iahphx

Thanks for confirming this -- although, of course, it's been obvious to anyone with an open mind. People stay up to book seats to Hawaii for Xmas. There aren't throngs missing sleep to book all the award seats from STL or MCI.

Personally, while I've found this domestic embargo to be an interesting topic, I'm more concerned by the reported reductions in int'l award seats. At some point, if nobody else studies this, I'll have to examine if there's any particular pattern to the reductions, or if there's just a tightening of the "capacity controls." It would be particularly problematic for me to Europe, as AA doesn't have major "no fee" transatlantic partners. Otherwise, I can continue to simply use award inventory on AA's int'l oneworld partners, who probably offer better in-flight service anyway.

EsquireFlyer

No. Your argument is the "flat world" argument. A flat world argument has three defining characteristics:

1. Assumption that everything is exactly as it appears. ("The world looks flat, so it must be flat. People who say otherwise need to open their eyes and see what's right in front of them.")
2. Refusal to believe any claim that one doesn't see with one's own eyes, if it is inconsistent with the pre-existing belief. ("I don't care if people who claim to have sailed around the world say that it's round. If it's round, show ME proof that it's round. Seeing is believing.")
3. Willingness to automatically believe, without seeing it with one's own eyes, any claim that is consistent with the pre-existing belief. ("Dragons live at the edge of the world. Ships that don't return from attempts to sail around the world either fell off the edge or were sunk by the dragons.")
   

In comparison, your position:

1. Assumes that because you don't see any award availability around the holidays, the airline must have embargoed all awards on those days.
   
   Quote:

   Originally Posted by iahphx

   We can make this very easy: find us domestic coach saver award seats on the "embargo" ("blackout," or whatever you want to call it) days. Any city pair -- your choice. If there's no embargo, it should be easy to find something.
2. Refuses to believe the people who say they have seen and even booked award availabilty around the holidays last year (when you believed that awards were also embargoed, as stated in your OP), and that they have seen award availabilty disappear within hours after being loaded. Because you have not seen it with your own eyes, you have ignored reports such as these:
   
   
   Quote:

   Originally Posted by VickiSoCal

   They load sometime between 4 am and 6 am eastern time. But YMMV. If you are checking at midnight and then going to bed, high demand flights for high demand days are probably gone by the time you get up. Booking Maui for the whole family for Thanksgiving was a nail biter last year but it got done.
   Quote:

   Originally Posted by jayer

   My hero and data point is a family friend who manages to book her entire 8-member extended family to Hawaii every, single, year for the last 20, and always on the days she wants. . . . [S]he knows the scriptural day and the hour and the minute holiday flight availability will be poured out on the public. That night she is logged on with her flights typed in at midnight, or whenever it is, gives it about 30 seconds in case her watch is fast, and hits enter. Why anyone wants to go to Hawaii when its packed is beyond me, but she nails it. Every, single, year. She swears flights are picked over by three and everything is gone by six. Its hard to argue with success.
   Or else you have explicitly stated that you don't believe reports of award space because you did not see the space yourself:
   
   
   Quote:

   Originally Posted by iahphx

   Quote:

   Originally Posted by Science Goy

   If your holiday plans are even slightly flexible, this is a non-issue. I was able to book saver awards for multiple family members to/from extremely busy vacation destinations during the 2011 Xmas holiday period. All it required was initially purchasing sub-optimal dates and times, then switching to better flights as AA freed up award availability closer in to the departure dates.

   Could you please give us the details of your travel plans? I honestly have a hard time believing you. Last minute award availability looked absolutely awful to me at X-mas time on AA. . . .
3. Readily accepts the existence of a "special script" or "program" that zeroes out holiday award availability loaded by AA's normal capacity control system, even though you have never seen such a script, because it is consistent with your belief that AA has embargoed the dates.
   
   The fact that you don't see award availability around the holidays could also be explained by: (A) the normal capacity control system loading fewer seats, or loading the seats later, not at 330 days out; or (B) fast movers grabbing the very few available award seats on the first day. But you automatically rule out both of these possibilities in favor of the assumption that: (C) AA has specifically installed a script to zero out all holiday award inventory.

EsquireFlyer

How can you vouch for the fact that American never loaded saver inventory on dates around the holiday, both this year and last year, and that saver availability "is not materializing at any point" when other people upthread have stated that they found and booked saver award inventory for travel around the holidays last year? Moreover, they stated that the award inventory was gone within a few hours of their booking.

It must be the case that either (a) these early birds (and people like them) booked the space, either before you saw it, or that became available after you checked and went to bed; or (b) they are lying about having found and booked the award space. What do you think happened?

iahphx

OK, you win. I'm wrong.

But is there a single domestic coach saver award flight currently available on any of the embargo dates (which are currently 16, and increasing every day)? They've all be immediately snapped up? I mean, why are you picking this fight?

777lover

Another consequence. No saveraward = no connections to partner awards out of the country.

iahphx

Is this actually true? Somebody else mentioned it.

