Don't you worry - they still win. It'll be renamed Best of the Worst!

On Saturday, I was calculating the nights needed for Lifetime Platinum with SPG. By Monday, that changed to how to transfer a fair bit of miles to AA only to realize the miles would be even more worthless.

All these miles and not even time to make great use of them. It's like sitting on a pile of turd sprinkled with gold dust.

I feel your pain. I was half looking forward to the 2x EQM on discounted J until I found out it only pertains to AA flight nubmers. So things didn't change a bit for me, moving from 1.5 EQP to 1.5 EQM, amount of flying does not reduce and losing 4 SWU in the process.

The new program dinged partner earning hard. Looks like they are really focusing on making that buck for themselves.

Time to check out Virgin.

I typically do a month-long trip to LHR and then nestle a BA trip somewhere else in the middle. The 50% EQM thing is going to make BA completely lose my business... I guess I'll have to re-connect in the USA to use AA instead of flying LHR-SIN-SYD on BA.

As a PLT I'm really unhappy, particularly with the RDM earning chart for the second half of 2016.

Also, the $10 increase in the price of 500-mile upgrades was an extra twist of the knife.

Makes sense. But, those extra SWUs are hardly an announced benefit currently, I would sense similar will occur in the future for you ;).

Agreed.

I may have missed it, but was there a change to the $75/15K Miles and co-pay upgrade to First?

SPG yesterday, AA Today...boom-boom

Were you somehow expecting that airlines and hotel programs would stop devaluing programs the same way they've been doing for over 20 years? (This is one in a LONG SERIES of AA devaluations, all the way from the 1980's.)

This isn't like having Krugerrands, currency or owning shares of Apple. You're accumulating things that historically have been devalued consistently. So why on earth aren't you burning for something?

Exactly. Hoarding miles and points for the future is like stockpiling snow during a Chinook.

What it feels like to await the death penalty
 

We knew it was coming but that doesn't make it any more pleasant.

So this is bad isn't it? I ditched UA and DL in 2015. Looks like it's time to seriously think about Southwest. I have known this was coming for a decade.

And looks like some massive mileage runs for miles in June and then the term goes in the history books.

It was fun while it lasted. Probably too much fun which makes this a sad day.

But it looks like a great half a year ahead of us on AA. A trip to Sydney I think. And Europe. And maybe Asia. Do I have the time??

As someone else said earlier in the thread...they have to save something to cut in 2017. :D

Ok. Help explain this to me. Why would someone that always buys first class tickets care about obtaining executive platinum.

Agree, paid J at now 2 X EQM in 2016 makes qualifying that much easier. 3 trips to HKG and can be EXP. Not bothered about the SWU thing, won't fly unless confirmed at ticketing, and how often can you ever get that to happen? :-/

How did AA de-value the Citi cards? I must be missing something because it looks the same to me.

Really, so true.

Increase in miles required for redemptions --> each mile is worth less than before. Unless Citi were to start awarding 1.5x miles per dollar as the new base rate, but that has a roughly 0% chance of happening.

... and why on earth would they be flying AA? :D

Because the miles that I earn by using my Citi card have significantly less value now. Given the fact that these cards have an AF and the benes are tied to one airline only, I'm much better off canceling the ones that are tied to AA.

They are now paying out miles that for many award tickets will soon be worth less. Let's put it this way: an AA mile 3/21/16 will be worth more than one 3/22/16. At best, one can hope availability improves 3/22/16 and later.

If you wanna check out VX, B6, WN, go ahead... I happen to be looking more into B6 myself (the changes in the BA and IB earning rates are the bigger kicker for me), BUT, with that said, I really don't think the sky is falling with these changes... they were pretty much expected, be happy AA isn't adding a minimum spend requirement for status, and the devaluations are fairly reasonable... These changes are DL's fault, and DL and UA are still worse than AA. Truth be told, after challenging over from being DL GM I'm pretty happy with my experience with AA. I may go for B6 Mosaic instead of AA Plat because my flying patters would have put me flying PHL to TLV and MIA to LHR a lot and those routes either no longer exist or got really cut with AA now, BUT as far as the 2016 changes overall, they're not so bad.

The frequency, scope and scale of the devaluations has not been consistent over time. It's gotten worse, but more so and more frequently when US market conditions changed and we ended up with the market being well-defined by an industry where three cartel kingpins (DL, UA, AA) run the show in far more concentrated ways than ever before.

I still have a large six figure balance of AA miles even as I wasn't clueless about where this was going. I still have time to burn my AA miles, but this is increasingly reminding me of what I had to do with Hilton HHonors and later with DL.

For one, IRROPS phone service. If he's actually JFK based as his profile says, it's a big deal. Can be the diff between being rebooked ahead of the snow or a week and a half later.

Possibly for personal travel? Employer-paid J/F tickets gets the status, and then able to use SWUs to fly the family on vacation for cheap? And the little extras like first lounges when flying J. And better service during IRROPs and the like, although that might be a bit of a canard.

