Originally Posted by
nwflyboy
What happened? The most massive and drastic frequent flyer program devaluation in history is what happened, about 2.5 weeks ago (it hit on May 16, though apparently has continued to roll out and may not be completely done).
Folks continue to argue about exactly what happened (and what to call it). What most seem to have completely overlooked (distracted by the price increases) is the stunning and instant disappearance of partner award options (especially international business), which nearly disappeared in some regions, and completely vanished in others. If you're looking for partner international business class awards, you may need a microscope, Geiger counter and a fortune teller to locate a decent one of those (a time machine would be best). The price increases (which range from just a little to a lot) are relatively minor compared to this much greater aspect of the mega-devaluation. I suspect the (generally modest) price increases were just a clever misdirection so people didn't notice much larger devaluation via the massive loss of partner awards....but everybody seems to be fixated on the price increases and still haven't even noticed the REAL devaluation.
Classic misdirection to distract the rubes, and it seems to have worked quite well.
Good luck finding that business class reward inventory.
price increases are UAs doing, as they control those. They also control award inventory on
their own flights. Your anger on any disappearance of partner is misdirected. Partners completely control what inventory is open at all - either just to their own members or to * carriers. UA doesn’t control that. With higher demand in general, award space in general will be lower. More people willing to buy seats means carriers have less incentive to open award space.
I’ve looked up some intra-Asia award space via both UA and SQ. Both show the same options, though priced via kF are less - but that’s always been the case in that region. A Y seat BKK-SIN is 13.5K KF + fees - UA is showing 20K + same fees (pretty close - converted). Same flights have the availability. Same deal on BLR-SiN - UA wants 27.5k vs. KF 20K, but same fees, and same flights have. Availability. Partner space is controlled by them, just like UA controls space on its flights. Unless you think UA is engaging in practices like *net blocking like they did. But that was pre UA/CO merger, and I haven’t heard of or seen any evidence that this is the case. Care to share any proof you might have that something like this is occurring?