Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
Well, yeah, I would say it’s a bit more reasonable if your positioning flight is a transcon that AS flies once a day… but not a single saver award on a route on the west coast that they fly several times a day? And ignoring the extra cost, not everyone has the spare time to pad their vacation trips with a day on each end for flying an AS flight and a night in an airport hotel somewhere. At some point it just becomes easier to book a revenue flight on whoever offers the best deal and get to Europe in one day, not two.
All those blog post praising those new lower award rates for short domestic hops seem to not be written by people who actually try to book those :/
I did say East Coast, just not point out that I have never seen AS releases a saver award on either coach or business class on their inherited routes from America West which they way overpaid it. And even catching CX from JFK or BOS or ORD, often do require an overnight hotel on top of the positioning flight. To us this is an accepted cost to pay since AS niche of the low mileage cost and the stopover on international redemption totally justify the additional cost. For those who complain about the additional costs they can use other programs which could cover the who,e journey on a single award,
The essence is, you choose what works best for you, I.e. you make compromises in exchange for far greater value. If having positioning flight/overnight hotel/ lost time, are big deal to you, then by and large AS program is NOT for you. You cannot have everything in this game, that is what it is.