greg0ire

I realize it is the lax to dfw,jfk, or ord segments that are the issue...but all summer?

magic111

Flights from sfo-to either dfw or ord showed econ saver availability for about two weeks after 330 down to about 318 days for summer travel and than disappeared. You could pick a random summer date and every single seat was available on every flight from sfo to dfw or ord but no saaver awards were available if it was approximately 317 days or less. (I know, I know, that seats do not mean no bookings)

Since that time random dates have appeared and than been booked and the flights continue to fill. My guess is that by the time summer comes around the planes will be completely full in the back. Only matters to me as I was trying to put some family members there.

The "opinions" posted here along with my observations are aadvantage RM has tightened the capacity control logarithms used. I usually call it the other shoe factor. That is you give out millions of miles to churners and now they are looking for their awards that the bank told them was going to be there.

Many of us who fly look for eqms, which are not redeemable, and only see the rdms as a side benefit. Personally I can not believe how many threads we get started almost every day from somebody who has never flown AA in their life and asking how to redeem their hoard. Maybe AA should allow saaver awards for bis miles only.

magic111

Embaro or limit Poll added for those who want to get their opinion noted without posting.

moderator

FlyMeToTheLooneyBin

Where's the "None of the above" option? I refuse to believe there are fewer seats!

And sorry for the nitpick, but it should be "past" years.

Science Goy

What is this "econ" you speak of?

I realize it's probably not an option for those trying to fly a whole family on vacation for the summer, but man am I glad the F/J Saver awards are still out there in abundance.

iahphx

Aw, that's mean. I've used the 24 hour rule on int'l tickets and last flight/first flight on domestic tickets, so I assumed they followed the general practices of other USA carriers on this. I guess they don't want anyone to get a free business meeting somewhere out of it. I could see refusing a longer connection if seats were available on a better connection, but preventing someone from booking an award when a slightly longer connection is the only option is silly.

I'm skeptical that it will matter, but Citi is now almost certainly doling out fewer AA miles than they previously did. It's harder to churn the cards and the sign-up bonuses are lower. You also have fewer US-originating BA miles being generated by their 100K bonus -- many of those miles obviously being used on AA. But if award availability in the next year actually improves based on these developments, I'll be amazed.

Happy

That is what I am seeing now for the MIA-LIM route - 30K J is abundant while Saaver coach is less than 8 days between Jan and June...

I have a last segment of an award that happens to be MIA-LIM - I could not upgrade to Biz because the award has already traveled on. May be this would end up as a throw away segment... as it was part of the original thought - if I could change to a date we can travel on, we will still go. If not, then it is a throw away as HNL-MIA-LIM is cheaper than HNL-MIA when I needed HNL-MIA.

lonman

They could go even further and implement this thing that some other airlines have...blackout dates. Instead of that they just limit the seats. This is an odd thread.

Happy

Does CO/UA allow 24 hours connection in domestic travel? DL allows such?

But then I would much rather have AA being "mean" in the connection time than AA going the way CO/UA, DL, AS on the Change Fee department. AA charges zilch for changes however many times you need / want to change it as long as you keep the same O/D and only change among OW members. The other airlines charges $100 to $150 a pop even for a basic date change.

Would you like a 24 hours connection or would you like to have the flexibility to change date, carriers, routing, to get the most optimal combination as availability becomes better?

Oh, there is also the 5 days hold period on reservation versus the instant ticketing among other programs...

To me, there are far more good things about AAdvantage program than the "mean" connection time or the more aggressive capacity control - that AA being the "Good Guy" in the industry in the past, now they are more in line with its competitor in this area, should not be a constant source of people's complains. Think about the other benefits you DONT get from other programs!

Happy

People forget other programs have a lot more "mean" things than AAdvantage even with its current capacity control is more restrictive than in the past (that just brings it inline with its competitors!)

This indeed is an odd thread.

GUWonder

When it comes to flights to/from LHR in recent months, AA has done this embargo dates thing for the most marketed mileage ticket price levels (read: SAAver) during this most recent winter holiday period too. It's been done by AA in a way that I have never before witnessed AA do in my decades of being a heavy AA user. It quite clearly has nothing to do with the planes being more full or not as discount economy fares have been readily available on these flights in much the same way as in prior years even as the "SAAver" awards had been blacked out.

Things are awful enough recently with AA's release of inventory at the traditionally standard (most marketed) mileage price level redemption that I have found DL and CO to have even worked out far better than AA for mileage tickets to just about anywhere in Europe than AA for trips to/from Europe (to LHR or via LHR).

AA's recent customer-unfriendly practice that is also applicable to international redemption efforts using AA miles has been a real driver in my not really caring about AA's elimination of counting (most all) non-flight partner miles toward AA million mile level status.

iahphx

The poll question is silly: the domestic saver Holiday "embargo" is just one particularly blunt and limited programming tool that AA is using as part of an overall revised strategy to limit award availability. So the answer to your poll is "both."

I don't doubt the tightening up of award availability to London. We're getting lots of reports in various markets of fewer Saver award seats being available. But (other than the domestic Holiday embargo) I haven't yet seen a report of another systematic programming tool being used elsewhere to automatically eliminate all Saver availability on particular dates. For instance (not that I want to give them any ideas!) AA could program no Saver seats to all European destinations for specific dates in late June and July.

Maybe something else systematic like this is already happening elsewhere and nobody has caught it yet. So far, the only thing reported has been case-by-case "unpredictable" award limtations. Nobody can tell me the specific dates I won't be able to find award availability -- except for the specfic dates I've identified for DOMESTIC saver travel around Thanksgiving and Xmas.

GUWonder

For economy class SAAVer travel around Christmas and New Year, AA's holiday crackdown (which was put in place at some point late last year) for international travel to/via LHR on AA metal was for the period from Dec. 15th to January 8th. I'd never seen such awful standard "SAAver" type economy class or business class inventory release practice at this time of year with any of the US majors as I saw with AA in recent weeks.

FlyMeToTheLooneyBin

So who is the rogue poster who believes in embargos?

danorum

I am already thinking about booking some new years travel (ORD-MCO) for family. Does anyone happen to remember how long the "dry spell" was for econ SAAver tickets was this holiday?

They would like to fly on 12/27 and back on 1/2. It already looks like I might have to connect in MIA to get 4 econ SAAver tickets, and I would rather do this than get 4 first SAAver tickets (for 2X the miles).

I was hopeful that someone here might remember how many days didn't have Mile SAAver tickets loaded.

Thanks,
Dan