2018 Black Friday / Cyber Monday sale
Nov 25, 2018, 9:34 pm
#16
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: USA
Programs: AS MVPG75k
Posts: 330
What they're actually doing here is flipping the bird to Wall Street. With this pricing scheme, they're going to prove that saver fares are B.S. that hurts the airline's bottomline. Result: AS will be free to go back to providing non-misleading fares, caring about their elites, and running an airline their customers will love again! Yay!
Nov 25, 2018, 9:53 pm
#17
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 3
So my 42 flights in 2018 between PDX and SAN last year will now cost me $1260 more a year to stay MVPG with the additional $30 a ticket. What used to be the best available priced flights are now simply Saver fares. So Alaska now wants me just to pay up in 2019 to maintain status/benefits? Unfortunately I would no longer ethically be sourcing the best priced ticket for my company. I would be choosing to spend an extra $60 rt just for the personal perks of the MVPG program.
Logged on for Cyber Monday and had 8 flights to book, and my wife, also a Gold, had 9 to book. As there appear to be no incentives to purchase and we are not quite ready to walk away from our MVPG benefits we are stumped. Pay up or just look for best available fares including SW. Not happy. How is this good for Elites? You are charging us more for what we already had?
Logged on for Cyber Monday and had 8 flights to book, and my wife, also a Gold, had 9 to book. As there appear to be no incentives to purchase and we are not quite ready to walk away from our MVPG benefits we are stumped. Pay up or just look for best available fares including SW. Not happy. How is this good for Elites? You are charging us more for what we already had?
Last edited by JohnPP; Nov 25, 2018 at 10:32 pm
Nov 25, 2018, 10:33 pm
#18
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Snohomish, WA
Programs: AS MVP Gold, HHonors Diamond
Posts: 2,793
Neil
Nov 25, 2018, 11:11 pm
#19
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Seattle
Programs: AS - MVP75k, Marriott - Titanium, Hertz - PC
Posts: 225
This sale really sucks. Finding same day turns is much harder this year, it seems. I'm not ready to say I'm giving up on Alaska just yet but I don't really see what makes them different than the other guys now.
Nov 25, 2018, 11:32 pm
#20
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: SFO
Programs: AS, UA, WN, IHG Diamond Elite, Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Gold, CET 7*
Posts: 3,300
It does. The only difference (for the time being) is actual mileage flown vs. revenue based accrual.
Nov 25, 2018, 11:59 pm
#21
Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Seattle
Programs: AS - MVP75k, Marriott - Titanium, Hertz - PC
Posts: 225
I'm not an alarmist and don't make drastic changes but there have been so many negative changes to AS over the last 18 months and not that many positive ones. I have some credits that expire in early January and I'd really like to book something by then.
Nov 26, 2018, 12:58 am
#22
Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 540
I knew that Saver fares just meant a price increase on the same product (Main) I always purchase so I hedged in early November and purchased all my flights for Q1 (Prices from April on were just high so no point). I ended up paying "Saver" prices on all my Main tickets through March. At the time I thought that if there was a sale on Cyber Monday when I usually purchase my flights I could just cancel and repurchase with the wallet funds. It turned out I was right, but not looking forward to spending more the rest of the year. I also have status with United and pretty much have the same upgrade rate on my routes so I will now just buy the most convenient in terms of time whereas in the past I would sometime leave later than I needed to so that I could fly AS. This whole move by AS just means that they will get 30 to 40% less of my business. They should of had some sort of differentiation on the Saver fares for Elites even if it meant no upgrades to First, but some sort of middle ground in terms of seat selection.
Last edited by halamadrid; Nov 26, 2018 at 4:06 pm Reason: grammar
Nov 26, 2018, 3:01 am
#23
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: SEA
Programs: AS G100K, DL PM, IHG Gold, HHonors Diamond
Posts: 843
i didn't see any good deals coming out of this cyber sale, other than seeing a jump in prices on most main cabin fares on routes that I was interested in, because of the introduction of the X fare. Over the weekend, I only purchased one RT ticket SEA to ANC for work. Somehow no X fare appeared on this route yet in mid-December?? So my fare was main cabin fare. I almost purchased a DL ticket for this trip, but their frequency just couldn't match this AS' bread and butter route, although their main cabin fare met or beat the AS main cabin fare, depending on schedule.
