Flying for Fun

JL F US-TYO & JL J TYO-South East Asia is a mixed cabin Itinerary. Just saying!

James

Flying for Fun

Fall for what? Awards are clealy marked as mixed cabin and a warning is issued that not all segments are in the class chosen. Additionally, each segment in the award clearly shows the cabin that the award is booking into. If someone somehow misses all that, who should they be "pissed off" at?

The Terms and conditions also state, albeit in typical sloppy AS fashion, that the award will be priced at the award level of the highest class flown in the itinerary. See point 6.

1. Be sure to view each partner's definition of North America, as each of our partners may define it differently. The purchaser of an award ticket is responsible for all applicable taxes, fees, and checked baggage charges imposed by the transporting carrier(
2. American's Business/First Class is First Class on a 2 cabin aircraft or Business Class on a 3 cabin aircraft
3. American's First Class is First Class on a 3 cabin aircraft
4. Carrier Imposed Charge: British Airways mandates a carrier imposed charge, ranging from approximately $150 to over $1000 (USD), for all awards redeemed by Mileage Plan members.
5. Carrier Imposed Charge: Icelandair mandates a carrier imposed charge, ranging from approximately $150 to over $300 (USD), for all awards redeemed by Mileage Plan members.
6. Mixed-cabin itineraries are booked at the award level listed for the highest class of service of any included segment. For example, where one segment is in Main Cabin and another segment is in First Class, the number of miles required will correspond to a

No, I didn't truncate point 6. AS did that.

James

olouie

I think you are putting too much faith into non super frequent fliers trying to use miles. The website does a decent job but the mobile app doesnt show the warning until after you select legs and then only in text at the of the screen before checkout unless you click details. There are a few more things that are pretty much just money grabs and/or pure incompetence by AS:
1. I sincerely doubt they are remitting the amounts for premium class cabins to partners when booking mixed cabins and AS is premium but rest are coach.
2. AS seems to be charging the premium class taxes and fees even when the non-AS legs are in coach - so going to LAX-SEA in F then SEA-LHR in Y on BA has taxes and fees of over $890 per person one way. Book that without the AS premium leg connector and the taxes and fees are around $200-250 in Y. How are they paying this tax if the passenger isnt flying premium cabin? Or are they hmmm .....
3. Its would be easy enough to show the extra miles required but have it under the lower booking class. More honest approach IMHO.

But in any case this probably no longer matters in December when partner redemptions get changed up. However, point 2 seems to be a big miss and potentially actually illegal. Never seen an airline charge the premium taxes and fees when you aren't actually flying premium cabin before and how the heck are they paying that through if the passenger isnt in premium cabin?

Kacee

Actually you can't tell at all when searching on the App, not even if you click through to "Details."

I do have an issue with AS pricing an international itinerary based solely on a domestic F segment. They really shouldn't even return those itineraries as options - the only "mixed" itineraries they should show as premium cabin are ones where the long haul is premium cabin, and the domestic connector is Y. I don't ascribe any ill motive to AS here, but they can do better.

cpworld

What do you think will happen in December?

wrp96

Just because you cancel an award, doesn't mean those seats will become available for awards again, especially if the flight is booking up, like it seems flights to Japan are.

LGACIC

Agreed that I wish AS would filter the results differently. At the very least it's an enormous waste of time. I'm 99% certain that when I click on the dreaded mixed cabin itinerary that the segment I want will be in coach, but I still have to check.

Back to OP with one more data point - I found both HND-LAX and HND-SFO in first class four days out last week. Enjoyed it very much.

olouie

Dynamic partner redemptions. Or at least much higher maximums with peak / off peak etc for partners.

Flying for Fun

Actually you can tell when when searching on the APP by adding it to your cart. Then you will get the mixed cabin itinerary warning and the details will show you what cabin each segment books into.

