Originally Posted by
minnyfly
Why should the award also be subject to airline-determined "supply-and-demand"?
Not to get all geeky with econ here, but because it maximizes economic profit for both the airlines
and you!
Imagine for a moment that American Airlines used the same chart system for paid tickets that they use for award tickets. What would be the result? You'd have three prices for all flights within the U.S. On routes like JFK-SFO, AA would only ever offer one price: high (if they offered anything at all). On some short routes or routes with a lot of competition, the "low" level price wouldn't be competitive and no one would buy it. The end result would be that AA would sell a lot fewer tickets and you wouldn't be able to get all of your travel demand met. In my opinion, this is a big part of the reason it's so difficult to find decent award tickets on American.
To be clear, I'm all for transparency and stability in the value of miles. However, I'm of the opinion that in order to create a functional award chart that meets the most traveller demand, it would have to be so complicated that it would have the same effect as getting rid of the award chart all together.