Nov 26, 2018, 9:41 am
#25
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Northern California
Programs: I want to be free! Free!
Posts: 3,455
Nov 26, 2018, 9:42 pm
#26
Join Date: Nov 2017
Programs: AS 100K, HH Diamond, SPG/Marriott Gold
Posts: 189
It's always been a cash grab - all that's yet to be seen is whether consumers (as FT does not represent the majority of fliers) ultimately just eat it up or whether this spells disaster for AS California plans
Dec 4, 2018, 4:04 pm
#27
Join Date: Dec 2018
Posts: 45
Greetings, first time posting, I just found this forum last night. I thought I got good Black Friday deals for EQM but after reading this forum I am not so sure any more.
I booked a R/T flight from SEA to DAL for $150.79
To me it looks like I get 3,334 miles for $150.79 which came out to $.045 per mile...… I am new to mileage running so maybe I missed something, was this not a good deal?
TIA
James
I booked a R/T flight from SEA to DAL for $150.79
To me it looks like I get 3,334 miles for $150.79 which came out to $.045 per mile...… I am new to mileage running so maybe I missed something, was this not a good deal?
TIA
James
Dec 4, 2018, 4:49 pm
#28
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Oct 2014
Posts: 10,904
That doesn't look bad at all. Not earth-shatteringly good, but definitely not bad. At the end of the day if those 3334 EQM are going to get you status that gets you a lot of value it's a good deal for you. These things are very situational. There might be a great deal out of SFO getting you more EQM but if you have to pay a lot to reposition to SFO and you don't need that many miles then it's not such a good deal for you at this time, even if it's a great deal for someone else.
Dec 4, 2018, 5:06 pm
#29
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Pacific Northwest
Programs: UA Gold 1MM, AS 75k, AA Plat, Bonvoyed Gold, Honors Dia, Hyatt Explorer, IHG Plat, ...
Posts: 16,854
Greetings, first time posting, I just found this forum last night. I thought I got good Black Friday deals for EQM but after reading this forum I am not so sure any more.
I booked a R/T flight from SEA to DAL for $150.79
To me it looks like I get 3,334 miles for $150.79 which came out to $.045 per mile...… I am new to mileage running so maybe I missed something, was this not a good deal?
I booked a R/T flight from SEA to DAL for $150.79
To me it looks like I get 3,334 miles for $150.79 which came out to $.045 per mile...… I am new to mileage running so maybe I missed something, was this not a good deal?
Dec 4, 2018, 5:34 pm
#30
Join Date: Dec 2018
Posts: 45
Thanks for the welcome and the feedback. I am fine with anything under $.06 per mile so I thought it was a good deal, which is why I purchased 5 of the same trips. That will get me 16K EQM by mid February so figured that would be a good jump on my MVPG goal for this year. This last weekend I did SEA-BOS-LAX-BOS-SEA so I could get my first MVP for the year, I didn't get in the game until April so was behind and needed a big mileage grab to have any chance of making it. That was a 10K run at around $.05 per mile but I figure I can find better routes once I get use to the system.
Staying on topic, I felt I got a good BF deal but really I wasn't all that impressed with what I thought should have been a day of good deals. Don't want to blame AS as I noticed the lack of deals across the entire shopping platform....even for cyber Monday.
Anyways, thanks again for the replies and welcomes.
James
Staying on topic, I felt I got a good BF deal but really I wasn't all that impressed with what I thought should have been a day of good deals. Don't want to blame AS as I noticed the lack of deals across the entire shopping platform....even for cyber Monday.
Anyways, thanks again for the replies and welcomes.
James