lax2sea

It looks like with the recent award chart changes AS has gotten rid of the ability to add AS segments to connect to a partner award flight. Previously, you could add AS segments to a partner booking for no additional miles if there was inventory of the appropriate fare classes (T for Economy, E for First). An AS Partner agent confirmed what we're seeing on the website, that you can no longer do this.

IMO this is one of the biggest devaluations I've seen AS make in a while. Used this all the time to be able to take advantage of difficult to find partner space and especially adding stopovers.

Example: Trip is from SFO-EWR-LHR. EWR-LHR is 70K miles in BA F. There is E space (Saver first space) on AS that morning from SFO-EWR. Previously, the entire trip would have cost just 70k miles. Now, the trip cost 85k miles because you are no longer allowed to add free AS connecting flights to Partner bookings.

Here's just the EWR-LHR


Here's the combined total for SFO-EWR-LHR



Here's EF showing the E inventory:

PDXPremier

​​​​​​​It looks like you save over $500 in taxes/fees by adding the AS segment for 15,000 miles....seems like a reasonable trade-off.

lax2sea

That does not appear to be universally true unfortunately. Seems like no discernible consistency with when they are/are not discounting fuel surcharges. Example:




​​​​​​​

frankvb

It's not consistent indeed. E.g. SAN-AUS-LHR and AUS-LHR are both 65K (though there is no E class available on that specific SAN-AUS flight) and same fuel surcharge, Adding a 3rd (BA) short-haul flight with a stopover somehow bumps it up to 70K, but without that stopover it stays 65K.
No idea what's going on here...

What seems to be happening is some kind of seasonal or inventory related mileage variation though.

[ADDED] - take a look at this page, it's all 'starting from' in the amount of miles needed - https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...s/award-charts
also: https://thepointsguy.com/news/alaska...-award-charts/

And I completely missed this thread (was on a Christmas trip ) New Partner Award Chart Posted (12/28/2022)

ashill

Eek. Seriously not cool. If true, that effectively eliminates all international award bookings for those of us who don’t live in international gateways.

But I wonder if what’s really going on is a switch to married segment availability? ie the fact that SFO-EWR and EWR-LHR have availability doesn’t mean that SFO-EWR-LHR on the same flights necessarily have availability, and vice versa. That would be hard or impossible to search on ExpertFlyer for partner connections, AFAIK.

eponymous_coward

Seeing as it took me about 5 minutes to find a counterexample, perhaps there's something else going on here (like EF is wrong, or that's not actually Saver).

ETA: yeah, there's something weird going on here. Same date, AS is dropping YQ on the nonstop (FWIW, the nonstop is also priced as 2.5k less than what BA J has always been priced at, 60k... and AS has never priced an award at 2.5k, if they were adding SFO-ORD as an additional segment like Avios it would be 10k.)

Kacee

Looks like AS IT in action, i.e., totally inconsistent results. Hard to tell what exactly they're trying to do, but it's almost certainly intended as a devaluation.

eponymous_coward

It's just weird, they've actually reduced pricing and dropped most of the YQ on BA nonstops. Pretty hard to beat 57.5K AS miles + $267 to LHR from the US West Coast. AA's tacking on almost $500 extra YQ on the same booking. I don't know if they've fat-fingered this but it seems to have been around for a few days.

ashill

Sure looks like this is exactly what’s going on.

The award chart now says, for Canada/contiguous US to Europe, business is “starting from” 57.5k miles. This BA flight is pricing in at that lowest value, which as you say is in fact slightly cheaper (in miles) than BA flights have been in the past. But pretty clearly the “starting from” means variable pricing: the price in miles is whatever the booking engine says it is.

This doesn’t seem like the IT malfuction you’re implying at all, to me. The new award chart and the pricing we’re seeing make it pretty clear that this is deliberate. Almost certainly mostly a devaluation (what isn’t in the frequent flyer world?) but in some cases (like the 57.5k BA business trip) a small increase in value. And almost certainly not as simple as Avios-like per-segment pricing: the OP’s example of a flight being 15k more expensive is because they’re pricing that SFO-LHR higher (in miles) on that particular day than they’re pricing EWR-LHR, not specifically because of the added AS segment.

Summary: it appears that AS has joined the other US airlines in ending the days of a useful award chart with predictable award prices, even on partners.

Kacee

You've misunderstood. The apparent error is the lack of consistency, making it difficult to determine exactly what the intended result is.

ashill

What makes you say that's an error? It looks to me like variable pricing; the price is what the booking engine says it is (just like with cash tickets). I don't like it, but I don't suspect an IT error (with the possible exception of the BA YQ surcharge varying).

eponymous_coward

Because it doesn’t actually make sense. BA prices vary if there’s a connection. JL’s don’t (and I would point out that Asia J could be as low as 50k miles, so if there’s variable pricing for Europe why don’t we see it for Asia?), YQ is being dropped from some awards but not others.

I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, other than you should probably book BA with a YQ under $300 for J/F if you want it, I suspect it won’t last.

ashill

I don’t really know what’s going on under the hood for pricing, but variable award pricing must include some inventory calculations more complicated than availability or lack of availability of a single fare class, which would require pricing information from the operating (and marketing) airline. It seems entirely plausible, for example, that AS and BA have an agreement like that but the AS and the Asian carriers don’t.

I think variable (and opaque) pricing is an explanation that is both far more likely and far more consistent with the observations in this thread than the OP’s claim that AS is no longer allowing an AS feeder flight to connect to an international partner award without charging for a separate domestic award. In fact, if it were as the OP suggests, you’d think AS would now allow (eg) an AA domestic feeder to a QF long haul award. They don’t: looking for a MSY-SYD award, there are AS-QF options (via SEA and LAX), AS-AA options (same), AA-AS-AA options (via all sorts of convoluted routings), and pure AA routings, but no AA-QF (via DFW) routings, even though the latter is by far the simplest routing. That’s all 100% consistent with the status quo in partner rules: partner awards can include AS segments but no segments on any other partners. The change appears to be variable and hard-to-understand-or-predict pricing, whether AS is involved or not.

Hard to argue that one.

eponymous_coward

OK, that’s fair. We can say pretty definitively that OP is wrong, happy to provide as many counterexamples as needed on request. Neither CX nor JL are showing extra miles for AS flights.

If AS is removing YQ and reducing J prices for BA J nonstops that’s kind of wild IMO since presumably nonstops might generate premiums. Um, duh, so I want the SEA or SFO nonstop or do I want to pay extra for an overnight redeye connection to AUS?

The whole thing is bizarre because AS can control inventory on a connection. The customer base is also heavy out of SEA…

lax2sea

So would it instead be most correct to say that it does appear they have indeed removed this for BA awards? I can't find a BA counterexample. Also tried to amend an existing booking with the partner desk where the supervisor confirmed they can no longer add AS segments to my BA award for no extra mile charge, regardless of saver availability.

Nonetheless, it's infuriating AS does not just simply publish the rules. We're all just guessing and reading the tea leaves.