My opinion on this is that AA has done nothing wrong. When they post an award schedule they're saying "right now, you can get these awards for this many miles." They're not saying you'll be able to indefinitely into the future. Some of us have made that assumption, and are now ticked off at AA because our unjustified assumption was wrong. I don't see why that's AA's fault. Six months notice of a change, during which you can get a ticket for yet another 11 months out, is more notice than anyone else gives of price changes.

The analogy of a department store raising the price of a coffee maker to $22, five months after you got a $20 gift certificate with the intention of buying that coffee maker, is apt here. For how long does anyone expect them to hold prices steady in case someone wants to use an old gift certificate? And, while I think grandfathering old miles to use an old award schedule is nice, does anyone expect a store to say "if your certificate was issued during 2002, you can pay our 2002 price for anything you use it on?"

Another point (unless I missed it) hasn't been made. AA does not run AAdvantage, nor does any other airline run its FF program, for our benefit. AA runs it because it generates more profit through customer loyalty than it costs. The business balancing act is to maximize the difference between those two. That's a fine-tuning process. If they make it too generous, the added costs are higher than the benefits of the increased loyalty. If they take too much away, losses due to decreased loyalty outweigh the cost savings. They have to keep adjusting to find the optimum, keeping in mind that this year's is not the same as last year's - and without yanking things around so much that the number of changes becomes a source of customer dissatisfaction independently of what those changes are.

So, if they decide that too-generous awards are costing them too much and feel they won't lose much loyalty by cutting back, they will. If they're right, they'll come out ahead. If they're not, customers will defect. That's what free choice and a free market are all about.