AA doesn't give out more points for more expensive fares "just because." They give more points in hopes of encouraging certain behavior -- like encouraging more people to buy the more expensive fares.

Would increasing F bonuses from 150% to 200% encourage many more purchases? I don't know. It's hard to think many people would pay full F out of personal funds. And employers and clients either do or don't allow full F purchaes. It's not as if they'd shift -- not as if they'd begin to allow such purchases on the basis of some AAdvantage bonuses.

There may be some consultants or executives who could get/encourage/force clients to buy F rather than Y or A if the incentives were right. But I think AA perceives that there may not be many folks with this kind of purchasing power, who are near the margin of deciding. In that case, they'd just be giving big bonuses to those few folks who would have bought F anyway -- and there's no reason to do that.

What could trigger big bonuses for F is the prospect of a war among carriers for the F pax -- UA could offer a 200% bonus, AA 300%, etc. And these pax are so profitable, they'd probably be well worth even a 400% bonus. (More?) But somehow we haven't seen this yet...


As to the problems with revenue-based awards rather than mileage-based awards: 1) There's an even greater appearance of impropriety when a traveler earns more miles upon booking a more expensive ticket. In contrast, origin, destination, and routing are perceived to be more fixed. 2) Sensitive data, especially when shared among partners. AA may or may not want to tell all the Oneworld partners (and vice versa) what various pax paid for their various tickets. Disclosing that the trips occcurred (and their respective distances) is considerably less sensitive.