Originally Posted by
HIDDY
Should also be said that resident fares aren't always available especially the closer you get to departure
Fair point although all it says is that sometimes there is a single whammy rather than a double whammy.
nor are they that much cheaper considering the restrictions they come with and the vastly reduced miles earning attached to them.
Now this looks to me like pure Kirchneronomics. CFK would be proud.
"not that much cheaper"? "vastly reduced miles earning"? mmm... Let us put that to the test, shall we?
AR
The cheapest non-resident ticket on AR on the route that interests me (BUE-IGR) will cost me US$390 and will book in L class. How many miles will I get for this? L class earns at 50% on Flying Blue (or DL Skypesos for that matter) so I will earn 326 miles each way so 652 miles all in all. If we apply the standard rule-of-thumb FT valuation for miles at 1 cent/mile (which, to be honest, is very generous for FB miles but let us not quibble), this means that I will get roughly US$0.65 of value in miles for my US$390.
How does that compare with a resident fare? Well, a return in A class at a resident fare on this route with AR will cost a shadow under AR$2000. If we convert at today's median blue dolar rates, this would be roughly equivalent to US$150. A class only earns at 25% in Flying Blue (or DL) so I would only earn 326 miles, so 326 miles less than what I would earn with the non-resident rate. Let's round that up to US$0.33 that I would "lose" in fewer miles with a resident rate.
So, in return for paying an extra US$240, I get US$0.33 worth of miles. What a deal! how about this Hiddy? next time you are in the UK, I give you GBP3.26 and you give me GBP2400 since apparently this is a fair deal in Hiddynomics.
Now, you might perhaps want to say: but you are not taking into account the fare conditions. And you would be right. So let us look at them. Both the resident and non-resident fares are non refundable, so no difference here. Both are changeable, though, but at a fee. The fee for changes at the resident's fare is AR$150, so approximately US$10.56 at blue rates. The fee for changes at the non-resident fare is US$30. Yippee! Not only do I have to pay more than 2.5 times the price for my ticket but I also have the privilege of having to pay a change fee which is almost 3 times that of the resident fare. Ain't I the lucky one!
Admittedly, this is on AR rather than LA. Are things much better on LA?
LA
In truth, they are
a little better. For a start, the cheapest non-resident fare is somewhat lower on LA: it is US$337 (compared to US$390 on AR). OTOH, with BAEC I would earn 0 miles on this fare. In fact, in economy on Lan Argentina, only fully flexible fares (Y,B,H fares) earn anything in BAEC. If I wanted a fare eligible for miles in BAEC, I would have to pay US$471. That just ain't gonna happen. To be fair, things are better in some other FFPs. The US$337 fare, for instance, should in principle earn at 100% in AAdvantage. So one would get roughly US$13 of value in AA miles from that US$337 fare.
The change fee is also somewhat lower than for the resident fare (the lowest LA resident fare is the same as the AR one at slightly under AR$2000): AR$100 instead of AR$150 and the cheapest LA non-resident fare, unlike the AR one, is refundable (at a very reasonable fee of AR$150). So, yes, things are a little better for non-residents with LA. But there is still a very big gap with a cheapest fare at roughly US$150 for residents and US$337 for non-residents and referring to differential mileage earning to partly explain that difference is, frankly, ridiculous.
Don't get me wrong: I can perfectly understand that a government may, for social reasons, want to make sure that affordable fares are available to local residents which are not available to non-residents. I can certainly live with that. What I am less impressed with is being forced
on top of that to pay at artificially high rates of exchange.
In any event, whatever the merits of residents-only fares, let us not pretend that they are "not that much cheaper". They very clearly are significantly cheaper (and rightly so, otherwise there would be little point in having them).
[edit]The figures above on valuation of miles are completely wrong with a misplaced comma. But even with a revaluation at 10 times more (which is what it should be), it remains the case that the value of miles is negligible compared to the fare differential.[/edit]