OK. Got it. I thought maybe one of the Citi-specific benefits (like EQMs or 2 RDM/$ on AA purchases, etc) had been reduced or eliminated. Thanks for the quick responses.

If irrops and swus are the main thing keeping them with AA, I'd say that with today's announcement, dl diamond is far superior than exp...

The minimum spend will come later. AAdvantage has joined the race to the bottom. I think that I will get my flying done by the first half of the year, before the new milage rules come into play since I buy the cheapest tickets I can to stretch the travel budget.

I'm not surprised when the major airlines devalue their frequent flyer points. They've been handing them out like candy and now they need to devalue. 30K - 75K miles for signing up for a credit card, all the non flying ways to earn points, etc.

The bloggers and its readers have been asking for devaluation from AA for sometime and now you got it. You have been saying" if AA gives us advance notice, you were all for any devaluation". Well they gave you advance notice and they destroyed the aadvantage program so be happy from April 2015.


AA is now one of the worst reward program after doing away with stop over and now this award devaluation.
Time to use cash back cards cos the gov rarely ever devalues currency.

Love my 2% back on everything everyday card.

will be canceling my AA cards just like i have done with UA card

Funny, I _really_ don't recall anyone you call out (bloggers, their readers, etc) saying that.

That said, the gap has seriously, seriously narrowed. So, many will go off to UA (even some who came-- pretty recently in many cases-- to AA after UA's moves) and/or DL, etc. Or they'll just pay for what they want going forward (smartest move.)

Everyone makes their choice, and moves on. Way it's been for 2 decades.

Yep no point in stacking miles of toubare not a frequent traveler or business traveler.

Time to cash in on the points :(

Joining in with the rest... :td:

What's the spending minimum for that?

During my mileage running days (which ended a couple of years ago) people would look at me like I had 3 heads when I told them what mileage running was all about.

Ironic as I am now one of those that doesn't understand why anyone in their right mind would mileage run (or bank millions of miles) going forward.

Letter I wrote to AA
 

Not that it matters, but here is the letter I wrote to AA Customer Relations. As I've said before, these changes would make me reevaluate my flying habits, and they have. Thank you for the memories AA, I wish your loyalty to me had been as strong as my loyalty to you.

Letter:

Hello,

I am emailing you concerning the changes announced today to the AAdvantage program. As a multi-year executive platinum member, I have frequently gone out of my way to fly American Airlines, including paying hundreds to thousands of dollars more for a fare to stay on AA flights. For 2015, I believe that AAdvantage was the best frequent flyer program, bar none. Sadly, in 2016 AAdvantage has decided to make changes which will make it among the worst, if not the worst program in the industry. From gutting award miles earning and upgrades to devaluing the award chart, AA has made many changes which negatively impact their customers.

As a result of these changes, I can no longer be loyal to AA as I have been since 1989. I will no longer go out of my way to purchase more expensive tickets simply because they are on AA, and I will no longer travel as much as I do now, purposefully taking extra trips so I can fly AA. Again, I am writing you to let you know that this is a direct result of the changes announced today and that I am disappointed in the manner in which American Airlines has chosen to treat its loyal customers, as this loyalty was clearly very one sided.

I've had many great times on AA, and will always have the memories. For that I thank you.

Regards,

Phasers

I'm not happy about this one at all. I use most of my miles to fly from Europe to ME with EY in J or F.

Interesting--as I read through the posts so far--no threatened mass migration.

Truth is AA is still the best for those seeking elite status from the standpoint of ease of qualification, including no revenue requirements. Big downside is that DL and UA elites who watch their $ will see that AA is the last elite-easy-to-qualify outpost when using discount fares--and upgrades will become scarce.

As a UA 1K--I am hoping to see less UA elites in future years because AA should attract the penny pinchers.

Finally--cannot find anything about the million miler program. Hope it’s not been scrapped.

Roughly speaking, Y from US-EU will be as many RDMs as J/F Saver is now, and J/F is moving up to where F Saver used to be.

Someone explain why they didn't just cancel the entire program again?

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_1) AppleWebKit/601.2.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.0.1 Safari/601.2.7)

Disappointed, but not shockingly so. I think the AAdvantage program is still the better of the 3 programs, just much, much less so. ...I have started flying Delta more and generally enjoyed the experience. As always, I will reevaluate which program makes the most sense for me personally and professionally and adjust accordingly. ...In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, but not necessarily pleasant to look at.

Safe Travels

At least there is no minimum spend for status!!

Except it's not just USA-based airlines devaluing their charts, so that fails as an explanation. AC? Check. BA? Check. AF/KL? Check. LH? Check. AV? Check. NH? Check.

That's a lot of airlines that aren't AA/DL/UA who've devalued their award charts.

As for the ME 3, since a lot of people think that might be a saving grace... tell me, what EQM/RDM do you get on deep discount EK Y? (I'll help: not a lot.)

The whole industry is moving away from a model of "buy a ton of cheap Y and we'll treat you like royalty". The salad days of FT being a way to turn $99 transcons into Krug and caviar are going behind us. C'est la vie.

Why would they put a minimum spend, the status has been devalued to the point where no sane person wants it anymore.