Midwest Express has announced that the miles required for some of their AAdvantage awards will increase beginning Oct 1, 2004. Continental US and Canada will go to 30,000; Hawaii to 40,000 and Mexico & Caribbean to 35,000. I've not seen anything from AA that they are raising award levels; however, Midwest has always set the miles required for a partner award at the partner requirement. The have also always been very good about warning their frequent fliers of award level increases. I'm posting this here rather than the Midwest forum or American forum since other carriers may decide to go along as well. The announcement can be found here:
http://www.midwestairlines.com/speci...ail.asp?id=163

i think that the features of ff programs will continue to decline as the industry moves to a mass transit mentality because of business considerations.

The risk the big airlines take with these devaluations is that Joe Sixpack the infrequent flyer realizes the value is dropping. Many of those trillions in unredeemed miles are in individual accounts that have been slowly building up for years. Imagine Joe has just under 20K, is excited about getting his first-ever award ticket, and just took a long-distance company switch on a 5,000-mile offer to try to top up. Then this hits. Could be a real turnoff, eh?

Maybe this straw won't break the camel's back, but at some point (especially if after repeated devaluations) the public could go sour. And that would cripple both the revenue from the non-flight mile selling and the perceived value of the programs themselves. Don't forget that the programs and promise of maybe a trip to Hawaii someday are some of the most potent weapons the big airlines have against the LCCs.

My guess is that if the big airlines do follow, we'll get a heaping helping of baloney about fuel prices or terror-related security costs or some other external factor being supposedly behind it. And most laymen would buy that, even though the consequences above would still apply. You certainly won't be hearing the airlines fessing up to the seat supply/unredeemed miles imbalance that they themselves created.

Interesting. AA is running a promo reducing the number of points for "short haul" (under 750 miles) from 25,000 to 15,000.

I suspect this has more to do with the death spiral of this once proud airline than any impending change in the Aadvantage program....

Midwest is only the latest airline to make a midyear devaluation, following closely behind Continental which raised it South America redemption levels and Air Canada that raised all its overseas redemption levels.

My issue isn't with the devaluations per se, but the troubling timing of them.
Devaluations should take place during the NEXT benefit year not during the middle of an existing benefit year.