scnzzz

To the OP: What evidence exists to support the assertion that AA is not providing saver award seats around the holidays? How do we know that AA isn't making inventory available but savvy travelers are snagging at the earliest possible date (before OP was able to)? As far as I can tell, OP is unable to find award seats at the saver rate and has concluded that AA is not making these available (and to make things interesting, is using fun terms like "embargo").

Oh, and +1 to all the posts noting that AA has no incentive or obligation to release saver award seats during the holidays anyway. I want AA to make money. That's how capitalism works. I own no stock but I sure as heck would like them to stick around... if for no other reason than for ORD-DEL SWU redemptions

In other words, this seems like way too much ado about nothing at best

janetdoe

Like right here?
That is SOOOO deceptive.



Don't forget to check Dynamic Air Awards, especially if you are not looking at a bread-and-butter route. For example, on my first try, I found a 34k domestic round trip flying on the Wednesday before and the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Time traveller

Most airlines will limit saver award tickets during the holidays, including AA, as if they can sell those tickets at a higher revenue, this will help boost their bottom line. This is business 101. The question is - has AA been more generous with saver award tickets during the holidays compared to other airlines and have they recently tightened up? If they have, is this best for the company to stay competitive at the expense of a few unhappy customers?

I still believe AA has the best availability on award tickets in general amongst the legacy domestic airlines. Try looking for saver award tickets on UA/CO, US or DL during non-holiday time periods and compare them to AA availability.

magic111

moderator

Cannonball Run

OLD miles (10,000 old miles Round Trip ) to upgrade a Y ticket to F on a Three Class trans con last Thanksgiving - Worked perfect for me - the inventory was there. Thank you AA -

Awards are fluid - last night was able to book two J awards to BKK - in March - which weren't available for the last 3 months of trying.......

AA is a business - loads are a combination of science, math and voodoo - imo.

mingw

I checked saaver tickets SFO-TUS on 12/16. even this late, I could book 12/20 coach for outbound and quite many saaver first return between 12/25-1/2.

I don't think you can call this embargo.

AA might be limiting saaver availability for the holidays, or people just grep those tickets faster than those for other period. without any evidence or data supporting these, all we can say is AA doesn't blackout holiday saaver seats.

formeraa

I view it as AA being extremely generous until last year. Realistically, most (if not all) airlines severely limit or zero out their lowest award availability during the holiday periods. From a revenue management perspective, that makes sense in the days of 80+% load factors. It also makes sense for an airline in bankruptcy...if you can sell the seats, then sell them. Award travelers can travel during off-peak periods if they want the lowest award redemption.

bruinfan90

Well ... American's competitors do it. Alaska & United both offer some level of lowest-tier seats for domestic routes around Thanksgiving.

Also ... Until last year, American routinely did it. My family used reward seats to travel on American around Thanksgiving several times. Granted, we couldn't find seats on Wednesday or Sunday, but we were happy to take early morning or late night Monday/Tuesday and Friday/Saturday options.

Effective last year -- ZILCH! The entire domestic market has been blocked out by American for saver awards. In fact, I can confidently confirm that it happened quite suddenly in early January of 2011, as I secured our outbound reward seats on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and then, on the day prior to the point when the Saturday seats would have opened up in inventory, the whole week vanished (in all domestic markets to boot). We arranged for our return leg through United.

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.

3Cforme

The OP's frame of reference is the long-outdated expectation that carriers will populate award inventory as soon as the booking window opens. Absence of award inventory at T-330 means AA has embargoed the date. That is simplistic. When AA has a reasonable expectation it can't sell all the seats it will make some available for awards. ExpertFlyer flight alerts are very useful.

iahphx

Right, Bruin. I know there are some AA defenders who don't want to believe this, but you describe EXACTLY what happened last year. Whatever metrics AA usually uses to allocate award seats was overriden by a special programming script they installed which wipes out domestic saver inventory at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I don't really have an opinion as to whether this is "fair." Life isn't fair. AA certainly needs the revenue, but if they want to take away Holiday travel opportunities, they could also (for example) embargo all Friday and Sunday travel year-round. I suspect we'd get folks here saying that's OK, too -- you shouldn't really "expect" to be travelling at saver mileage on busy days.

