ktenorman

I know that the conventional "aspirational" thing to do is to use AS miles to book premium cabins on international partners for much lower prices than other programs (CX, JL, QF) to get value from their miles. Or so the bloggers say. As has been discussed here, AS released too much saver space following the integration of the VX flights into their booking system, especially by partners (here's the conf. call transcript) but I think the hammer has swung too far in the other direction for the average member to derive value from the program.

For the vast majority of members (and non-FTers) who redeem on AS domestically the new pricing scheme was at first a slow erosion when first announced and recently a more dramatic devaluation. From what I can see it isn't even revenue based, there is a lot more randomness/weirdness/lack of transparent pricing going on. Long story short, the lack of a true "saver" award anymore, at least not in the sense that AA or UA use it, really devalues AS miles.

- In lieu of a close-in booking fee, AS ups the price of saver awards close to departure, even when W space is available to partners and tons of seats are open (example: SFO-SLC 1/4, many open seats, AS wanted 30k, but available on aa.com at saver level). This means that especially Avios are a better deal than AS miles for close in bookings. Even United doesn't do this (a saver award is a saver award) and they open the floodgates on award space when there are a large number of seats that will go out empty, though they do have the close in booking fee.
- Despite the distance-based chart, award prices for lower 48 destinations skip seemingly randomly from 5k to 25k+ for o/w in W - even when revenue prices are the same for the same flights.
- Saver space in general on mid-cons and transcons is very, very limited. Again, subjectively worse than UA for saver awards (comparison for being Bay Area-based).
- Redemption value over 1.2 CPM on AS metal is very rare.

Really some of this doesn't make much sense, and at least to an outsider to the company and semi-frequent flyer feels almost Delta-like. We've got the 1cpm "pay with miles" option as a floor, but that is a tremendous devaluation compared to where AS miles on AS metal were just 18 months ago. Anyone else feel like redeeming AS miles on AS metal really isn't worth it anymore? What the heck is going on up in Seattle?

VegasGambler

I don't know how rare decent redemptions are, but I did one random search (SFO-ORD 1 way, 2 weeks from now) and I saw a cash price (non-saver) of $256 and a miles price of 12,500 miles + $5.60. This is exactly 2c per mile.

I'd still rather book this as a revenue ticket (to earn miles on it) but it's a far cry from 1.2c. It's also a sample size of 1, but I don't have the means to do a search of many routes on many dates. Did you collect some real data on this?

Still, unless I see evidence to the contrary, I find it hard to believe that the sky is falling.

milypan

IDK, if I do a search tomorrow for SFO-AUS, which is just what's prepopulated on alaskaair.com based on my last search, I see Saver availability on the evening AS flight at 3.5 CPM (12.5k miles vs $439). If you'd like to do a mixed-metal, mixed-seating F itinerary (Y for SFO-LAX, F for LAX-AUS) you can get it up to 6.9 CPM (25k vs $1726). That would beat the "value" on a lot of intl J partner redemptions.

eponymous_coward

SEA-KTN on 1/10 is $499 cash, 12.5k + $6 in miles.

SEA-SFO is 12.5k for tomorrow (1/7) and $296 cash. PDX-LAX is similar.

jrl767

ktenorman

I certainly appreciate the counter examples, and hope that I'll run into them more often. I think my point was kind of missed, though, in the bit of hyperbole there at the end. Through what I've seen I am concerned we are headed toward a SkyMiles-like experience of a lack of transparency where saver awards do not price at the same mileage based on other factors than just availability of W class (close in booking, other things?).

VegasGambler

It's not clear that they do jack up the price close-in.

Using your SFO-SLC example for 1/7 (tomorrow) at 6:30 pm the main cabin price is $351 and the miles price is 12,500.

If fact, looking at that flight (AS 3450) for the next week, every time there is W space, it costs 12.5k miles.

Are there actually times where there is W space and they charge you more miles? I am not seeing this.

Flying for Fun

It depends on supply and demand. Check SFO-SLC Feb 13, 14, 15 & 16. Presidents Day weekend. The non-stop flights are 10K, 20K, 30K & 20K while the flights with connections are 5K, 7.5K, 20K & 10K.

