Global321

Bullies? I think that is a bit over the top. (You and I probably mostly agree, but 'bully' is one of the most overused terms today. I am appalled and outraged at its overuse. )

Are you a bully for taking your business away from AA? No way. Good for you! AA is a company and they can do what they want. If it does something you do not like, walk away. We are not children.

I am not one of those AApologists on FT. I happily criticize them on a regular basis. I don't like the new program, even though I might be one of the few that benefits from the changes this year and next.

(FWIW - Why don't I like it... I see where it is going and it will take more in the future to the point that 100% of us will not benefit. See devaluation in UA/DL FF programs to see our future.)

Bully? No.

Maximizing short term shareholder value to their own selfish gains in options/shares which hurts/kills long term shareholder value? Absolutely.

infinite97

Frustrating to me, for sure. I just requal'd for my 3rd year of EXP and don't like this news.

Being an AA elite based out of PDX was always a hassle. I think I'll seriously have to look into DL now, especially given that they (for now) have a partnership with Alaska.

jediwho

Did you send a letter or email? What address?

jediwho

Concur on this. You will be getting RDMs based on the fare you pay -- sure more RDM for gold, platinum and exec but I don't think it makes economic sense to do mileage run for the extra 2 RDMs unless you are super close to gold and just need to do one inexpensive flight. Even then, I am not sure what those 2 extra RDMs would do for the remaining 30 or 40K miles you fly.

Sant

Because people were starting to buy the foreign brands over the domestic ones, the domestic carmakers were forced to improve their products.

jediwho

Bully is indeed a strong word and maybe not called for. My frustration is not so much with their decision as much as with the how much money they have to throw around in DC, etc. The right word would be Big Boys or a Goliath and yes they will most likely destroy shareholders value in the long run for maximizing short term gains.

Global321

Fair enough. And until we get to an anti-trust situation, we can expect the Big 3 airlines to do more of the negative items and whine about competition from the gulf.

jediwho

But didn't foreign car makers have a complete free access to US market? One can't say that about foreign carriers until they are allowed to fly domestic -- at least let them drop off passengers to NYC/DC/PHL when flying from LAX to DXB/LHR, etc., or allow foreign airlines to have 51% ownership in a domestic airlines and not restrict it to 25%. Until them, the big 3 US airlines have a much stronger grip and behave much more like a duopoly than free market.

Having said that, I personally think we have options for two reasons: one, airlines can’t keep inventory and are very vulnerable because of that; and two, they have devalued their FFPs so much that many, if not, majority of the frequent flyers are likely to fly an airline opportunistically. This means RASM shifting to LCCs and foreign carriers.

We will see how this shapes up but I am expecting November to be the bottom (AS might devalue RDMs from AA flying in the future) and improvements in programs starting in about six months.

blueheronNC

I actually boycotted AA starting in 2007 until the US merger. This was back when I was just a non-status kettle but had booked a flight into ELH. A couple months later, service was terminated and I had been automatically rebooked into NAS, which is on a completely different island and would have required booking an expensive flight on a local carrier just to get to Eleuthera. NAS and ELH are in no way co-terminals (there's 60 long miles of ocean in between the two with no roads, it's not like SFO/SJC). I called AA to rebook/refund and the phone agent said she had no record of my reservation into ELH. When I tried giving her the record locator and ticket number that I received via email showing my original flights into ELH, she said that wouldn't do her any good because I was probably just making it up to swindle the airline! I didn't even try HUACA because if the airline was going to hire people like that and accuse me of extorting poor little AA over $450, I could very well take my business elsewhere. So in the interim they lost out on about 600,000 BIS miles of revenue flying. But now I'm with them again as ex-US which I suppose is okay since Dougie is at the helm so it's different management. But they're on a short leash.

hockeydiva

I'm not trying to reach gold or platinum for the additional RDM after the change that will happen sometime in the second half of the year.

It's the other benefits (free bags, free MCE seats, higher upgrade priority, international lounge access, etc.) that are valuable to me, and with much more travel in 2016, those benefits are worth something.

And if I wait to January/February, I'd be able to work in work and vacation travel, not just mileage runs.

wijibintheair

I am assuming that under the new policy from January as PLT flying on CX or QR we will no longer receive the 100% bonus miles?

randomizer

First post

So... any change is always a net "bad" to the consumer regarding reward programs. Is there a way of objectively, measuring the devaluation of the AA rewards program by tier?

Everyone, no matter their status or usage pattern, is being devalued. If you don't think so, then just wait for the fine print and subsequent adjustments mid-year.

I just want a way to measure this to know whether it is a reasonable market adjustment, like 5% value or is it 25% etc.,? An aggregate value index that encompasses award availability, earnings, redemption, seat class, plane type, etc., by status tier. Macro value vs. individualized micro value.

Reading through the many messages, hard to get a clear picture of reality without my own personal knee-jerk reaction at my 8 systemwide upgrades reduced to 4.

brp

A balance. Our path to requalify for EXP got easier by, maybe 10-15%. Net plus here. With judicious choice of flights, we can bring this advantage higher.

We got cut on SWU by 50%. However, 8 each were more than we needed, so it's not really a 50% cut. Let's call it 25%.

So, net cut of maybe 10%.

However, since easier EXP qualification is more useful to us than the lost SWUs, it's not really a straight some, but needs weighting.

Cheers.

randomizer

I get the individual usage differences, looking at this from a Macro economic value perspective. AA will not do this unless it reduces overall cost for them, which net is bad for us.

A fundamental priority (making it up), AA wants to kick those with status out of first class. So... let's eliminate the class of cabin, or keep the class but only have 8-12 seats vs. 16 etc., At the same time, reduce the SW upgrades. What else can AA do to kick EP(or anyone else) out of first class?

I use the SWs for certain seasonal flights (location dependent) where complementary upgrade not going to happen or high risk.

Still, all could be forgiven if the most awful coffee on the planet would stop being served on AA flights...

Dave Noble

Not everyone is suffering devaluation. Some can be better off out of this.

Depending on their spend and redemptions , different people will be affected differently, though generally it is a devaluation

It doesn't want people to be kicked out - what it likely wants is for those not paying for a 1st class ticket to be the small minority