UA Fan

First SW starts price based awards and now AA. Hope this does not continue.

pkerr

Dynamic Awards are great for Thanksgiving travel. No Milesaver Awards left but you can use Dynamic Awards which for me, saves 4,000 to 6,000 miles over the Anytime Awards, depending on which airport I fly into.

hillrider

No, it's not misleading the least. Those unspent miles from 1985, or 1990, or whenever, didn't get a 100% bonus, SPG 1.25:1 multiplier, and all the other things you cite. You can bet that today's miles will be worth less next year, and a whole lot less so in 2020; the earning rates of 2020 doesn't affect the value of today's miles the least.

toomanybooks

If AMR stock keeps going down like it has recently, none of this is going to matter much soon (it's fallen from $4.92 to $3.68 in 2 weeks).

Stripe

And if you had 1,000 U.S. dollars in 1984 they would now be worth 463 dollars. Not quite as steep as AA miles inflation but in the same ballpark.

Time traveller

Has anyone tried to select an exit row seat? I was not able to on a trial itinerary I was trying to book. I am not sure if it is just a bug, but since this is for elite members only, exit row selection should have been enabled.

swag

Post #105 in this thread.

QueenOfCoach

What's the big deal? It's another tool in the toolbox.

You're planning a flight. Check award availability, check dynamic pricing, check regular pricing, make your decision.

Dynamic pricing might not always be the the best choice, but occasionally it might. Give it a try.

pinniped

I agree with coremill: it's very misleading. I mean, look, you don't have to convince the board that miles devalue. But nobody redeems 16,000 miles for a rental car or 31,250 miles to stay in a crappy Holiday Inn.

I get the point: long ago, 20k went a long way. But long ago, it took me longer to earn 20k than it does 50k today through myriads of promotions and partners. It also cost a lot more in real terms in 1984 to do the underlying flying that earned the 20k.

I haven't tracked my exact redemption values over the years, but I think valuations tend to ebb and flow based a large part on available of attractive leisure fares. In 2011, with supply tight and leisure fares scarce, miles are worth *more* than they were in, say, 2008. Or even the late 90's when $400 all in R/T's to Europe were not that hard to find.

I've been burning miles a lot this year...doing a Canada trip this weekend for 12.5k each way (split between UA and AA), a trip that would have been $650+ with cash. Also doing some TPAC F award travel later this year, also made a lot easier by being able to do one-ways.

It's not *all* gloom and doom...

hillrider

This comparison is irrelevant: if I had 1,000 Zimbabwean dollars they'd be worth far less, and if I had 1,000 ounces of gold they'd be worth far more.

So? I have miles, not the other type of assets. And if I had 1,000 U.S. dollars in 1984, I would have bought risk-free U.S. Treasuries, and therefore in reality I'd be able to buy a but more that what I could have in 1984. AA does not permit me to invest miles; they only devalue.

hillrider

Couldn't agree more, unless you have unspent earned miles in the account; that's a terrible way to "save", and unfortunately widely published numbers (e.g. AA's annual report) show that many people are doing exactly that.

coremill

An honest question: Does anyone actually still have miles earned in 1984? Of course it's impossible to tell since miles are fungible, but my hunch is that the number of people saving miles for more than 20 years, and so who would be most severely affected by miles inflation, is quite small.

chriseng

One thing that's really annoying about this implementation... why do they have it on a separate website? Why can't they just integrate the Dynamic Air option into the normal award booking process? It would be a much better experience that way. There's no reason the Dynamic Air rules couldn't be incorporated into that workflow. It's like nobody thought about user experience.

ScreenGuy

I don't think miles earned before 1989 suffer inflation anymore (in fact they may become more valuable as the 'new miles redemption chart' increases in terms of miles needed or copays and one can still redeem old miles under the old chart). I do not have any of these so I can't say for certain, but this thread contains some information (I found the link in the FAQ).

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...solidated.html

BAK

Looks like AA is moving to a 3-tier award system, a la Delta, only Delta might have a better award availability.