Unless things have changed this year, you can book an int'l coach award on AA metal during the domestic embargo period and get seats for the domestic connecting flight. It's different if you're connecting to a partner? That would be bad news for a lot of int'l travellers.

sdsearch

It doesn't necessarily mean that. Each AA saver award is evaluated separately on the basis of the origin city and the destination city. AA can make a saver award available for AAA-BBB-CCC even though it's not avialable for only AAA-BBB or only BBB-CCC.

However, at the very least, it means it's difficult to research domestic routing avialability (on the connection portion) without calling, since you can't look up partner awards onllne (as one complete booking). If you were relying on looking up partner inventory on another OneWorld site, and then matching that with domestic inventory looked up on aa.com, that's what won't work, even if iti is possible to book. (Remember, it always had to booked over the phone; but now it has to be researched over the phone as well.)

goldengate

So what they seem to be doing for Christmas 2012 is holding back on saver inventory for economy after December 12th but continuing to release business/first inventory (all the way up to Dec 17th)...I've checked multiple routes and this seems to hold true for all the routes.

If this is the case, it's a huge improvement over last year where business/first were also unavailable the week before and the week after Christmas. The next week will tell!

iahphx

No, it is NOT an improvement. It is EXACTLY what they did last year, except that it seems like there will be more coach embargo days this year. If you read the threads, you'll see there was never an embargo of domestic FC inventory last year. They are just subject to "normal" capacity controls.

If you are AA and are trying to maximize revenue (and not too worried about pissing off your AAdvantage members) this strategy makes good business sense because there is little demand by business travellers for premium travel during the Holidays. For individuals, of course, if you really want to use your AAdvantage miles for domestic Holiday travel, it's a no-brainer to look for "standard" FC seats. For the same miles, you'll be in first class.

phillyjoe

The op seems to have two points:
1. that some tickets are never loaded; or
2. that they disappear from availability very quickly.

I think the op's point was that, if seats are never loaded it should be stated by AA that there will be no mile-saver tickets available around certain dates. This would be a black-out period.

If tickets disappear from availability quickly, the quote above shows how that might happen (the early bird gets the worm), and that's that. The voodoo of revenue management is, well, a revenue issue and not one of bait and switch.

I have frequently changed from coach to business or even first a few days before european flights, even during holiday and vacation travel times when seats became available. As PLAT, there is no charge to go up, so I am thankful.

I look at all this as similar to when an electronics store chain has an ad for 34" tv's at $299 with an asterisk to indicate that at least 2 tv's at this price are available at all stores. I think the op wants AA to "guarantee" at least so many milesAAver seats on every flight.

iahphx

Sorry, but your post makes little sense to me. Some people here are trying to "muddy the waters" by suggesting -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- that the reason there are no coach saver seats for the Holidays is that people stay up to the middle of the night and immediately book them all. This is ridiculous, and I think most people now realize that. The facts are simple: AA is not loading any domestic coach saver award seats for certain easily identifiable "embargo" days around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Now you can hope that someday they'll reverse course and load some seats for these days. And, last year, they did later make minor changes to their embargo strategy. For now, though, there are simply no saver seats being loaded on the "embargo" days. If anyone seriously denies this, I again ask them to show us an example of an available saver seat in the embargo period. (Frankly, if you want to be a "denier," it's better to claim those seats "will be allocated later" -- because there's no way anyone can empirically prove you wrong -- except perhaps next Thanksgiving! ).

As far as me suggesting I want AA to "guarantee" "so many milesAAver seats on every flight," give me a break. AA can do whatever they want. And AA's customers can do whatever THEY want. But is smart for those customers to know what's actually happening and to not be deceived into believing "nothing new is going on" with regard to award seat allocation.

goldengate

I am surprised to hear there was never an "embargo" of first/business saaver awards last year... I searched multiple routes 330 days out @ midnight and didn't see any appear on either side of Christmas... and then keep checking for a couple of weeks to see if they appeared... they did not.

Science Goy

There was ample availability 1-2 months before Christmas.

gozetta

This was my experience last year: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24413218/AAdvantage-Program.jpg

iahphx

I can confirm that there is NO current embargo of domestic Business/First MileSAAver for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Unlike their coach couterparts, these seats are getting loaded (at least in some domestic markets -- I haven't checked them all) and are available to book right now. (I guess the folks staying up to midnight to grab all the award seats don't want these ).

Of course, these seats are still subject to AAdvantages "normal" capacity controls, and the inventory will change as the travel dates approach. It certainly isn't surprising to me that more FC award seats will be made available closer to departure time. This could be very useful to folks who need/want to make last minute Holiday travel plans when the only other option is high priced coach award seats or high priced revenue tickets.

EDIT: I recall earlier in this thread that somebody was interested in ORD-MCO award travel at Xmas. So far, there are FC saver award seats for everyday in December, including many nonstop flights. Sadly, this is the way it used to be for coach travel, but is no longer.