Originally Posted by
TWA Fan 1
Is there a value to not having to book a return leg if you don't need to? Sure. But is it worth 100% of the roundtrip cost? Perhaps to a tiny cadre of customers. But since this award in only bookable on the phone, any potential benefit in time spent booking the award is lost anyway.
So there is value but not to enough people to meet some threshold that you've determined?
Originally Posted by
TWA Fan 1
However, if you build in a reasonable incentive, such as 75% of the roundtrip award, then your argument makes a lot more sense, and--more significantly--is likely to attract more takers.
And clearly CO doesn't want that or they'd have already done it, right?
Originally Posted by
TWA Fan 1
The funny thing, of course, is that were CAL to allow one-way awards at exactly 50% of their roundtrip awards, it would not reduce the value of the miles to CAL in any way.
Actually it significantly decreases the value of the program to CO. Making it easier to redeem rewards makes the points more valuable to the customers which translates to less valuable to the carrier. It should come as no surprise that they will do what they can to keep the edge in their favor, just like they do with revenue tickets, ancillary fees and just about everything else they do. After all, they're in business to make money, not to operate as a non-profit.
I'm glad that you see the value in my points about the hotel analogy, one that you brought up as relevant. I guess it no longer is since I have a reasonable counter to your claims?
Originally Posted by colin
sbm12 said earlier that AA's one-way awards do not allow open jaws, which of course is not logical. A to B at 50%, C to A at 50% = 1 open-jaw award at 100%.
Actually I said that it wasn't as relevant because of the one-ways.
The lack of stopovers on foreign soil is a significant devaluation that AA imposed in exchange for the one-way option. And AA is more generous than many of the others that offer one-way rewards; many offer no stopovers at all.
Getting caught up on one particular aspect of the reward program and obsessing over how it specifically is good or bad for the customer without taking into account the whole of the program doesn't make much sense. That's why I keep pointing out that there is more to it than only the one-way rewards. And that's after taking into account that there are actually ways to derive real value from them either through lowered points required for a premium cabin or by not paying r/t taxes, a benefit that can actually be of significant real money value depending on the market in question.