sfozrhfco

How exactly would this help B6? They have many, many planes coming in the next few years and will be expanding to Europe and beyond with their own aircraft. AS doesn't really bring anything of value to them--especially as more gates open up in B6's new SFO terminal and LAX builds out more gates in the future as well. AS has already been cutting routes that overlap with B6 given AS's weak product. Why would they want to go through the headache for very little benefit?

Visconti

You know, like most in west coast, in particular SFO based flyers, I was horrified with AS buying out VX, and immediately sought to diversify with other carriers assuming this BO was going to be bad for me. Now, I couldn't be happier! It's been the best FF program I've ever experienced, and my only regret is that I hadn't found it sooner. I never realized how right when a Poster (forgot his/her handle) observed that AS is like the SPG of airlines.

AA? Well, let's just say I don't even really care about the great Hyatt promo they're offering me, because it's just not worth it to turn down the AS bonus miles.

Eastbay1K

I'm so old, I can remember when AS and AA had the original codeshare type agreement ca. 1980s.

flytoeat

And there's the reason Alaska gets away with all the program downgrades - they suck less than the competition. Those of us who are Mileage Plan veterans remember the glory days...

Visconti

Ignorance is bliss, as they say. During the "glory days," frequent travel wasn't required for me, and when it was, I had F/J provided. I didn't even care about the miles and had no idea how to use them. If only I had found FT in 2000!

TEDisgone

I'll have to change up my TATL strategy starting today, I guess. I've been flying AA instead of BA due to the better J seats but if BA keeps rolling out their newer product on more routes other than just JFK then that should be okay. Otherwise, if I'm "forced" to fly with AA then I'll just credit to BA.

nearlysober

Not surprising, but disappointing. Particularly the loss of international EQM earning opportunities... that was pretty much the only reason I've been using American lately since the US priced codeshare pricing always seems to be bonkers.

As an Alaska Lounge member, makes me worried about our lounge network as well. If we lose AC access, they absolutely need to find a new partner. The AS lounge's just aren't plentiful enough.

They can spin it all they want that they think they're one of the "big boys" and don't need a US based partners... but there's plenty of cities I cannot get to on AS. But more than that, over the past several years, they've gone from having an assortment of world-class redemption partners to now having and odd assortment random carriers that, it seems like, we can't redeem on half of them.

Madone59

No more award flights with AS miles Oh no. There goes using my stash for annual family CLT-ROC trips

Visconti

Granted, pure speculation here, but perhaps AS revenue management is assuming these "plenty of cities" aren't all that significant to their bottom line?

rayfound

That MIGHT be true... but a lot of the time it is the difference between "Via Seattle and 3 hour layover on AS metal, 10 hours total routing" vs "3 Hour direct via AA"

eponymous_coward

Plenty of cities you couldn't get to on WN when they were a 330+ plane airline and not a 750+ plane airline like now. They still have zero, count 'em, zero partners. There are still a lot of airports you can't fly to on WN, including MIA, JFK, soon to include EWR, in fact there are entire states you can't fly to on WN. They seem to be doing slightly better than "5 minutes from filing for Chapter 11".

Eastbay1K

True as that may be, my patronage of WN was never based upon the world of partners they advertised.

AS' marketing strategy was (pretty much) "If we can't take you there, one of our partners can, to either earn or burn your MP miles."

sltlyamusd

Although currently based in ORD, I have been avoiding AA since April because of their chronic reliability issues. Things appear to be slowly getting better, but I'm not sure I will be back on AA metal any time soon. The ability to redeem Int'l awards on AA was nice, but avail had been so limited of late that it never was of any use to me.

I do think an AS/B6 partnership would make sense in terms of giving B6 a much better west coast connections and AS much better east coast connections. There isn't much overlap in route network outside of BOS and JFK transcons.

RAD_PDX

Too bad. This will likely result in a significant decrease in the value of AS miles for domestic travel. The only time I've redeemed them for > 2cpm was when there was an AA leg.

ryandc99

This is a sad day.

Delta made flying AS very hard.

The downgrade of no domestic earning on AA made it impossible.

This pretty much means if you don't live in a west coast city you aren't really valued as a MP member :/