FWAAA

The new co-pay isn't always the cheapest option. The other day, JonNYC pointed out a pricing anomoly that causes the price of one-way B fares JFK-LHR to exceed the price of one-way H fares by only $135. B fares are upgraded without a $250 co-pay and for only 10k miles, not 25k miles. Is the $250 co-pay a good deal? Not all the time.

Of course, AA might remedy that anomoly by raising the price of the B fare so the difference is at least $250.

chicagorich

--I had not considered that you could earn miles while using the upgrade award in my analysis. Man, they are generous on that thing.....!!



--If I were AA, I would be choking about now reading things like “fly free” and “co-pay is abhorrent”. How is AA supposed to make a profit if everybody approached flying as you suggest?

--AA is sitting on top of a $22.5 billion pile of debt. How management allowed the debt to reach that level is incomprehensible to me. Rather than tinker with their ff program or any other costs 10 years ago, AA has waited until it has reached an apocalyptic point where the changes needed now are major surgury that will be painful

--If you use your example of miles for money with DL, you are getting 25,000 miles for $150, or less than a penny a piece. At that rate, you could spend $300 plus about say 35,000 miles to upgrade to business class. That’s not bad. But I wonder if AA is even covering its interest costs doing business in such a manner.


--I don’t know of too many other businesses that offer a promotion and also allow you to add on top of it another promotional deal. Like at the car dealer—low financing or a rebate…….

--How does it make business sense, given AA’s financial condition, for it to continue to offer the kinds of incentives that pax are complaining that AA is now changing or taking away.

--Yes, I have heard everyone say that they will pull their business from AA and fly elsewhere—even though as stated on this forum, the AA upgrade award with the co-pay is still more generous than the airlines offerings. Whether AA would cave and try to prevent its current customer mix from fleeing to other airlines is yet to be seen.

However, if they do, all that will be accomplished is setting up a slow spiral to bankruptcy because the root problem of balancing their product offerings with the cost of providing those offerings will not have been addressed.

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benchy

I will need an extra 3000 miles before the end of the year to re-qualify for Platinum, and after reading all of the changes, I am not sure if it is worth for me to requalify, and continue to fly AA. I left Continental a while back for the same reason, and I guess all of the airlines are doing the same thing in trying to make/save a buck.
Most of my travel is personal, and I buy at least one international Business class ticket out of my own pocket, the great thing about AA so far has been the ability to upgrade. I am not sure what my options are right now, but I am starting to consider making Virgin my next preferred carrier of choice.

brp

Well, if you win that new Richard Branson reality show, you could become president of Virgin Worldwide. Then you could travel for free on Virgin . (And, no, I don't watch reality TV, but I do watch sports TV, and the promos are shown during football/baseball games).

Cheers.

benchy

I just saw the ads while in the US this weekend. I am in the UK so it will be tough to enter the competition, but I guess is a good idea. Looking forward to the new Suite in Upper Class.

777Brit

Well, it worked. I got the job! I start on November 15th.

chartreuse

Congratulations Dave! I'm really chuffed for you

MJChicago

Thanks for sparing me from watching the show Dave!

Wow, this thread just keeps on going.

As my last bit of real international travel was to Asia (paid J), I would just switch over to CX for those flights... versus doing the Narita shuffle with my upgrade to First on AA. And for my personal travel, you'll see me start to cash in miles instead of buying cheaply and upgrading (although I'll still do that with the VIPs).

The thing that really irks me is how crappy their premium product is versus the other options out there. I know why the other airlines don't allow upgrades at all or as easily - they actually have a product that's worth something, but AA's premium cabins are pretty far from premium.

But by far my biggest disappointment in all of this is the response to my letter to AA. I told them that I thought they should introduce a real premium product (which would not only justify but necessitate this change), or they risked losing the business traveler that liked to fly on the cheap for personal travel. The response (and not the first, auto response) from Gail Greene, was nothing more than the FAQ copied off of AA.com and pasted into paragraph format in an email. Not once was my concern about the quality of the product addressed. This is probably the first time I haven't received a real response to any of my compliments or concerns over the last three years of being EXP and a 1MM flier...

AAgoraku

Congrats to you, Brit!! From a selfish point of view, I hope that your employment at a rival carrier does not mean that we will lose you from the AA board

PremEx

Congrats 777Brit!

At least you won't have to change your FlyerTalk handle like some of us might if we changed airlines.

777Brit

This is something that I've been pondering...my new employer is also a OneWorld partner, and I'm still planning on flying AA next year, even though I'll also have some nice flight benefits in 6 months time.

I'm chewing this one over......

Thanks for the congrats!

brp

Adding to the congrats. I hope you won't have to give up your lucrative employment as a FT moderator .

Cheers.

satstrat

Ok, forgive me for not reading all 40 + pages of this post.... I did some searching for the past hour and couldn't find anything on this topic other than statements on vip's being good on any fare..... Well,

I flew NRT/SJC Tuesday on a ticket that had been upgraded at purchase (1 month ago) and the AC counter at NRT tried to tell me that I could not use the VIP with an N fare, even though my flight reservation had shown the upgrade for 4 weeks. After some debating they said they were letting me upgrade but I needed to check the fare in the future. What gives? Did I miss something in the 04 changes, or is this new? Or, as I hope, is it bogus and just a case of misinformed AC staff?

satstrat

Sorry for posting this here....

chicagorich

There was a thread a few pages back discussing your question---

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=363314


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