Originally Posted by
beyounged
When the beancounters think market has decided for them to go dynamic or semi-dynamic, the AS mirage of a beautiful airline will finally crack for most people, who used to barely fly enough Y to get a 12.5k redemption on SEA-AUS last year and brag about it to family.
(I get that AS is already semi-dynamic on own metal, but I think the conversation generated with going that across the board will be way more press that it will reach occasional flyers' daily conversations. Think DL's change last year.)
i dont think it's because of the market. i think it's because they need to and they want to. airlines dont sell miles at a very high rate to their partners, maybe 1.x - 2.x cpm, likely on the lower end based numbers that i have seen thrown around. if the average redemption value is not devalued to this figure, airlines are actually losing money from their ffp. so when you have sold a large amount of miles, as alaska just did with amex, HA and bilt, this was always gonna happen. and there are really 2 ways to deal with this issue. 1) limit availability to limit losses and 2) increase pricing or use dynamic pricing to match cash prices. and this is exactly what we are seeing with AS and many other programs for that matter
another thing is more and more airlines are making it easy to extend expiry of their miles, decreasing the burn off rate. this may sound great for the customers, as you have less pressure to spend your miles quickly, and more time to accumulate more miles and only redeem when you want to, it also adds pressure to devalue the miles