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Alaska confirms: 'travel hackers' killed their Emirates Offerings

Alaska confirms: 'travel hackers' killed their Emirates Offerings

Old Apr 2, 2016, 10:41 am
  #61  
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Originally Posted by Raffles
Miles are different because you are filling seats which normal supply and demand has failed to fill.

This is why revenue based redemption is stupid.

Lets imagine well-timed flight A is $200 and badly timed flight B is $125. Under revenue based redemption, many people will still choose flight A and fill seats which could have been sold for real cash.

Under the current system, you simply make no seats available for flight A and push people onto flight B to fill seats that would otherwise be unsold.

Unless revenue based redemptions are also capacity controlled they will displace cash paying customers - which benefits no-one. Similarly, those empty J seats will remain empty when a revenue based redemption is 10 x the miles of a Y redemption - which simply pushes more pax into Y where the seats would sell.
Actually there already IS dynamic pricing of awards...and there has been since I got into the game over 20 years ago: 'saver' awards vs. 'standard' awards. In fact, anyone else remember when on UA a standard award meant no capacity controls; if there was a seat open for sale you could get it with miles? Ah, the good old days....

Saver and standard awards are the first step toward dynamic pricing for award tickets. And as smb points out, as points become more and more revenue-based, selling an award seats at a point price based on supply and demand makes more sense than ever.
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 1:12 pm
  #62  
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Originally Posted by GUWonder
I had some suspicions about points.com involvement but wasn't sure. Thanks for the info you did provide. I had thought that the commission rates varied by type of transaction and perhaps also by access means.

And those award booking services help people buy points too? Interesting how this works.
Only some airlines pay - BA does not, for eg, even though they use points.com

Virgin America was 10% a few weeks ago. Normally 2.5%.
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 1:17 pm
  #63  
 
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Many years ago Chase United Card had a maximum points of !0,000 per month, today it is unlimited,

When we took a hit we applied for another card, wife's name.

Life is not always easy, as long as a seat is open, that is the main thing.,
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 3:27 pm
  #64  
 
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Originally Posted by kokonutz
I completely disagree.

If Alaska had given warning, there would have been a rush/crush of 'travel hackers' buying/churning miles and soaking up every available seat at a huge cost to Alaska. Blogs would have gone crazy with 'ACT NOW, BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!!! BUY MILES! SIGN UP FOR A CARD AT MY AFFILIATE LINK!!!'

Alaska set those levels up to reward their BIS flyers with a nice little perk: cheap-ish award flights on Emirates. But with the cards and mile sales the hacking community was not just abusing that perk, they were gloating about abusing the perk. And would have done so harder and more had there been a sunset period.

So it WAS the hackers, not only who took so much advantage of the redemption levels that they had to raise them, but also that led to immediate implementation of them.

We need to own it when we strangle the goose that lays the golden eggs. Bloggers most of all.
I don't really have a dog in this fight, don't fly AS and don't participate in the "hacking" (no issue with anything that's legal though), but the statement I highlighted stuck me as odd. If true, couldn't AS have structured certain 'premium' awards as requiring actual miles flown (maybe +bonuses) the way the majors do with qualifying for status?

Oh, but them that would remove much of the incentive to buy miles, and there goes the free revenue golden goose starts to look sickly.
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 7:40 pm
  #65  
 
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Bloggers caused the AS EK devaluation

Originally Posted by Edgerfly
Is anyone else as scared as me that AS will devalue their award chart significantly more, specifically the Cathay awards?

I hope I'm wrong, but Ive always defended Alaska (esp against DL) as the good guys, but after what they did in the dead of night for EK awards I'm getting more pessimistic about the airline and their MileagePlan program as the days go by.
It might actually extend the lifetime of CX awards if everyone would just stop discussing them on FT to prevent the blogs from picking up on availability patterns.

An F seat is very difficult to come upon unless you understand them...the blogs have publicized some of these patterns, but there are still pockets of opportunity...for now
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 7:59 pm
  #66  
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Originally Posted by heyheyha
It might actually extend the lifetime of CX awards if everyone would just stop discussing them on FT to prevent the blogs from picking up on availability patterns.

