Award Costs Increase on 1 August 2007
 

A new AS Mileage Plan "Enhancement": good bye 20K saver award.

The 20K award will only be available on-line, but what about awards that can't be booked on-line? Talk to us, ASers!

Amusingly, this news came to me in an email headlined "75th Anniversary Gold Letter". If this is AS' idea of a anniversary present, one shudders to think what they'd be doing to us if they weren't celebrating...

:td: Ouch! I hope this is not indicative of a bad trend...At least most of us use the online website. Maybe they're trying to encourage more people to do that instead of clogging the phone lines? As long as they continue to improve the online features, I guess I'm not too worried...I'm glad there is still the availability online:

"You will be happy to know that we are retaining our industry-leading 20,000 mile round-trip domestic award level, as well as the rest of our current award structure when you book your award travel online at alaskaair.com."

This was discussed at the MVPG lunch @ SFO today.

If it can't be booked online, then it will be the higher rate.

I noticed the header "Enhancement" also.:rolleyes: Hopefully this will have the positive affect of additional awards available but I'm not holding my breath. I see this greatly effecting partner awards.:td:

how would it affect partner awards?

Uncool. I just booked 2x 75k Lan awards: there is no current way to book this on-line. It doesn't seem right to punish us for not booking on-line when we can't err, book on-line.

:confused: Lan Awards aren't going up.

Can you please tell us what -is- being increased? Is it just the 20K award? That was not at all clear in the 'enhancement' announcement sent to me.

Also note the Redemptive Upgrade Change.

Upgrades will now cost 15k each way and will only be available on H class fares and higher.

Good news if you are MVP/G and want to wait out complementary upgrades as there will be fewer people cashing in miles for an upgrade to F.

Bad news for everyone else...

It is JUST the 20K award that is going up.

I don't have the full list of new award costs, but it appears from the letter, that this only affects Alaska Air award levels. I would imagine that the Peak Award will go up too. Those awards that can currently be booked online for 20K, will still be available for 20K online, despite the award level increase.

Even if Lan did increase..since it was never bookable online, I'm not understanding where you get "punished" for not booking online.

How about partner awards?
 

Okay... so I have been saving my miles for a BA FC award.... I have them ( 140K) but I can't book until October of this year....should I be trying to save more at this point anticipating an increase?

While the LAN case doesn't have merit (at least in the above example), AS has set the precedent of punishing users who cannot book certain tickets online... such as the $10 booking fee using a phone agent regardless.

I guarantee this is just "Phase 1" of a pre-planned process to eliminate 20K awards completely. AS is very good about phasing in negative changes... they smartly do it in baby steps. Once 20K awards are gone, the last incentive to fly AS is gone.... for 25K you might as well start using an airline that has 10x the destinations.

NOT cool.

I would be okay with this if the on-line engine was modified to allow stopovers. Currently it only allows open jaws. Otherwise those awards are going up by 5,000 miles or 25%