I think for the first time ever I am leaving a year with close to ZERO mile balance with any airline.

I've had 12 months of paying ridiculous amounts for reward redemption on DL, UA and AA. I've found DL to be the worst. I'm embarrassed to publish how many mile i'm using SJC-SLC in F. UA is a close 2nd with also ridiculous redemption rates in F SJC-DEN. With AA I've always been able to find something decent in F or J but using 1 stops instead of non stop or going out of SFO but coming back into SJC etc. For international AA has done a decent job of putting me on BA instead of their own metal with much better redemption rates and availability. UA also usually gives me a better shot on LH as does DL with Virgin.

Just remember airline miles are just like Sushi. If you don't eat it quickly it goes bad.

Yes, DL award levels can go quite high. On the other hand, many routes have fairly predictable pricing if you look at the fare rules for the awards which DL discloses. FC awards for SJC-SLC are currently available from 23K roundtrip (11.5K each way). As disclosed in the fare rules, this level has a 21-day advance purchase requirement as well as requiring Tue/Wed/Sat travel. Low-level awards for travel on other days of the week are 1K higher each way. Obviously, if you are booking at higher demand times the lowest levels will likely not be available. If you are a last minute booker, it pretty much guaranteed DL will only have availability in the highest award levels. Your options with DL are pretty much adjust your booking strategy, or move elsewhere. But at least if you are looking at something that is 3+ weeks out, you know with certainty that level will no longer be available once you pass the 21-day mark (similar to advance purchase revenue fares) and you need to be looking at that advance time horizon to find best awards. There can also be awards (not on this particular route) where a round-trip purchase is required to get a lower award level. There will be a min stay requirement in the fare rules for these and the fare basis codes will have an 'R' in the middle for them.

OK, just trying to see if someone would know why I used to be able to book a non-stop super saver business on BA using AA miles, or other AA flights if i wanted a connection, but now all that's coming up is via Boston. But guess all I can get is obvious answers.

Would the addition of the Club Suite from AUS-LHR effect this?

It is probably connected with this topic:
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...-now-live.html

I searched a little in June/July and I did find some, "web special," business awards on AA going through ORD and PHL. But I didn't see decent, "prices," for anything through DFW, and I didn't see the AUS-LHR nonstop listed at all.

The copay amounts I saw listed were very high ($600+), even for AA flights, which just doesn't sound right. I don't redeem miles for award travel often, but when I used AA miles for Qantas SYD-DFW I paid about $100 each.


Have you looked into just buying a coach ticket and using a miles + $$$ copay to upgrade? I'm seeing quite a bit of inventory (via Expert Flyer) for C (so immediate availability) for DFW-LHR-DFW (along with some other options). If you do this, at least you'll earn some miles, plus they'll count for 2020 status.

It could do that - Air New Zealand's scheme does just that - 1 airpoint is worth $1

AFAIK there is no direct AA operated (AA metal) flight to LHR from BOS. All flights are BA operated so you will
pay high fees...

There will be as of March 29, and it looks like award availability on it is pretty good.

Every single penny counts for the accounting types approaching quarter end and those trying to impress their own masters. But account shutdowns are almost certainly a drop in the bucket compared to the bad hit that this devaluation delivers against standing AA program account balances.

MikeShores Unless you only care about seats in economy don�t you think that would be far worse? This thread is about premium seats and you�d never see anything close to a J/F saver price again outside the US.

I think that it really depends on what you want from a scheme. Comparing with hotels, some have points rates for a free stay and others ( e.g. Accor ) assign a value to points

I find the latter works much better - I can book the hotel I want and can use what points I have to reduce the cost of the stay rather than having ( as I often find with IHG ) that I cannot book the hotel that I want using points and would have to stay somewhere less conveniant if I wanted to use points - also with a direct valyue correlation, do not end up with hotels where using points is useless due to the cost in points vs price in cash

I dumped mine. The Chase card eliminated the 10% "rebate" on award redemptions and gutted the travel benefits.

I am truly disgusted. I was hoping to get Award travel to Europe in the Fall and MileSAAver awards in Business look to be 115,000 miles RT. I remember when my late husband and I were able to get Business Class to Madrid for 100K. RT. Both of us. I may end up booking another airline in one direction and paying for it- whichever direction/schedule works for me. Hopefully it will get me a layover in a Polaris lounge, which is head and shoulders above the Admiral's Club, at least at ORD.

Actually, this thread isn't limited to F/J discussion, as the dynamic award levels apply across all fare classes. This is a substantial devaluation (at least 67% from my limited evaluation) and we should all let the folks in Dallas know what we think. Do I think that will get them to change anything? No. But, if you remember when Oasis rolled out, Doug Parker's fallback comment was "we haven't heard any discontent among the ranks of our frequent flyers." Let's make that not the case this time. I have already hit them on all fronts: twitter, facebook, and email. With this new pricing, I won't see any kind of an award, domestic, international, Y/F/J/Toilet in a couple of years, as I typically only earn 110-125K miles per year.

I doubt that most people are going to be able to earn or collect enough usable miles to stay interested in frequent flyer programs over the long term. And, as we are learning on another thread, there's no big payoff in credit card scams either. In ten years, or possibly much less, most of these programs will be gone.

I don't see how it can be called a devaluation - the other awards have not been removed , these are additional awards

Writing in to say that you don't want to use these new awards and to complain about that existence, I have trouble seeing anyone caring