Originally Posted by ClueByFour
Regarding award tickets:
"# A quick ticketing fee of $50 will apply to all award reservations purchased within 14 days of travel."
Shame FT does not have an "FU" smiley, if you know what I mean.
The list of blackout dates is as long as BBB's last game of risk.
Off-peak awards are history (altough this may have already happened and I missed it).
The gofirst thing is now legit, and you can assume it's being peddled before your upgrades are clearing at the gate.
And I just booked off another 120k of award travel. As I'd have to stretch go get silver, I see no point in trying to hoard these miles anymore, and I figure I'd book them before they spring the rule changes.
Anybody yet see whether Elites are still not abused by blackout dates? Or, are they for the 19th time now screwing us in that regard as well?
Of course, up until now there has been nothing for standard award availablity...not one...on otherwise blacked out dates for elites. 100% of them have, interestingly, been at premium mileage levels. So, if US has canceled this elite benefit it will be because "usage was too low to continue this elite benefit". Once again, redeeming twice as many miles for something that is worth have as much is a sign of ignorance.
Some day they will learn...or another better airline will before them...that they soon need to choose a couple of FF populations that they are just not going to screw with under any circumstance. No blackout dates, no capacity controls, no nickles and dimes, no change fees, no miuimum fare for upgrades, no nothing. Then whatever airline that is will learn that their revenue, P & L and margin will improve by 8% to 14%. Then, they will stop screwing with all passengers and improve things by a little more than twice that.
I don't think that Doug has the brains or the guts to do that, so it is likely that it willl be AA. Doug and his team are still thinking in the calcified terms that have created so many bancruptcies in the airline sector, including in the companies that have employed him and them.
I like Randy generally and find him to be a good source of valid information so I certainly hope that his view is not driven by ad revenue with so many other advertisers on this sight. But, he apparently doesn't fly US much, has not tried to book an Envoy or standard mileage ticket in the last 3 months, has not researched the newly tripled capacity controls and blackout dates, has not waited for one of these "rich" upgrades to clear at the window, has not dined on US, has never spoken to Lufthansa, Air New Zealand or 2 other star alliance carriers who now drastically restrict DM redemption on their systems because of tripled lack of availability on US for the customers of those carriers, and has never sent a suggestive letter to US so that he can see the ignorance that ensues on the part of US.
Awards with newly tripled capacity controls and blackout dates, and awards that are simply never available even when no seats are yet sold on a given flight are not awards at all. They are simply false advertising and marketing that is fraudulently intended to mislead flyers.
The US program is, in a very quiet way, now bordering on the worst one out there...even at the CP level unfortunately.