david55

Brother -in law just called. FF on American ( back and forth NY-LA a lot). Spent 50K MILES on a business class red eye from LAX-NYC last night. Pod did not recline. FA did all she could but could not fix it. She offered him 10K on the spot. He said no. He would like to know what would be an adequate compensation. Thanks.

jcatman

Spent 50K dollars? That must have been a really, really good steak AA served in J.

wetrat0

What kind of award was it (anytime or saver)? Assuming 50K is the one-way redemption, in J that is not a Saver award but I don't see any Anytime in J that low (lowest is 52.5K). Are you sure it wasn't Saver F (which would price at 50K when available)?

My opinion is he should ask for the difference between what he paid for the J award and what a Y Anytime award would have required. That would be either 20K or 30K. I'm sure some people will say "well he got the food and extra service" but let's be honest nobody flies J on LAX-NYC redeye for the food. The idea being that if he had known the seat would not have reclined then he would probably have chosen to book Y instead.

david55

Just asked him.....was 52.5K miles..... my mistake.

enviroian

Last night the recline did not work on my F seat dfw-mex. The flight attendant came around with his handheld and promptly deposited 4K miles into my account.

wetrat0

In that case I would ask for at least 22.5K back since the Anytime Y award would have been at most 30K. I think it's anyone's guess as to whether AA will give that much since technically he got most of what he paid for, i.e., to his destination in the class of service he booked (although as I argued before in practice nobody would pay the difference between Y and J knowing the seat wouldn't recline).

Score8

Whenever I get in a J or F pod, I always check the operation (plus I hate sitting straight up for the 30 minutes before taxi.) It can come in handy if there is an operational issue...I would ask for 20K+, perhaps more...

sluggoaafa

Miles in the FA tablets for INOP seat, IFE, no pre-reserved meal are pre-calculated compensations. He should have taken the 10K miles, then written a letter and/or a message to Twitter about the inconvenience. If the FA did all they could to manually fix the seat in the air, not much else they could have done.

USFlyerUS

10K of miles seems reasonable to me.

Bretmd

Gig103

I find it insulting. That's about a $100 apology for what is easily a $1500 seat one way. As said above, nobody is buying business class for the service or food, it's about being able to sleep lay flay and arrive refreshed. Especially on a 12 hour flight! I mean if I came up from row 30 and offered you $100 to swap seats after the meal service, you would surely refuse.

Edit: as corrected below I read the route wrong. I saw the lay flat and price of award and was thinking transatlantic not transcon.

ryan182

Gig103

Mea culpa I read LHR - not sure why, probably forgetting about transcon and the 52500 which is almost the 57500 transatlantic saver price.

Dr. HFH

It's not about your (or my) subjective opinion of what we think people would or wouldn't pay. He paid for a seat in the J cabin and got everything he was supposed to get (food, AVOD, priority boarding, priority luggage, etc.) except a reclining seat. Oh yeah, he got transportation across the country, too. The reclining seat, by itself, isn't worth anything close to half of his entire fare. I think that 10K is reasonable.

wetrat0

I'm surprised that it took so long for someone to make this tired argument. The seat wasn't supposed to recline. It was supposed to lie flat like a bed. The OP's relative paid for a seat that should have turned into a bed and instead got a seat that didn't even move from the complete upright position.

People routinely pay a large premium for seats that lie flat. The fact is that you can find 25K one way LAX-JFK awards on regular domestic F recliners basically every day over the next month, and as close in as this afternoon. The OP's relative could have saved 27.5K miles and taken one of those awards, but he instead paid 52.5K for LAX-JFK on a lie-flat. That's more than double the number of miles. Either the value of the lie-flat is 27.5K or the OP's relative was acting completely irrationally.

If you look at the way AA prices LAX-JFK in cash, you see something similar. If I want to buy a one way flight with cash tonight on LAX-JFK it would be roughly $2500 for lie-flat business and roughly $1100 for non-lie-flat domestic F recliners (connecting in PHX, for example). Booking 4 weeks out from today is the same story: $1100 for lie-flat business and $600 for domestic F recliners.

To conclude: if the only thing OP's relative wanted was transportation across the country with food, priority luggage, etc., he could have saved more than half of his miles by taking an option that wasn't in lie-flat seats. The compensation should reflect that.