OZ Man

I have my biggest fears that my 200,000 AGR points will turn from being very valuable soon to almost useless at a 1-1 ratio instead of 5-1 to almost 10-1 on the long distance routes. rumor mill from a conductor on my Acela has it that it could happen this could possibly happen in the fall. What are your guys thoughts? I would probably book next summer travel now just in case...

nerd

What do you mean by 1-1, 5-1, etc?

GoAmtrak

Rumor-mongering is pretty much the favorite pastime of front-line Amtrak employees.

I could see redemptions eventually moving to 5 or 6 tiers pegged to the prevailing fare bucket, particularly on Acela itself. Presumably more points are earned and burned on Acela than any other route, so a targeted devaluation there would make sense in absence of capacity controls (beyond the weekday peak and blackout restrictions).

Of course, at least Acela has Rule Buster awards, which don't currently exist for sleepers.

OZ Man

5-1 ticket is $500 for 10,000 point redemption
1-1 ticket is $500 for 50,000 point redemption

OZ Man

My biggest fears have been answered on Delta, Points guy has broke the news that Delta will be going toward a revenue based rewards next year. I have a fear that Amtrak will soon follow.

Big4Flyer

Because Amtrak often follows Delta's lead??? Agreed that it would be unfortunate if Amtrak went towards revenue-based redemption, but I don't think they have the ability to handle complexities like this. Not saying it won't happen, just saying there isn't enough real evidence to even be concerned about it.

sdsearch

Where? I just went to the Points Guy site and searched Topics: Delta and see nothing of the sort! I also went to the Delta forum here on FT and see nothing of the sort being discussed.

Are you sure you didn't confused and see an article from a years back that was announcing the revenue-based earning that by now is already in effect at Delta? Or the slightly-dynamic pricing of awards (without a clear award chart) that's already going on this year? That's quite different than true revenue-based redemption.

Big4Flyer

Here: http://thepointsguy.com/2015/07/delt...nces-upgrades/

While he doesn't explicitly say that its revenue-based redemption he did say "That means award redemptions will be based even more so on the cost of the flight."

Orwaid

Hi -

You can go to the DL forum to read all about it.

Starting next June, DL will go to "Dynamic Pricing" for reward tickets; meaning they will charge whatever they (or their algorithms) feel like charging at that moment.

I do not see this happening to Amtrak anytime soon.

sdsearch

Actually, he's saying no more than Delta has already said, and that's explicitly quite different from revenue based redemptions. Nowhere does Delta (or he) mention "business class and first class flights are going to require 3x to 5x more than now", but that's the revenue (cash cost) difference between economy and business/first class. So if they were truly going to revenue-based, you (and everyone else) would no longer be able to afford to redeem for business class or first class awards.

But that's exactly why no airline that flies international longhaul has gone to true revenue-based redemption, because then their front cabins would go empty with nothing to show for it.

So all Delta (and he, by parroting Delta) is saying is that they'll have "dynamic" pricing. I've seen "dynamic" pricing at work in hotels (Hilton), airlines (AA), etc, and it's quite different from revenue-based. For one thing, people traveling on business redeem miles much less than people traveling for vacation. So the flights that have higher demand for miles redemption are not necessarily the same as the ones that have higher demand for paid seats. Dynamic pricing can take that into account; revenue-based pricing can't.

So, for example, AA charges higher pricing for "anytime" level award redemptions around Christmas/New Year holidays, because that helps stop people from reserving all the seats they can ahead of time with miles. But they make domestic first class seats more readily available at "saver" level award redemptions for the same time period (at least on some routes), because they know fewer people pay for first class during that time, and few enough people will use double the miles to book first class rather than coach redemptions. Yet they don't reduce the first class cash fares by the same amount, because they want those people who do buy first class to not get a heavily discounted price (compared to another time of year).

Therefore, I think you misinterpreted what he wrote as "revenue-based redemptions" because you weren't familiar with all the other ways that redemptions can be "dynamic". "Dynamic" can be related more to the cost of a flight than pure award chart redemptions that are the same 365/24/7, but the question is how much more is "even more". If it's just 10% or even 20% or maybe even 30% more, that still would be nowhere close to revenue-based redemption.

Besides, whatever Delta has done so far, not every other airline has followed. Delta did 3 tiers many years ago, and 5 tiers last year, while UA, AA, and AS all still have just 2 tiers. Delta did away with award charts, while UA, AA, AS, and BA all still have them. Delta went to (mostly) revenue-based earning, and while UA followed, so far neither AA nor AS have followed.

So Delta over and over has been the outlier with their FFP changes.

And thus I also don't understand why you think that Amtrak would necessarily do something just because Delta did, when none of other "legacy" airlines in the US have done. If Amtrak does revenue-based redemption, I think it'll be in reaction to Southwest having done it a few years ago more than any of the convoluted and hard-to-explain-clearly things that Delta keeps doing. (Delta's main goal these days, even greater than any devaluation, is to make things so muddy that the average person won't know what to expect, and thus won't have any expectations to judge against when they consider a redemption.)

physioprof

One thing that has never made a lot of sense to me is that Acela rewards cost the same number of points no matter how far you go. For example, it is lunacy that NHV-PVD is the same number of points as BOS-WAS.

AlanB

They seem to have wanted a simple system. Here's another example, although depending on which destination one chooses it could be in our favor or in Amtrak's favor. For example, NY to Miami in a roomette is 15,000 points. NY to Chicago is 20,000 points.

Going to Miami, I get more miles on the train and more time on the train by comparison to going to Chicago. Even sillier is the fact that NY to Chicago I only get two meals whereas I get 4 meals for the trip to Miami.

littlemookie

Would a distance based award chart make sense for AGR? The zones have always been a bit silly and confusing but the northeast zone is still a bargain and would remain so in a distance based chart. I can see an increase in the northeast zone (I recall the last increase which brought howls of protests on flyertalk) which is easily the most redeemed award. Although the greatest value may be redeeming for long distance sleeper car awards, I don't see a drastic change in those award prices. It always amazes me that there are people that would pay the sleeper fares.

calwatch

I could see reducing bookability of sleepers to 30-90 days in advance similar to one of AGR's partners, Choice Privileges. This would allow Amtrak an opportunity to sell the sleeper to a paying customer before offering it up as a redemption. It would not affect most customers who redeem for roomettes or bedrooms, but could crimp people who want the family bedroom.

OZ Man

I hate it when I am right...
Note to Moderator is there anyway to merge this with the other topic?