Cumbersome, yes, but I was replying to a poster that suggested someone might be upset not knowing they are purchasing a mixed cabin award. If they don't heed the warning after adding it to the cart but before purchasing the award, who should they be upset with? That was my point!

It was always easy to tell immediately in the APP if the TATL segment was in Main or PE as oppsed to J & F without ever looking at the details or adding it to your cart to see the warning. The surcharges for Main & PE are significantly less than for J & F. If you saw a 60K redemption in the Business column & the fees & taxes were sub $300, then the BA TATL was either Main or PE. Pretty Simple.

AS awards on BA have been wonky lately with BA First sometimes showing up in the Business award column as a mixed cabin award and as recently pointed out, the correct surcharges are not being displayed so the "flag" that the BA TATL isn't in J or F is missing.

I tried to find a mixed cabin example with AS in F and the BA TATL in Main. After a dozen random dates I came up short from West Coast cities. I did, however, find a plethora of AS F with BA F or J. AS F with BA J is, of course, a mixed cabin award.

Here is an example: LAX-LHR



Two LAX-LHR option. We know the non-stop is J, but what about the one-stop?


Mixed Cabin Warning


Details: Mixed Cabin, AS LAX-SFO in F, SFO-LHR in J


I am sure most do as well, it matters not to me as I won't redeem AS miles for BA awards. Ironically though, the award pricing with the domestic segment in F connecting to the international segment in Main can be cheaper than the domestic F standalone. I have a JFK-PDX-HNL in F that was part of a partner award with 3 flights already flown for 27.5K. I purposely booked the partner short-haul international segment into Y when J was avaliable to effect that routing.

We also need to look beyond the AS network. If mixed-cabin awards were not shown, it would have implications on partners awards. No CX F/J, no JL F/J. Similarly, No JL J/F connecting to a short domestic Y flight. No awards for any AS outstation that has only ever had Q400 service; No EY awards starting in TLL. The 64 mile flight from Tallinn Estonia to Helsinki is opearted by an Embraer 190 without a J cabin.

For BA specifically, there are a lot of gateways in the US where AS has a presence; BOS, JFK, EWR, IAD, BWI, ATL, MIA, MCO, TPA, BNA, MSY, DFW, IAH, AUS, SAN, LAX, SJC, SFO, PHX, DEN, PDX, SEA & ORD.

The approach should be to find the BA TATL in the premium cabin first, and then work your way back if you are willing to pay the Vig. I am not. If I was on the US West Coast, I would be looking at revenue flights to earn additional EQM/RDM with the fare offset by the reduced Vig. From SFO North, flights to YVR where the Vig is ~$400 cheaper. From SFO South, flight to MEX/CUN where the Vig is ~$600 cheaper. YQ on BA J MEX-LHR is $181; total taxes & fees $260. But I also appreciate that some, in BA gateway cities, are willing to pay the price for the convenience. In the last year, I have booked 10 AS awards, to, from or stopping over in Europe, with F domestic segments, none of which were on BA.

The same holds true for any partner redemption, start at the gateway and work back from there.

I agree AS can do better, much better! So you are okay eliminating "mixed" itineraries where the long-haul is Premium and the domestic connector is in F? What about Premium Economy? it is Premium too, but not likely the premium cabin you are looking for.

James

cpworld

you are right that it's not a guarantee, but when I've canceled award flights in the past, I've seen them return to available inventory within minutes. So if someone was interested I would PM them and work out the timing because I would not expect them to last long.

Kacee

I don't believe you are honestly defending the need to click all the way through to the purchase page to learn that the itinerary consists of a 60 minute flight in AS F (e.g., SFO-LAX) and an 11 hour flight in Y (LAX-NRT). Who would ever knowingly pay the premium award price for that itinerary??? In this respect, I agree with OP that the AS display is deceptive, because a reasonable consumer would not expect that combination to price as a premium award.

I wouldn't redeem AS for BA either. But I do redeem for JL and SQ, for example, and I resent having to click through to find out whether it's really a premium award.

