drazin

Does anyone know the background on why AA mileage awards have more than doubled in price (no matter how far in advance you search) and whether it will ever be restored??

It used to be easy to find one-way flights to/from Brazil (Rio) from the US for 30k or less miles for economy, but now they are all a minimum of 75k through the beginning of August with the entire month of July being 130k(!).
A similar thing seems to go for Boston and New York.
It sure seems like the AAdvantage Miles are not worth what they used to be (like about half)!

Anyone else having this issue and/or know what's going on and what to expect in the future?

VegasGambler

I just booked PHX-CLT-EWR for 8.5k miles, JFK-PHX for 12.5k, and PHX-BUR for 6.5k.

Oh, and (a couple of months ago) a partner award: PHX-ORD-HEL-FCO for 57.5k in business (domestic leg in econ but I expect to get upgraded).

So, no, the miles aren't worth half what they used to be.

LovePrunes

shopping in June for July international flights is going to be EXPENSIVE. That's more about it being last minute during peak vacation travel time that already booked up long ago than it is something that AA did to lose value for their miles.
Have to plan earlier than you used to, if that's what you did previously when you got cheaper redemption rates. Been shopping for domestic summer trips and they're all crazy high all over the US for July and August when I shop now, but if I look for September after Labor Day, they come back down to usual affordable rates for miles.
Good luck!

javabytes

Demand is surging, planes are full, airlines are having trouble staffing up and can't add more flights, oil prices are astronomical. It's the worst time to be on the demand side of the equation in a long, long while.

xliioper

30K probably isn't going to happen. As others noted, June/July is simply too close-in and too high demand to be looking to find anything decent. August has a fair amount of availability at 55K for mid-week travel.

armus

Every 1-2 weeks this forum has a thread like this about mileage costs to a particular location for a particular month. It’s probably overdue for there to be a consolidated thread to dump them all into.

At any given time there’s places with high costs and others that are a good value, but things generally get especially tight around the summer and perhaps moreso now with high demand and high fuel costs. It helps to be flexible in time (both when to go and when to book) and location, and there are times when there’s nothing decent on the calendar but things generally fluctuate over time. As counterpoints I did transcon trips to Boston and NYC last month in flagship biz for 20-25K (for 2 pp each way)and have UK in Aug (and another trip for Spain in Sept) for 55-60K (biz, pp each way).

drazin

We've always traveled all year round, and even during peak seasons, we could always find one or two flights in the immediate timeframe (a day to a week or so) that appeared at the base rates. That never seems to be the case now for LAX/SNA-NYC, BOS, RIO, etc.

Even searching today for after Labor Day, they are about 2x or higher…

drazin

Yes, that’s just about double, even months ahead.
It’s like they put a new “floor” at 55k, when the old normal was 30k (and sometimes they had flights below that).
So, now we need about double the miles.

BTW, United is doing the same thing, and there are zero flights available to be booked at any price via partners BA for American and Air Canada for United like there used to be (had to search multiple days, but you could find them—now nothing).

LowValueCustomer

NYC-GIG has some 71.5k biz redemptions later in the calendar, which seems fair-ish. But I agree that awards on AA metal are certainly getting fewer and farther between over the past two months. Hopefully it'll normalize over the coming months, like cash fares seem poised to do.

Centurion

American terminated the two tier award pricing and which was Low award miles and AAnytime award miles. Example: A low business class ticket from USA to Europe with First on the domestic leg and then Biz over the water was often no more than 25,000 miles and a AAnytime award was 50,000 miles ANYTIME each way and no higher. The American first devaluation came when AA made it difficult to get First Class to your USA domestic location to hop over the Ocean and you had to travel in economy or have a very very long lay over if you wanted to be in First on the domestic leg.

Now American has dynamic pricing or think of Uber Surge pricing. A one way in business from USA to CDG or LHR is now often 400,000 miles. That is over 8 times the price of the recent past few years.

As others have pointed out American is aware of the demand for travel and there is something called REVENGE TRAVEL where people are getting there revenge on the Covid Pandemic. People are going anywhere no matter what now that they have been locked up at home from the Pandemic. This plus the pilot shortage means American does not really want to give away any awards now. American wants you to pay cash so American can pay for pilots. Some over the water pilots are making over $700,000 a year right now.

enviroian

Advantage miles are for the most part Advantage pesos. Pretty much worthless for international fares.

Centurion

Yep First it was Delta Sky Pesos now American has Advantage Pessos!

VegasGambler

Except for all the business saver fares to Europe for 57.5k miles and to Asia for 60k.

This works out well though. You keep complaining that they are worthless, and I'll keep redeeming for long haul business class travel at saver rates.

enviroian

How many 57.5 J flights are you finding? There are none (maybe one here and there and probably HEL).

What country is open in Asia? No wonder they exist.

VegasGambler

You can connect beyond the gateway, and AY flies almost everywhere in Europe. Summer availability is pretty much dried up now but there was availability for almost every day in summer up until a few months ago. I fly out in a couple of weeks (to FCO, via HEL)

As for Asia, several countries are open. I'm going to South Korea in August (basic economy ticket + SWU though; not an award). Other than Japan, Taiwan, and China (including Hong Kong) what isn't open?

Even though you can't enter Japan, you can connect onto another country. And, before covid, there was always tons of JL saver space (I booked it many times with my AS miles). So it's not true that there is only availability because most people can't enter Japan. There's always been availability.

It seems to me that people enjoy complaining more than traveling. If you want to travel, there are plenty of good opportunities to use your miles.