New AA Award Chart with Dynamic Pricing
Apr 5, 23, 4:44 pm
#17
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What is means per my conversation with AAdvantage leadership is that every AA metal award is priced to/from North America. They no longer maintain separate pricing such as 'Europe to Asia via North America'.
Apr 5, 23, 4:46 pm
#18
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Generally speaking today's change means that the milesAAver and AAnytime award types go away, and web special is renamed Flight Award. That's it (for now). There's no change to the pricing algorithm as part of this change, though I expect less pricing transparency in the future.
Apr 5, 23, 5:08 pm
#20
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One thing not noted anywhere other than my coverage of the topic (https://viewfromthewing.com/american...-need-to-know/) as far a I am aware is that Executive Platinum expanded award availability has been eliminated with this change. That was tied to saver. And AA hasn't followed, say, UA's lead in making better dynamic award pricing available to elites.
Apr 5, 23, 5:10 pm
#21
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Generally speaking today's change means that the milesAAver and AAnytime award types go away, and web special is renamed Flight Award. That's it (for now). There's no change to the pricing algorithm as part of this change, though I expect less pricing transparency in the future.
In addition, web specials sometimes priced lower than saver awards as well! That was how web specials started in the first place.
This places a floor on awards that’s higher than saver (and web specials).
Even if they (for now) price some things below these new “starting at” rates, this reeks of a phased devaluation.
Just like Alaska did earlier this year, change the published chart, then change the prices a few months later using the new chart as justification for no notice.
Last edited by islandguy84; Apr 5, 23 at 5:24 pm
Apr 5, 23, 5:17 pm
#22
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One thing not noted anywhere other than my coverage of the topic (https://viewfromthewing.com/american...-need-to-know/) as far a I am aware is that Executive Platinum expanded award availability has been eliminated with this change. That was tied to saver. And AA hasn't followed, say, UA's lead in making better dynamic award pricing available to elites.
Apr 5, 23, 5:29 pm
#23
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I don't believe this was offered to BA at all? [In fact, I haven't seen any of this inventory in the wild in several years.] AA didn't even offer it online, it had to be booked by phone with the agent searching using the member's AAdvantage number and they did not see the inventory as in any way distinct. To know if you were getting it, you would need to know that saver awards were not available online but that an agent offered you one.
Apr 5, 23, 5:31 pm
#24
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Even if they (for now) price some things below these new starting at rates, this reeks of a phased devaluation.
Just like Alaska did earlier this year, change the published chart, then change the prices a few months later using the new chart as justification for no notice.
Just like Alaska did earlier this year, change the published chart, then change the prices a few months later using the new chart as justification for no notice.
Apr 5, 23, 6:01 pm
#26
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I don't believe this was offered to BA at all? [In fact, I haven't seen any of this inventory in the wild in several years.] AA didn't even offer it online, it had to be booked by phone with the agent searching using the member's AAdvantage number and they did not see the inventory as in any way distinct. To know if you were getting it, you would need to know that saver awards were not available online but that an agent offered you one.
Apr 5, 23, 6:11 pm
#28
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But at some point down the road, I expect the pricing to get a lot uglier on these kind of trips too as these airlines seem to like the Balkanization of award inventory via playing mileage pricing games on one side so as to initially block the other side until both sides get into lockstep with massively devaluing the miles/points so as to put the mileage pricing in the same gross league.
Last edited by GUWonder; Apr 5, 23 at 6:16 pm
Apr 5, 23, 6:12 pm
#29
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If they're maintaining T U Z internally for partners, I'm curious how that works. Is it still tied to whatever old calculation they used or are these also tied to cash prices?
As a side effect, could we see some occasional nice pricing of AA metal with partner miles?
As a side effect, could we see some occasional nice pricing of AA metal with partner miles?
Apr 5, 23, 6:24 pm
#30
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As with many things AA and UA do, look at what already went on with mileage ticket space availability on DL flights and how the chances of arbitraging across partner airline programs changed between trying to redeem DL miles for DL flights and trying to redeem AF/KL miles for DL flights. It wasn’t pretty, and it remains ugly.