Flights YLW-SEA, 220 miles, are 30K on the 7th, 12.5K on the 8th... Active ski season. Off season this is a 5K route. Would I ever burn 30K on a 45 minute Q400 flight? Absolutely not. I can drive to SEA in 5.5 hours, BLI in less than 4.

James

VegasGambler

Yes but other than the 13th, those are all W0.

Obviously W space is not available on all flights. The question here is, when W space is available, is the price "jacked up" close in?

It's definitely variable, but 12.5k is the max that I've seen for W on this flight, and that can be very good value given some of the prices.

Kurt

I got DEN-SEA-SBA R/T for 25K miles and $11.20 (W class). Cost for my dates is $1,063 R/T. SBA is notoriously expensive so I feel like I'm getting good value for my miles (outbound is upgraded already at T-120 and the return looks good as well). Is this 4.2 cents per mile?

VegasGambler

That is great value!

Remember that you can buy miles in unlimited quantities for 2c each so any time you can get better value than 2c per mile (adding the miles that you would earn from paying cash for the flight into the cost) you are getting a good deal.

The only possible issue with this is eqm... if you want / care about status then you might prefer to buy a cash ticket even when it's more expensive than the miles cost, because you need the eqm.

In this case it's a little under 4000 miles of flying -- I certainly would not pay a $400 premium for 4k eqm. So I think you got a great deal.

If you are gold (for example) you would earn 8k miles for flying that trip so the "real" cost is 33k miles, which you can buy for $660. You saved about $400... that's really quite a lot of savings for just one domestic economy round trip ticket.

Kurt

That's good to know. DEN-SEA-SBA is a bit out of the way, but it is mainline with actual meals in F, or PE with decent legroom/drinks etc. The connections are usually not bad and it's a mid-day arrival/departure in SBA. Nonstop on UA can mean a CRJ-200 (no F and just awful), a CRJ-700 (tolerable) or an E175 (pretty nice). AA is DEN-PHX-SBA, also not very appealing. There is now one flight a day DEN-SBA on Frontier (sometimes very cheap), but who wants to be nickle and dimed for every darned thing?

Plus if I get upgraded on all 4 segments (pretty likely), the cost works out to $1,708 paid or 6.8 cents per mile. I will take it!

czpdx

I'm not sure if anyone has addressed this part of the OP's post.
I assume the OP means that the example SFO-SLC flight is operated by AS and could be had for 30k on AS or 12.5k for the exact same flight on aa.com. Is it normal behavior outside of distance-based Avios awards that the same flight would require more miles on AS than via one of its partners? Especially more than twice the miles? If that is true, then, yeah, it seems pretty screwy. Sounds more like a glitch where the website isn't showing the lowest inventory.

VegasGambler

Well we can't go back in time to check, but I did check a few other dates (including close-in for that specific route) and I couldn't find an instance where there was W space but the flight was not available for purchase on AA at the saver level.

It's entirely possible that the OP made a mistake, or that there was some timing issue where there was W1 when AA was checked but W0 when AS was checked. Or perhaps AA is caching AS availability and it was slightly out of date (AS is not the only site with occasional "phantom award space" issues) Or, of course, it's possible that this can actually happen -- I just wasn't able to find an instance of it.

ktenorman

What I am seeing doing some more searching on alaska.com and EF is that the lowest award price levels for the various distance brackets disappear 2-3 weeks prior to departure. It isn't transparent where the maximum price for saver "W" awards is close to departure but it appears to be "level 2" where the lowest price is "level 1". An example would be SFO-DAL W class 12.5k o/w on 5/1 whereas the lowest price for a "Jump" length flight is 10k which is available on flights starting 2-3 weeks out.

Not sure where the SFO-SLC 30k I was able to find came up from. Based on the above theory, it'd be expected to be 7.5k as a "Hop" distance flight.

This isn't completely transparent (a little Delta like) but I suppose it's better than a close in booking fee. If you live in an Alaska hub or focus city the best use of miles on AS metal is the generous stopover on one-way awards. It'd be nice if programs consistently priced saver awards no matter the circumstance. With United going revenue based this clearly won't be the case anymore with them sadly either.