Originally Posted by
Passmethesickbag
I guess one of the aspects where I've been quite spoiled as a UK-based EXP is award availability with BA. It's never been as good as *A availability via UA, but typically, so long as a flight had a bunch of seats available, at the very least, business class award availability would appear a couple of days beforehand. Lately, even monthly award maps have been looking very empty indeed. I know there's school holidays in the UK right now, but it has started to look like you can no longer count on BA availability via AAdvantage for a last-minute weekend getaway, even if you're very flexible with destinations. Is this BA or AA turning off the tap?
Just as AA’s move toward multi-tier mileage prices for any given cabin and a more explicitly revenue-based program for redemptions using AA miles has hit the ability to use BA points for AA flights, the same sort of throttling of availability of BA flights using AA miles is to be expected. BA has already trialed some revenue-based award redemption pricing, and I’m expecting that this is just the beginning of BA copying AA when it comes to redeeming airline loyalty program points.
In other words, I am expecting that the redemption pricing/availability is going to get uglier than it is already even when using BA points for BA flights. And it won’t be all that better when using AA miles for BA flights.
It’s more than just a Thomas Cook impact.