Disappointing development. Although I am surprised about the first change since they had just liberalized the originating continent stopover rule less than 5 months ago. I wonder what problem they were trying to solve, however, since these changes will still allow you to make 100,000 points on AA if that was your goal. You will still be able to fly to MCT for instance as long as you do not stay more than 24 hours.

The biggest impact I see with these rules are that Americans can no longer originate in Europe and fly all segments except the final USA to Europe segment and then just keep buying extra segments on an as needed basis. This has allowed me to fly last minute with no Saturday stay anywhere on AA round trip (except trans-con) for 200USD plus a 75-change fee.


rich