LTimeL

Biggest negative for me happened this past year with EQS going from 100 to 120. Sounds like I may get more RDMs for my $500 short hauls though. Four (4) less SWUs clearly a negative.

I read back a few pages and did a quick search on "consolidator bulk fares" and only got hits in UA and Delta. As a MM UA refugee I recall there being a big stink, mainly with folks booking via their corporate travel sites, where no miles were awarded for "consolidator" or "bulk" fares. IIRC Delta does give credit for all paid fare types. As long as AA follows Delta and not UA, then I stay AA. Otherwise it's Delta for me down the road. Has anyone seen language from AA addressing this?

eponymous_coward

There are not many domestic USA routes on which an A380 or 77L operating 1x or even 2x daily makes sense. Consider that zero, nil, none, bupkis, nada, not a single US carrier has purchased an A380, or are going to, and how the Big Three have pretty much given up flying widebodies to places like Hawaii, save for markets that cannot be reached by narrowbodies, and you get the idea. EK's model and fleet is not meant to serve internal USA markets; it's meant to serve DXB as a scissors hub, and use it to connect places like India and Australia to the world. It is a good model for that.

The airlines the Big Three have to fear in the US market if cabotage was eliminated aren't EK and SQ, they are AK, DY, FR and U2. They would set up 737/A320 bases and start shredding market frequencies in key markets in a heartbeat, with lower-cost labor and lower costs, and able to pick off the price-sensitive people who make high frequency flying and hubs viable. This is basically the same model NK is using to good effect, and that F9 has transitioned to. It's worked for all of those airlines. We're starting to see this already in the TATL market from DY and WW... with EW to follow.

Service levels on the plane are entirely different creatures from loyalty programs outside the plane. Go look up what EK offers for RDM/EQM on their discounted Y fare if you think that somehow their hypothetical service in the North American market is going to usher back in the days of massive amounts of miles sloshing around if you buy lots of cheap Y (or look at SQ's program)... if anything, the outsized returns on Big Three loyalty programs were basically bribes for less competent service ("suffer through our lousy planes so every so often you can fly and enjoy some caviar and Krug"). Once those golden handcuffs are taken off... let's see if the Big Three can sink or swim.

(It's not like EK is some kind of paradise in the back... 10 across Y in 77Ws, and 615 seat A380's don't sound like much fun to me.)

dgparent

I really hope one of the new features they are considering is the ability to upgrade for a fee after you purchase your ticket.

I fly weekly for business in coach only, if I could purchase the ticket and get a receipt for it then go and upgrade to business/1st on my own that would be great. Hope they are looking into this as a option

Fanjet

There is no way EK (or any othe ME carrier) wants to get into the weeds of the U.S. domestic aviation market. And if you want an example of how little demand there is for such a product, just look at VX's very limited presence in this country.

scubadu

They just did change and that is what we are going to get.

Regards

austin_modern

Interesting. Absolutely 0 reason more or less for me to eek into platinum next year since the only reason to do so was for 2xing the miles. Now gold x7 and plat x8 really are close together. I guess I'll miss out on the exit rows. Shrug. Oh well.

eponymous_coward

NK and G4 are significantly larger than VX, and both have better operating margins than VX or B6.

jsieds

Wow, 44 pages in less than 48-hours. After reading every comment with care and giving careful consideration to my comments....

Really this is not unexpected although the exact details and timing have been fuzzy. People belong to a specific FF program for a variety of reasons. My reasons are my personal travel needs flying DCA-BOS about 35-40X per year. Add in work travel for another 25 trips domestically and 2/3 international. So I hoard my miles through one program so that I can redeem miles for the trip I want when I want. I redeem about 250K per year and bank about 300K with travel, bonus, CC, etc.

Because of my needs for flexibility with the AA Shuttle, I will continue to loyAAl and adjust to the changes. YMMV.

Jacobin777

Yup..I've been platinum almost every year for 10 years..not happy one bit.

