SSheinfeld

The book now link does not seem to work

QueenOfCoach

Whoo-hoo! I always fly Coach, unless I get upgraded on stickers they give me for free.

Ord Liza

It keeps timing out (maybe a lot of hits because the emailed announcements were just received?) When it does work, it is only saving me minimal miles at the cost of a few dollars, but the sample size is small. My sense is that the availability of the milesavers has often coincided with the availability of lower fares so that in the cases where this option would be helpful, it would tend to be linked with higher fares and thus higher mileage costs. Wait and see.

LAX_Esq

Has anyone figured out the "formula" that AA is using to determine the dynamic miles cost?

ts3

I like it. I occasionally have a situation where I am faced with burning $1500 for a full fare r/t in Y, burning a few hundred more for a Y/UP, or using 50,000 or 100,000 miles for AAnytime Award. I don't like spending that kind of money on airfare, so I will at times burn the miles. So, if I can save 10,000 miles, okay, thanks, I will.

Next suggestion to AA: let's get even more "dynamic". How about miles + cash awards like BA does? How about adding J and F awards? I think AA can do better than DL's skypeso $0.01 per mile. BA does.

billgrates3

What's the fare inventory for these new awards?

With Aanytime, if I buy a ticket for my son to visit (EWR-SAC or SFO) he can get an exit row seat, as it's booked in Y. With saaver, it's in T so just regular econ seating.
I'm wondering about Dynamic, as the miles saved seems to be rather minimal.

hillrider

+1.

Stuff happens, usually when you least expect it.

While in college, I was in the middle of a non-changeable ticket (opaque/consolidator) when my father was hospitalized and had to advance the return half; the airline and agent both denied the change (non-changeable is non-changeable; there was available inventory, was already savvy enough to ask), and was forced to buy a last-minute ticket. It was not pretty, it cost me an incredible amount of my annual budget, and as a result I learned never to use this type of tickets: the risk/reward ratio is skewed against me.

britenbsas

But not for all of us it seems - "Elite status members residing in the United States" according to aa.com. Why is it necessary to block these awards for loyal AA elite status members living in other countries

JumboD

I believe this, combined with the increase in certain award "prices" (HI flights being the notable one on TB), is fueled less by revenue management and more by the CFO's office/AMR's auditors telling them to decrease the mileage liability on the balance sheet. Perhaps due to greater-than-expected MM top-off purchases/transfers or perhaps due to some other unpredicted factors, it sounds like AA is trying to figure out quick and easy ways to get some of those miles out of circulation.

Raising the award price for HI, a favorite of once-per-year travelers who get all their points on credit cards, is a no brainer: they'll pay 10k more r/t for a "free" flight to HI. After all, that's the one and only thing they've been saving the miles for all year.

As for Dynamic Awards, if AA can get elites, particularly all of these "inexperienced" recent lifetime-GLD-due-to-MM-but-only-fly-once-or-twice-a-year elites (who actually think this is a benefit) to cash in some miles for flights they'd have otherwise spent money on or not taken, all the better. And with those elites, I think it'll work. If you take your spouse and three kids to Florida once a year and do no other flying, it doesn't matter if the tickets are only $318 each; you still need five of them, and you'd rather burn all of your miles than spend any money so this is a great opportunity since sAAver awards will likely be sold out, and you weren't thinking of flying F anyways. But I definitely think this is whom the program is geared for: you won't find too many "real" elites cashing in miles for coach on domestic flights; they're either saving the miles for int'l travel, upgrades/F awards or both.

So perhaps this is here to stay, but perhaps its sole purpose is to bring AA's outstanding mileage levels back to where they should be, and will disappear, or be replaced. I do not, however, see it as taking AA in the DL direction.

pinniped

Agreed....I'm sure when the site is performing well, we'll see how the valuation scales.

Two things appear certain:
- On cheap, far-in-advance bookings, you're getting about 1cpm. It's a poor option for that scenario.
- On a very expensive "I have to be on this exact flight tomorrow", mingw's post early in the thread - an $1,120 R/T fare for 49k, the system does indeed seem smart enough to cap at the AAnytime award level.

So the question is what that value/redemption curve looks like in between our notional $150 R/T and our notional $1,000+ R/T. Maybe there's a narrow sweet spot in there somewhere...a place where you can get close to 2cpm and redeem somewhat less than 50,000 miles for the award.

I think of my own worst-case scenario: needing a last-minute one-way that would run about $400. (I seem to get that one once a year or so.) Could I get it for 20k instead of 25k? Who knows...

LAXNYER

clunky search engine. having trouble finding dates on routes like JFK-LAX or even LAX-LAS. A lot of glitches on both safari & chrome.

NonRevKid

Got the announcement. Clicked the link. Very slow to load the hero graphic. Can not log in.

JDiver

I meant that I think the RM engine is driving the cost, as the "miles price" seems to be related to the fares pricing; the strategy behind this new offering is most likely management driven.

I agree with your take on Dynamic Air and the HI increases.

miamigrad

I just checked an ORD-LAS itinerary for later this month using the regular booking engine (selecting MileSAAver as my "award type preference") and was able to find a MileSAAver award (12,500 x 2 = 25,000 miles + $5).

Performing the same search on the Dynamic Award search engine, the same flights priced at 26,000 + $5.

So, it pays to check all options before jumping the gun
(but, let's be real... we're FT'ers. The vast majority will do the research before booking an award through this - if at all)

LookingAhead

useaamiles.com/air Servers appear to be overloaded.....