Originally Posted by
AA100k
Anytime awards in premium cabin international business class are always available albeit for twice the normal mileage of a Saver award. If you’re getting large quantities of miles for free through CC Signup bonuses every month, then it’s not a big deal “paying” for Anytime awards, thus depleting inventory that may otherwise have sold or been made available for upgrades. If AA wasn’t losing money on these schemes, I doubt they’d be closing these accounts.
Buying miles has always been a viable method for booking premium travel, with some good deals and some bad deals.
The award chart is priced by AA. They agree to sell miles to Citi at an agreed upon price (likely a little less than a cent) and sell miles to the public at varying prices approaching ~2 cents. At Anytime rate of 150K, that's $1200-$3500 in booked revenue for a one way in business to South America 2 or Asia 1. And most redemptions will be a lot cheaper than that, as low as marginal cost for saver award.