I trust that you did your research and I'm aware of the increasing scarcity on TATL awards in particular. However, I have a few objections.
Bolding mine:
Originally Posted by
Andrito
So I asked her how many seats they typically release per flight. She said about 10. So using her logic, thats means 40 seats were released yesterday for December 22nd(last day out) and I was wondering if she thought it was possible that all of them got scooped up in a 24 hour period. She did <eye roll>
This is not correct. AA has no obligation, nor is it anywhere in their policy to do so (at least AFAIK), to release award seats
exactly at the window. Just because flights are loaded on a day doesn't mean they have to load sAAver or upgrade inventory as well. RM decides when to release those inventories, and that can be anytime between 330 days to 1 day.
I see that you said from 5/1 out. How about sAAver inventory closer in? Obviously flights from now to 5/1 have been in the system for many months. Do those have any sAAver J/F inventory? That would suggest RM is waiting to see how quickly the cabins fill up before deciding how many awards to release, which makes perfect sense IMO. Also, AA has tons of historical data for their older planes, but comparably very little for the 77W product. It makes sense that they would err on the side of caution before releasing sAAver seats that could've been sold for full J or full F.
Also, you mentioned that there are connecting flights available. I think that's good enough, and AA also doesn't have an obligation to release inventory on direct flights. That also makes sense to me with their new 77W product (which should generate more revenue), to direct sAAver awards to their older J/F products. While perhaps not ideal (and you're right, no FFP is perfect and some will work better than others, depending on your needs), the mantra here is that flexibility is key when using awards.
I also want to mention sAAver J/F awards on the A321T routes. When the flights were first loaded they were nonexistant, but there have now been numerous reports of FTers being able to snag U/Z awards. It's not a huge number, but certainly enough to discount any claims of "sAAver awards are nonexistant on the A321T routes."