mrt88

Not sure if this was already posted, but the Skift article had an interesting quote from United, as part of the discussion on dynamic awards:
Source Article

Kacee

Meaningless. With dynamic pricing, of course they can increase availability. There will no longer be a fixed saver award price.

They will offer IN space at 2, 3, or 4x the current saver rate all day long. See DL.

mrt88

But this could help in two ways (1) to facilitate finding confirmable PZ space by looking for lower priced savers on calendar, and (2) when booking premium awards with Star Alliance partners you can get the domestic leg in biz. However, the only route I really care about biz domestically ps where I don't expect this to really make a difference, considering how full upfront cabins SFO-EWR tend to go.

mduell

Sure, they can improve availability for an arbitrary number of miles.

Even makes sense to claim loudly and publicly they are.

But don't be surprised when the new IN is double the price of the old JN.

amtrakusa

that is not correct, I and IN pricing are still at saver level for now. Most people don't get what is changing and what is not changing.

jsloan

Nobody knows whether or not this is true. UA has specifically said that they are removing the charts and that awards will not be capped. They did not say, "we will have a saver award chart and an uncapped Everyday award chart." They are clearly using dynamic pricing for saver awards now, because some of them are now cheaper than what's listed on the chart.

Is it possible that they're going to continue to keep the saver chart, internally, without publishing it, and that saver award prices will be capped? Sure, but I wouldn't bet on it. All signs point toward much higher redemption costs than in the past. Personally, I suspect that they will keep the I/IN/ZN/JN inventory buckets, because they will want to give some availability to partners and also have "better" availability for credit card holders and premier travelers. But that doesn't mean that anybody will like the prices that they see for I/IN inventory, just that they may be less nauseating than the ZN/JN price.

And, if you're basing this on some anecdotal searches done past 11/15, keep in mind that when they first introduced Everyday awards, the prices didn't jump to the new maxima right away. It took some time before their software went through and touched every flight; now, it's common to see max'ed out prices across the board for Everyday awards.

This, I agree with.

Kacee

There is nothing incorrect about my post. Further, if you don't think saver awards on UA metal are going to increase substantially in price, you're living in fantasyland. That's the whole point of dynamic pricing.

RobOnLI

I think this is a very dangerous assumption. I/IN appear when PZ is available today. I would not expect this to hold true down the road. I/IN will become more available because, as others have already pointed out, it will take 2x/3x/4x (etc) more miles to book into that space. That won't guarantee there's PZ available to use a "free" certificate on.

I would expect PZ and I/IN to decouple.

-RM

WineCountryUA

The lack of separate EveryDay and Saver inventory for PP, could a big red flag. A major hint of a future of "merged" award inventory.
[sarcasim] Making "simpler", "less confusing" as customers "have been asking." [/sarcasim]

However a less cynical explanation. UA is awaiting an *A uniform award system for PP/PE and then there will be another award inventory code for PP.

Not sure which it is but time will tell.

entropy

Within that article:
"Looking forward, the traditional 25,000-mile fare will certainly price higher every so often, but the new model also allows for the occasional situation in which the round-trip seat could cost 15,000 or 20,000 miles — a significant discount from today’s rates."

I already find that most space isn't available at 25k, let alone 12.5OW, MOST sleazypass awards are pricing at 32.5 (one way), not the "traditional" 2x, and that's today. Furthermore, United is so stingy with I/IN space domestically, its not even funny.

one of the "benefits" of the Aeroplan program was that they(AC) were actually contractually required to offer a given # of seats per month (in X/I) each way per route. That actually made it possible for people to use miles that they'd accumulated under that promise from the program.

amtrakusa

i guess UA communication is so bad nobody gets it. the whole point of dynamic pricing is all about everyday award, not about saver award. UA is losing a lot of money on everyday award, not saver award. UA would rather not sell your seat for 160,000 miles one year in advance when they can easily sell the seat through RM down the road for hard cash.

for saver award, UA doesn't care. it is seats UA is not expected to sell anyway. it has to release some seats to partners, the same seats everyone can see it, everyone can book. It is not in UA's interest to push everyone to using Avianca's program to book these saver seats. If this whole change is about saver award, UA can simply reduce availability, it doesn't have to do anything else.

having a saver award capped at certain miles (published or not published) does no harm to UA. UA is smart enough to know arbitrage opportunity exists here and it will not get too crazy in this department.

UA is so stingy with I, IN award, but still better than American/Delta, i guess? and if you look at internationally to do a comparison, im pretty sure UA wil have higher SAVER award pax as a % of total PAX, higher than any other international airlines on that basis.

jsloan

I suggest you read up on SkyPesos.

I hope you will turn out to be correct, but history shows otherwise.

transportprof

I am expecting a massive devaluation of Aeroplan when AC takes it back from AIMIA later this year. Air Canada is building a "new and improved" plan, and we all know what that means.

As evidence, Mrs. Transportprof just signed up for a new TD Visa card for her business which came with a 40,000 Aeroplan point bonus. That's double what the previous sign up bonus was. There is usually a direct correlation between big bonus increases and "enhancement" on redemptions.

physioprof

There are numerous completely unsupported assumptions being made to arrive at the conclusion that UA isn't going to dynamically price saver awards.

cricketer

I'll just say that I'll be really happy if we see increased saver award space at current saver award prices. I'd also be really happy if the UK revoked Article 50 tomorrow, and if we found out that the picture of the black hole was in fact captured and processed via a secretly constructed telescope that is the size of our planet.

I always have hope in life, I just don't ultimately find it to be a winning strategy to rely on.