Devaluation? Help explain
 

So a few days ago, I was looking into booking a flight from NYC>London, business class for January.

When I first looked (on the website and app), flights on AA metal was 57.5K points for business each way, with reasonable surcharges ($5 to, $315 from).

However, yesterday, when I looked again, it had moved to 75K each way, or 125K return (discount of 25K for return) on AA metal, although it is still 57.5K for British Airway, but with a much steeper surcharge.

Interestingly, the cost has increased to 75K each way even for future way in the future, with no 57.5K rewards other than BA metal.

Is anyone aware of a devaluation that took place this week?

This is not a devaluation.

For AA metal awards, AA has largely moved to largely a dynamic pricing model whereby the award price can and will change from day to day, week to week, depending on how full the flight is and a host of other factors. It's been this way for at least the past 2-3 years.

As always if you see a decent looking award option you should put it on hold first and then figure out the details. There's a good chance that what you see today won't be available tomorrow (or it will be priced much higher, as you're seeing).

No devaluation. For a couple of years now AA has been using very dynamic pricing for award tickets on their own metal. You search award space and the number of miles required may be different every time you login. It may go up or it may go down depending upon who is booking tickets and what their revenue management system decides when they run their algorithms. The lesson is that if you see something you like grab it, and keep looking. Right now you can cancel and rebook at no charge.

For BA flights they are always priced at the Saver but you have to pay the very high BA surcharges,

That all makes sense, but what is weird is that it went up 75K for pretty much ALL their own metal for all dates, every day of the month, in the distant future, like it was a systematic increase.

However, take your point it might be a system wide algorithm at play and will just monitor it daily.

Check out the prices in J next summer — you’d is a bargain. Crazy. All basically dynamic pricing now.

At the rate it is going, I'd be happy to exchange my AA miles for monopoly money.

And I'd be more than happy to make that trade. Recently booked a round trip to Africa for next fall using AAdvantage miles. The outbound is to Kigali, Rwanda and the return is from Dar es Salaam. The entire trip is in Qatar business class (Q suite on the transatlantic legs) and cost 140K miles and a nominal amount of cash. That is an incredibly good deal!

There are awards on AA metal for 69K starting in late May (you can find them by setting filter to AA only flights and then selecting the "Calendar" option to view a month at a time). Seeing similar from other airports like ORD and PHL. This looks to be current lowest web special award to LHR on AA flights.

The real hidden devaluation started a couple years ago. If you are not departing a over the water gateway city and want to travel in First you will not be able to find a First Class connection on your domestic leg.

I've had some amazing deals this year, with Transcon Flagship J for 22k each way. Another web special fare coming up is 78k (OW) to DEL in Flagship F in January. Return is in J for 66k. If I booked it as a round trip there was a further discount to be had as it priced something like 125k. Not too shabby for Monopoly money.

AA miles are like Sushi. If you don't use them straight away they go bad.

Another thing you may have run into was an unpublished award flight sale. Airline sales of various types are often available for a few days, and then those sale fares are taken away. So maybe there was an unannounced fare sale that ended Wednesday?

Ie, there are many different possible explanations other than devaulation.

Just revisiting this thread. I have been checking periodically since I made this post and AA for at least flights from NYC-> LHR has never fallen back down to 57.5K again for business flights on AA metal. That's about four months. Not a big deal but if you are out there writing blogs about the wonders of AA miles and how sweet spots is flying on amazing AA metal to Europe for 57.5K, time to change the blog.

57.5K is available on British Airway metal, but the fuel surcharge on those are egregious.

I have also found this to be the case with almost any route to Europe from PHX, LAX, LAS, I couldn't find 1 route at 57,500 miles on AA metal, it's almost like 72k or 78k is the new 57.5k but that also means that you could not connect to any O/W carrier in Europe for business class redemptions.

My new strategy is to book the lowest thing I can find, no matter how bad the trip, and hope for schedule changes and flight changes that makes the trip better. On AA metal because they’re more willing to help.

for instance, I was looking at flights to go from Los Angeles to Europe in J this summer with our family of five- one day I found a random flight for 57,000 miles, that was Los Angeles to Seattle with a bad layover to London. Well, I booked it, and figured something might change in the next seven months with the schedule.

this week I read on the site that they have canceled Seattle to London flights, I checked my app, and all five of us were booked into the direct LAX to London flight this June, which was pricing at like 200,000 miles each when I booked, but now I have it for the 57,000 miles I booked for the bad itinerary.

it’s a game of risk and certainly helps that I’m concierge key, but I didn’t have to ask or have anything done. In this day and age everything is changing so fast, sometimes you just wanna put your chips on the table and wait to see what happens. Especially when those chips are refundable.