An F seat is very difficult to come upon unless you understand them...the blogs have publicized some of these patterns, but there are still pockets of opportunity...for now
Well you're never gonna be able to stiffe information sharing on the Internet, and for bloggers to stop blogging, so that's why I'm concerned.

If AS has to make these changes, they should do so it doesn't affect their most loyal customers somehow. Like having a different award chart for MVP's. It's not right for how long I've been stocking up on AS miles to plan that perfect EK vacation in F and to now know it will be impossible to achieve.
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 8:30 pm
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Originally Posted by Edgerfly
Well you're never gonna be able to stiffe information sharing on the Internet, and for bloggers to stop blogging, so that's why I'm concerned.

If AS has to make these changes, they should do so it doesn't affect their most loyal customers somehow. Like having a different award chart for MVP's. It's not right for how long I've been stocking up on AS miles to plan that perfect EK vacation in F and to now know it will be impossible to achieve.
Agreed, but we can certainly take some lessons from the LM forums.

I certainly agree we can't stop them outright, but we can sure try to delay the onset of that fateful day...or in EK's case

EK is certainly a harbinger of what's to come...but the bloggers really only have one real source of accessible information...hopefully we can come together as a community to try to make the most of this hobby without sending it into a premature burial.

Unless they're coming up with the "methods" themselves...they're essentially lurking on these forums and hawking the information out to generate page views...and huge CC referral payments

That blogger (HWMNBN) who went on a media tour with his exploitation of EK routing rules really put the proverbial nail in the coffin for us...admittedly there were a confluence of factors, but some guy running around with 5 AS credit cards isn't going to stay off the radars of EK and AS for very long.

We must admit that the airlines have dedicated individuals who monitor FT and willingly allow FTers to utilize miles for certain awards that may be a bit creative. But when these creative methods are making headlines of the major media outlets, the party won't last for much longer...

This is a hobby I thoroughly enjoy and take a lot of pride in; FT is a solid community with a lot of awesome folks. A lot of my trips wouldn't be possible outside of Y without the knowledge I've developed during my time on FT. Hopefully I'll be able to continue taking these trips outside of Y until the day I drop ^

Last edited by heyheyha; Apr 2, 2016 at 8:44 pm
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 8:46 pm
  #68  
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Originally Posted by heyheyha
It might actually extend the lifetime of CX awards if everyone would just stop discussing them on FT to prevent the blogs from picking up on availability patterns.
Everyone should stop redeeming CX. Except me.
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 9:06 pm
  #69  
 
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Originally Posted by eponymous_coward
Everyone should stop redeeming CX. Except me.
I wonder to myself how many FTers are on my flights all the time...perhaps we should have an FT hand sign
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 9:10 pm
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Originally Posted by Edgerfly
Well you're never gonna be able to stiffe information sharing on the Internet, and for bloggers to stop blogging, so that's why I'm concerned.

If AS has to make these changes, they should do so it doesn't affect their most loyal customers somehow. Like having a different award chart for MVP's. It's not right for how long I've been stocking up on AS miles to plan that perfect EK vacation in F and to now know it will be impossible to achieve.
There are methods to preserve the value of your AS miles I shall not elaborate further.

Last edited by heyheyha; Apr 2, 2016 at 9:22 pm
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 9:33 pm
  #71  
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Originally Posted by heyheyha
I wonder to myself how many FTers are on my flights all the time...perhaps we should have an FT hand sign
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/commu...d-threads.html

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Old Apr 2, 2016, 9:43 pm
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Originally Posted by eponymous_coward
I'm just worried about TSA/CBP giving me issues
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Old Apr 2, 2016, 10:11 pm
  #73  
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Originally Posted by heyheyha
I'm just worried about TSA/CBP giving me issues
Hasn't happened to me yet...
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Old Apr 3, 2016, 5:54 am
  #74  
 
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Aa redemption prices should realign with aadvantage at some point.

Then Cathay.
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Old Apr 3, 2016, 9:04 am
  #75  
 
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Let's not give them any ideas for devaluations by not having threads dedicated to possible devaluation scenarios.
Sometimes I feel like people actually want their FF programs to get devalued by throwing out bunch of ideas how a certain FF program can/will get devalued when the airline itself isn't even thinking about it.
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