What program changes affect you most in 2018?
 

With so many miles and points changes, I know many people that are changing their strategy away from legacy airlines to earn with partners or simply become free agents and focus on credit cards. For me, DL/AA earning changes on Alaska sting quite a bit as well as devaluations with Singapore and United's Star Alliance charts. Also, Flying Blue's new revenue-based model will cut into my earnings, but I am quite happy that Delta will give upgrades on transcons (if they're ever available!).

What changes, new benefits, or devaluations will affect you most in the airline and hotel point world? And what are you doing to get around it? Maybe we can all learn from each others' strategies going forward!

Free same-day standby for elites on Southwest Airlines, introduced this year, has been much more useful than I expected, especially combined with priority for standby. About half the time I end up taking an earlier flight than the one I booked.

The loss of ability to use my AA LT Plat status to get free access to exit row seats on Alaska. (I don't care about the earning, since I don't fly enough to earn any status through flying, so I choose to earn AS miles on AS flights and AA miles on AA flights.)

As a tall-ish person, it'll mean I have to factor in the cost of the extra-legroom seats on Alaska flights, and thus my cost for flying Alaska will go up a bit, so I'll consider other airlines more on routes up and down the west coast, since AS won't have the price advantage of "no extras to pay for" anymore for me.

And the growing use of Basic Economy fares, without an easy way on most OTAs to filter out all Basic Economy fares, is making price comparison between airlines trickier.

The biggest changes likely to affect me that might come in 2018 (but haven't been announced yet) are due the merger of Marriott and Starwood, including what happens to the United Silver I'm getting from Marriott Plat and the Delta quasi-status that I'm getting from SPG Plat (which in turn I get from being Marriott Plat). But it's not yet clear if those changes will take place anytime in 2018, or if only the announcement of them will come in 2018 but implementation in 2019..

They've already announced that the programs will remain separate throughout 2018.

Same as others for me with the Alaska and American break up. My flights were split about 50/50 this year, but going into 2018 I'll probably primarily fly Alaska. Really painful after losing Delta too.

Yes, but that's not ruling out changes to each separate program during the year. In fact, at the same they announced that they;re going to remain separate throughout 2018, they announced changes like eliminating rollover nights at Marriott. So more changes within each program are not ruled out during 2018, only the merging of the two (or three*) programs is ruled out in 2018.

* They hinted that not only will Marriott Rewards and SPG merge eventually, but that the separate Ritz program will merge into that too. Thus the confusion over whether it's two or three programs that are merging come 2019.

For me it is Alaska's changes with no more earnings on American domestic and Delta.

The rather abrupt end of Fairmont President's Club. They announeced in late 2017 (after people had already been making bookings for 2018) that it will be merged into Accor in July 2018.
Originally, even if you did enough stays in the first half of 2018 to requalify status for 2019, such stays would have earned nothing, but they have back-tracked a little bit, and will offer some stub-year benefits that will expire in Feb 2019.

- End of the AS-AA partnership. I'm low-tier in both programs, but would have pretty easily been mid-tier in AS in 2018 if I could still post all of my regular domestic AA travel to AS. (I"m a relative newcomer to actually flying AS metal, but I like it so far.)
- Although it happened earlier in 2017, I imagine I'll feel the pinch of the big HH devaluation when I go to redeem my next 5-night award, sometime later this year.
- I won't affect me until Jan 1, 2019, but I'll miss the ability to throw one Marriott Travel Package every 2 years at Southwest and have a perpetual Companion Pass. I don't use the CP as much as hardcore WN fliers do, but my wife and I get a few short weekend trips around the U.S. every year using it. (Maybe 6 to 8 free roundtrips a year to the east and west coasts...) The more difficult part is finding the Marriott we actually want to spend 7 consecutive nights in.
- Losing the AA lounge access with Citi Prestige stings a bit, but I've warmed up enough to Priority Pass (especially in airports with partner restaurants) that I don't miss it too much.

Alaska losing AA & DL is the worst.

Really happy though that Alaska elites now receive upgrades on award tickets.

Losing the IHG first night free on BRG by far the worst hotel change for me. I probably got 20 free nights a year with that :(

Agreed on both! The partnership changes would be easier for me to adjust to if Alaska's AA codeshare prices were competitive, but every route that I have tried (e.g. SEA-BUF, SEA-YUL) is way too expensive.

I can't seem to find any AS-AA codeshares ex-MCI. Going east, I'd book one through ORD, CLT, PHL, etc. if there was anything that wasn't too awful, but it simply doesn't exist. I'm shown SEA connections to get to NYC. :p

My only other minor bone to pick with AS: they don't seem to load any competitive fares ex-MCI on things that are actually semi-logical one-stop itins. Obviously nobody is flying MCI-SEA-JFK. I don't expect a good fare on that. But why not on MCI-PHX or MCI-LAX? I might take connection to fly AS if it was priced in the same ballpark as AA/WN...

Not a program change, but an equipment change. We fly MIA-LAX (business class) a few times each year. AA used to operate this route with three widebody aircraft per day, then it dropped to one, and now even the one isn't on the schedule year 'round. (Discussion HERE.) This has caused us to try JetBlue Mint , FLL-LAX. We still collect AA miles for MIA-LHR flights, but this small change dilutes our loyalty.

There was no way AS was going to hold it together with all the hostile changes at AA and DL. I think we knew that.

I used to be a well-oiled machine back in "happier" times, earning about 120K RDMs and burning around that amount as well, with an annual SE Asia trip usually taking around half on the redemptions. Since dropping out on the legacies 2 years ago, though, I've fallen behind on the spend side. Will have to use or lose EY miles soon, and F9 is also piling up well ahead of spending.

If I were 15-20 years younger and having to face the current situation with a long list of desired places and more of a sense of urgency, I s'pose I'd be investing more efforts into manufactured spending or looking at things like fuel dumps. The general principle is the same as it ever was: You need some kind of knowledge or skill "edge" that most people don't have. Being able to put together inefficient MRs via green screens and command lines on easySABRE used to be such an edge back in the 90s, but the tools got easier, more people got into the game and almost by definition the old rewards became hard to sustain. And the airlines merged and got oligopolistic.

Bottom line for me in the past 2-3 years is spending less than ever on airfares but also not getting much in mileage benefit (or perks) for it.