that says AA has to make any MileSAAver award seats available for a particular flight).

Whereas, AAnytime award means that if a seat is available (i.e., flight is not sold out), then you can claim the award for the AAnytime award amount.

By the way ... welcome to FT!

billgrates3

btw - the aAnytime awards may seem expensive, but it's a much better deal to use them than buying a last minute full fare ticket in case of emergency!

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.

i_fly_AA

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.

martin33

It's also, sadly, now hypothetical since they raised the MileSaaver F award to 50K.

Only AA and UA currently offer the "real thing" last seat-for-sale redemption at similar (ie double) mileage levels. CO only allows it for elites. DL reintroduced it at a yet-higher third pricing level. US does not offer it at all.

i_fly_AA

Intersting. I had no idea that most other airlines don't offer it the way that AA and UA do. If you ask me, doing the AAnytime award for 50k miles on a last minute flight with something like Y-1 availbility is a hell of a value for the miles, provided that you absolutely have to be on that flight. Given that the cabin is usually already overbooked when it's showing something like Y-1, the airline is already accepting the fact that they'll likely have to VDB and give a voucher to an additional pax for that last seat sold.

bniu

yeah, IMO AA and UA are the best two mileage programs in the US with AA being the better of the two. UA has a bit too much of the one segment is in first so we'll charge you first class for the whole trip mentality. Delta in theory has a 25K tier 1 award level though it's existence is highly suspect. I had to cancel a 25k mile award booking with Delta and had a year to either rebook or reclaim the miles for a $100 fee. Guess what, those were the only 25k miles I still had with delta and I found that it was virtually impossible to use those 25K miles so I just called Delta and said, "to the heck with it, i don't want those miles back, they're totally worthless to me now" Since I live in austin, the only two airlines worth it to me are American and United. One day i'd like to be both EXP and 1K, that would be awesome, top tier status with the best two alliances, OneWorld and Star. What if American and United merged into a superairline called AmericanUnited Airways?

yeah, i was one of the last ones to take advantage of that saver award at 45K miles though for the same 50K miles today, the first saver award would still be slightly more valuable than the 50K coach anytime award if you're pretty much set on your dates. basically the pros and cons of each are this:

50K First sAAver
Pros: First Class Seat
Cons: capacity controlled, hard to change dates

50K Economy AAnytime
Pros: Flexible dates, same flexibility as a full fare ticket
Cons: it's a coach seat (though it does get you access to exit row seats i think)

so what is it going to be? flexibility or a better seat?

SylviaCaras

Is there a chance that a saver reward would be offered or reoffered nearer to the time of a flight?

My awards so far have been booked at -330, saver, successful, usually business class, usually international. Recently I've been looking at trips with maybe four or six months notice (conference dates not announced well in advance) and have sometimes found some saver awards at awkward times or on days I don't prefer, and often no savers at all.

So, generally, are the saver awards snapped up early and then gone, or might they reappear close-in? Or maybe they were never there?

So far none of the destinations have appealed enough to use anytime miles.

Sylvia

gemac

As it gets closer to flight time, AA continually evaluates the unsold seats, and will make more MilesAAver inventory available if it appears very unlikely that those seats will be sold.

KD5MDK

bniu, I'm puzzled by why you don't list CO as a plausible airline out of AUS.

bniu

that was back when CO was skyteam still. I guess now that CO is Star Alliance, it is plausible that I could end up flying CO for my *A activities. From what I've heard, CO is a pretty decent airline though i'm pretty pleased with AA IME.