Ethically, I do think AA should be more upfront about this. All (maybe nearly all?) major airlines used to have official blackout days. They published them. You knew which days you weren't going to be able to redeem for the low mileage levels. Then, the airlines decided their yield management systems didn't need such a blunt technique. Apparently, AA has now decided they do (much like the airlines now impose surcharges on peak days to make sure they don't underprice their inventory). You could certainly argue there's nothing wrong about this, but I certainly think that they should alert AAdvantage members about the new de facto blackout dates.

BTW, US Airways still publishes blackout days -- by region and for specific cities.

http://www.usairways.com/en-US/divid...koutdates.html

Interestingly, I've been able to travel on US on these blackout days by booking tickets on their alliance partners! Not sure if that still works. Don't get your hopes up about avoiding the AA embargo by using this technique. I checked on BA's Avios, and the script AA is using also prevents BA from booking the AA saver seats.

Why does any of this matter? Well, last year after realizing what was going on, I rejiggered my travel plans to include int'l flights: this got me to and from Hawaii despite the embargo (and additional free travel!). I currently don't plan to travel on AA next Thanksgiving, but I may fly them at Xmas. I now know what I'm dealing with.

Long term, of course, award availability matters. I remember coveting WN Rapid Reward credits because, unlike their competitors, they gave you standard awards without capacity controls. When WN changed their policy, their frequent flyer program lost its appeal for me, and I reduced my WN flying.

Same with DL. At one point, I was even a DL plat. Given the difficulty in using Skypesos now, I hold no status with DL.

I am a UA 1K (through the CO program) and I currently covet UA/CO miles more than anything else because of the ease in using them.

Award availability matters. AA's secret strategy of reducing Holiday award availability makes AAdvantage miles worth less. It's not bad enough yet to discard the program (hey, you can always fly overseas for Xmas), but it matters.

iahphx

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. I wanted to change my own travel dates, and it wasn't even remotely possible. Waiting for "last minute" peak Holiday inventory seems like a hopeless strategy to me -- and telling folks to do otherwise seems like poor advice. Booking days you're not actually planning on using during peak travel times would seem insane. This is different, of course, from waiting for better flights in (say) early February.

Please give us these alerts when AA releases more Holiday inventory. I think you'll be waiting forever in most markets, but last year they did seem to manually override the embargo in a few markets. Nothing most people would actually want, of course -- like flights out of Colorado ski resorts right BEFORE Xmas.

JDiver

This is, IMO, a totally bogus issue.

1) AA has AAnytime awards - available, er, anytime there's a seat available - even a pricey Y or B seat. That's the "usual" price for awards.

2) AA has discounted MileSAAver awards, released by the automated Revenue Management system, with "cheap" award seats being targeted toward low demand days and dates. You may was well say the "conspirAAcy" extends to Fridays and Sundays. And the RM system is no secret to those who would seek to learn about it - Google will find the information quite easily. Nor is the fact AA has greatly reduced capacity on many routes, making a discounted award seat a rare commodity.

Like any business, you will not find low prices at peak demand times (and when they have additionally reduced capacity) - whether it is fares in dollars, or in miles. They dole out fewer discounted seats of any kind and even put embargoes on excess luggage and / or boxes to certain high demand destinations at peak times. That's pretty much it. Laws of economics - supply and demand - very simple.

Peaches are cheaper and more plentiful in summer when they are ripe in the US, less so in winter when they may be imported from Chile, etc. etc. ad nauseam.

Many airline policies are opaque, self-serving and slanted against consumers - that's why FlyerTalk exists. This is hardly one of them.

chanp

Just 2days ago booked someone from lhr-fat rt Nov 21-26 for 20k each way. Can even go from lhr-hnl for 20k each way, but can't do lax-hnl for 17.5k.

gegarrenton

That is a ridiculous assertion.