AmericanAirlines

We’re experiencing a high volume of traffic on the Dynamic Air site. While we’re thrilled to see so much interest, please accept our apologies for the slow response time.

TrojanHorse

TH's data point for one pax

thanksgiving peak days
Wed 11/23

IAD-LAX evening Non Stop ($291 before tax - lowest avail was $288)

Sunday 11/27

LAX IAD a.m. afternoon non-stop ($478 before tax - lowest was $478)

Pricing - $783 a/i with N/W fares respectively


Dynamics

these two flights which are the first ones shown were for 46,000 miles + $5 taxes


AA.com awards

LAX-IAD 12.5K mile saver on same flight (jeez I need to book this today)

IAD-LAX 25K on same flight (no mile saver options period)

total 37.5K + $5 in taxes


summary, Dynamics would cost more over using the regular award booking process on AA.com

GrizShel

My first response is what a loser of an offer.
Award tickets are suppose to be rewards for loyalty and I really don't like the precedent of making these unchangeable (basically an excuse to charge the customer $150 when they have to change plans on a reward ticket).

First search:
ORD-DCA - RT of >30 days not eligible, so won't work for me.
ORD-DCA - OW 20,000 miles (or I can get a regular award one-way for 12,500 miles + it is changeable). What a tough choice.

Basically this is exactly equivalent to Delta's mid-tier award pricing (but they don't allow one-ways at half the miles of a RT).

Maybe I'll change my mind about this program with time, but right now it doesn't look promising.

kayjay

LGA to MIA

Miles saver 12,500 miles
Anytime 25,000
Dynamic Air 24,500+$5

Only one sample but Dynamic Air looks like a big nothing.

rfrost

I doubt I'll ever use them, as I do relatively little domestic flying nowadays and dislike sitting in coach, but you never know. Might come in handy someday for a short flight to WAS or something.

dayone

The development of this dubious new program is a questionable use of supposedly limited IT resources.

randomtask111

DynAir makes some sense though I think it'll be case-by-case for sure...

NYC to SEA

Eco MileSAAver 1-stop T 12.5k
Eco AAnytime non-stop Y 25k
Eco DynAir non-stop Q 17k
Biz/First MilesSAAver non-stop Z 25k

DynAir makes sense if:
1) You know the route is popular, so no point booking Y hoping to upgrade. (That is, if 25k Z MileSAAver is not available. Not the case here.)
2) Save 8k flying non-stop vs. AAnytime Y

japaik

i've had cases where i had to make last minute bookings - this could come in handy for those times.

mingw

I don't understand why no many negative posts.

basically it's just another choice. you don't have to use it when you can book a saver award -- just like when saver is available you don't book anytime.

you just check saver, anytime, dynamic, cash and choose the one fits best for you. what's wrong with an additional choice?

the400kid

I don't get it. I entered a half dozen sample itineraries using the existing AA site and the new Dynamic Air. In all cases the Dynamic site required more mileage for the identical flights as the existing site. For example, when I plugged in Miami to Los Angeles for November, a few non-stops appeared for 25,000 miles while the Dynamic site required 30,000 miles for the same flights - over and over again.

Is there an advantage to using the new site that I haven't realized?

sdsearch

Earlier today, after getting that email, I tried it on "blacked out" dates of Dec 23 and Dec 26 midcons just to see what I'd get. I got 44K for a bad routing, and 49K for good routing, and I couldn't see a way to check seats (though someone else in this thread claims there is one). At any rate, 1K savings over AAnyTime does not excite me given all the restrictions. (For one thing, if I book AAnyTime for 1K more, if magically a MileSAAver front cabin opens up, I can switch to that, but if I've locked in the 1K less Dynamic, there's no way to switch that to a MileSAAver front cabin later. And although I have no idea if it'll happen this year, I have seen in years past MileSAAver front cabin for Christmastime flights when no MileSAAver coach was ever available.)

mingw

for those trips that no saaver awards are available... if you found cheaper saaver awards, then great, use that instead of this new dynamic.

thehawk75

Is this for certain?

I've made a few dummy searches, and I see the following on various itineraries

Coach class of service (V)
Coach class of service (Q)
Coach class of service (S)
Coach class of service (G)

These all seem like revenue fair buckets versus the 'T' bucket given for MileSAAver. I even question if one might be able to earn miles flying on these tickets right now.

Of course, given that AAnytime AAwards book into 'Y', and don't earn miles (that I'm aware of), does contradict this rational some. Nonetheless, since this is a new product, that seems to be tied to the revenue pricing system, perhaps, right now, they are revenue tickets booked with miles?

Of course, someone is going to find the key point in the T&C's that will explicitly say that these flights don't earn miles, but, I haven't found it...yet (but would obviously like to figure this out either way).

GloverParker

While I agree with many others that these probably don't make sense for me as a traveler, they should be of some advantage when I'm booking tickets for others using my miles. I often bring friends along on a weekend away or just help them get where they need to go in a pinch and will book them a ticket using miles -- they're just happy for the trip and not worried about sitting in F. As far as I can tell, I can book for someone else at the lower redemption rate as long as the miles are coming out of my account.

miamigrad

Wirelessly posted (Samsung Galaxy S: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1-update1; en-us; SGH-T959 Build/ECLAIR) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17)

My answer was based strictly on the information posted on the page describing these awards. Near the bottom, there's a row "Eligible for Upgrades" (or something like that). "No" is indicated in the column for Dynamic Awards.

Of course, we all know that things don't always work "in real life" the way the policy is written.