Mrs.777 says I should fly enough every year to get LTPL and then decide what I want to do. Since I was leaning that way too, I think it might be the best route to take and then see how AS flying program is 4-6 years down the road.


What I'm saying is they need to change the 5 for non-AA status flyers and 7 for Gold flyers. Lower it down to say 1-2 for non-AA status flyers and 3-5 for Gold. Maybe then 8 for Platinum would be "worth it".

rampatt

Contrary to most Biz class flyers out here, I have paid for every logged mile out of my own pocket and just completed my 2 millionth mile today (I had long suspected that the program would change for the worse very soon and wanted to get to my lifetime platinum status for whatever the "new value" maybe)....the sad part of the new deal is that SWU's are cut in half, not sure whether that is a REAL issue any more since most of the time with the long list of multimillion miler EXP's and their companies paying for biz class tickets, I rarely get my upgrades anyway...still, it is nice to know that I could have a bank of 8 each year to help me look for ways to fly longer and more expensive flights and enjoy the upgrades--AA execs surely must have considered that the lack of SWU's would decrease the desire and thus the demand from EXPs to fly routes where SWU may be used....but trying to understand the logic of those stupid bean counters gives my already jet-lagged brain a bigger headache!

scubadu

Do you think they haven't already put consideration into the values they've chosen? Do you think they worked this all out last weekend over a couple hour pizza party at Doug's house?

These are the values, there announced. For now it's done. They aren't going to immediately back paddled because a punch of us on FT have spazzed out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy at all, but I've been predicting for years in these forums that "winter was coming" but most didn't want to contemplate that reality.

Well, winter is here...

Regards

zoombee

Am I reading this right: https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...s/british.aspx

Flying BA in D class and crediting to Alaska with MVP Gold status gives you 3.5 x flown miles as RDMs and 2.5 times flown miles as EQM? (*). Note: other airlines are 2.25 x RDM and 1.25 x EQM so this is BA specific.

If that is true after the switch to $ based RDM earning on AA then Alaska is a very interesting place to park say JNB-LHR-DXB on BA on a DONEx -- 45% of the way to MVP Gold in two segments and way more RDMs than you could earn on AA (though god knows exactly what RDMs you'd earn from AA for those 2 of 16 segments in an xONEx: good luck working out the $ value of it).

Still getting my head round the rules but the miles look perfectly usable at similar enough to AA value. Awards even still includes stopovers at the gateway city (remember that option). Different strengths but that is not bad thing if your miles are split between two programmes. And given Alaska didn't follow Delta, one can *hope* it won't switch to $s based RDMs in 2016.


The biggest thing that's having me ponder ditching AA is the RDMs massacre. I earn almost all RDMs from flying (mostly biz RTWs and cheap to mid level economy) and earning would be more than halved with the new rules. It would be ironic if I continued to fly AA because I can credit AA flights to Alaska for decent RDMs.

I can still use an SWU even if I was crediting an AA TATL to Alaska, right? I'm thinking of crediting enough flights to AA for EXP then crediting the rest to Alaska unless I want the EXP status flight perks (i.e. not flying upgraded or directly up front).


*:
"Elite Qualifying Flight Miles: Earned flight miles and premium cabin bonuses on British Airways count towards Elite Status." and;
"Club World (Business Class) Cabin: Earn actual flight miles* flown in R or I classes of service, plus 50% Bonus Miles. Earn actual flight miles* flown in J, C, or D classes of service, plus 150% Bonus Miles."

envgeo

The anytime awards have become so inflated (at least premium cabin overseas), that its not even a joke anymore, its just sad.

I dropped the charade when i went SWA started flying more out of DAL. Different beast, but less guessing on booking award flights. Makes sense for the legacies to at some point switch to a points/$ redemption model as well.

austin_modern

The flights I constantly take as a plat will earn 1/2 the points on the 8x scheme. That isn't worth it no matter how much they screw everyone else. Shrug.

Dave Noble

You would like others to be negatively impacted so that you can feel better about what you receive?