No, and if you had read my post carefully, you would know that my comment was limited to domestic F combined with international Y. I'm fine with domestic Y combined with international J/F. That is the only type of mixed cabin itinerary you'll see offered by UA, for example. And when I'm holding out UA's award booking process as an example of how things should be done, that's a very obvious sign that AS is falling way, way short.

AS has a great frequent flyer program, but it is not perfect, so please don't act like everyone who has a valid criticism of certain aspects of the program is acting like an irrational whiner. It diminishes your credibility.

olouie

Such long detailed replies that completely skip over why AS is charging premium cabin taxes and fees for non premium cabin bookings. I’m going to pursue this with AS and potentially file a DOT complaint since it’s so scammy. There is ZERO reason they should be doing that.

Nevsky

I think it is way worse now than at any time I have looked, especially to Europe (which was never that great). I have been looking at the end of the schedule and very little J availability anywhere. I have seen much better availability on UA without the high co-pays. There is plenty of BA availability on their discount fares. That is what I call a "mileage redemption" that requires a co-pay of around $1900. Total joke. Even a bigger joke when a mixed cabin. Very disappointing. As stated above, wish the mixed cabins were nixed from the results.

olouie

FYI Alaska’s response on mix cabin taxes and fees
is that they have no control over that and it’s the partner airline who decides to charge premium cabin taxes and fees even when you are mixed cabin and partner sections are flying coach.

The most telling part is that 3 separate international agents said they have no control over awards anymore and that they charge whatever the computer tells them to charge since pricing is dynamic and constantly changing. Foreshadowing much?

Flyertalker001342

I travel from the West Coast of the US to Europe 2-3X a year, always in either FC or Business, 99.9% of the time on BA. Up until maybe 2019, with a lot of flexibility on my part, I was able to secure award seats in FC or Business using miles (mostly from credit card usage, some from flying and some from mileage purchases when there was a "mileage sale"). The whole thing made economic sense as I was able to significantly undercut the cost of normal tickets by being flexible and using the mileage award programs (of BA and AS) to my best advantage. This started to change before the pandemic, as the additional fees and taxes charged on "award" tickets began to seriously erode any savings realized by using AS miles or Ba Avios.

The pandemic and its aftermath made my prior approach to obtaining FC and Business Class long haul travel more affordable stopped working, both due to the lack of premium cabin award availability, increased demand for what availability there was, and because of very stiff assessed fees and taxes on award tickets. The pendulum has now swung to where the miles/points/Avios have become less and less valuable, and where premium class award tickets no longer represent good value, even if they were available. The savings are truly miniscule and the value of the Miles/Points/Avios is something around 6/10 of a US cent if you do the math, vs. a purchased ticket.

Unfortunately, I ended up with some miles and Avios I paid way too much for when I bought them (even on the vaunted sales) but I will never do that again.

It's simply not worth the time and effort to seek premium cabin award seats on long haul trips, except maybe on carriers with hugely expensive fares where the arbitrage might be worth trying, but I have no experience personally seeking award seats on the likes of Emirates, Singapore Airlines, or Qatar.

What I do now is to figure out the itinerary I want to take, then use my flexibility to ticket on days where the prices aren't ridiculous. In the end it costs me a little bit more, but I also get status with an alliance carrier since I paid for the tickets, and the added cost is trivial in the overall scheme of things. Plus, getting those rare award seats now takes so much effort that you are essentially working for $1.50/hr seeking those seats, when all is done. I have better things to do with my time.

What I now do with the miles I have is to take the odd trip I wouldn't have taken if I had to pay for it. As a example, there's an event in Seattle I was invited to, that normally I would not have attended because I would need to fly there from Boise. I found that I could go there in the morning then fly back that evening, rent a car for $75, and go to the event. It's a spur of the moment trip I would not otherwise have taken, and it's costing me 22.5K miles plus a few dollars plus the rental car. That's not worth nothing.