jsloan

I mean, that's what dynamic pricing is. There will soon be as many price points for award travel as there are for paid travel.

Airline miles are a highly inflationary currency at the moment -- they're handed out like candy and chasing a limited supply of goods. This will continue until / unless it begins to have a major impact on the airlines' bottom line. If people keep signing up for frequent-flyer-based credit cards, this trend will not stop. If people change their behavior, it will.

Wx4caster

What is the latest status of the DoT probe into frequent flyer mile deceptive practices? A 100% increase in award ticket costs might warrant some probing...

escapefromphl

The cause of this sort of massive devaluation is more closely linked to consolidation in the airline industry than to consumer behavior. Yes the Points Guy is flogging cards buts that’s a constant effect.

angetenar

From some searches it looks like the pricing changes only affects routes that touch the US. FRA-PVG in LH F is still 126.5k, and FRA/MUC-DEL/BLR/BOM are still 71.5k.

jonisflying

Yeah, people signing up for credit cards, and accumulating miles, is not the same as people using miles. I wonder if there is any public data on mileage usage for Airfare (and premium seats vs economy seats, etc.)?

I was randomly looking for some flights yesterday - US to Asia in November / December, and most were coming in at 200,000 miles each way in Polaris. I found some great deals last year for a December trip to Thailand, 90K to TPA-IAD-HND and then 110K for BKK-FRA-IAD-TPA and I booked a cheap flight HND-BKK on my own. Really hoping to that deals are still out there!

zombietooth

I'm not so sure because I recently read an article about the success of frequent flyer programs and credit cards as profit centers, and a airline rep was quoted as saying that they had sold more miles in the last 24 months than in the previous 10 years, and that it was really helping profitability.

Airlines are not adding excess capacity, so flights are mostly full these days.
Whenever you create more currency without increasing supply, whether governments or private companies, inflationary pressures are added to the system. The natural course of things is for the value of FF miles to keep decreasing in value. We will soon see UA miles consistently trading below 1 cpm.

NH F is currently bookable on Virgin Velocity for 134K. How long that lasts is anybody's guess.

mw1234

It appears for TATL LH F there is some dynamic pricing. For example, EWR-MUC 4/24 LH F award is 154k but EWR-MUC-DUS has 140k and 154k options.

jsloan

It's a price increase. Are we going to ask the DOT to probe the airlines every time they raise a fare?

When UA removed the award charts, it was an extremely clear signal that they were going to do the same thing that Delta did when they removed their award charts. Rather than kvetch about it now, we should be thankful that they gave us about four years of relative stability before the prices started to go to SkyPesos levels. People have been in denial.

Indirectly, maybe, because airlines aren't operating at 60% load factors anymore. But even if there were more airlines, I don't think anybody would be running at a 60% load factor. We've been struggling with an ongoing pilot shortage; there's a shortage of new aircraft; and airfares are lower than they've ever been.

When airlines are selling 85% of their seats, giving some away cheaply for company scrip is a bad economic decision, so the carriers are trying to wean the public off of that practice.

There may be a hard floor at 1 cpm, at least for Chase cardmembers, if you continue to have the ability to erase United Airlines charges from your bill at 1 cpm. But otherwise, this is 100% correct. The banks have bought a pig in a poke because people keep signing up for these cards. Eventually the gravy train stops, but not until people get fed up collecting miles.

And it's not clear that people will get fed up. The FT community might be heavily invested in F awards. The general public is much more worried about being able to get domestic Y awards. And while you'll still find some eye-popping numbers in domestic Y, you can also find some relative bargains.

cfischer

It is similar to before where certain combinations will price less. Will take time to understand but that usually does not fluctuate from here.

LaserSailor

Airlines will continue these programs as long as people buy 2cpm product redeemable at 0.5 cpm,

id rather take the 4 cents from using cash than play the game of paying a product marked up 4x

zombietooth

I'm getting 5.25 cents cash back on every travel dollar for the last 3 years. Unfortunately, I still have ~3 million legacy miles on UA that I really can't spend unless I'm willing to take the .5 cpm or less (I got rid of my UA cards 3 years ago so I'm not eligible, even if I were to get a new UA credit card, to get the 1 cpm cash equivalent for CC purchases). I finally got the wife to agree to being willing in principle to grab some last-minute F availability on LH/NH etc., with no prior plans, in order to try and burn off some of the miles.

UAflyerwhoflystomuch

congrats on 5,000 posts!

WheelsUpGal

This was on The Points Guy on Tuesday:

United MileagePlus seemingly devalues first-class partner redemptions

LaserSailor

When the stock price crashes, talk about it after you call your broker. This is nothing new

avi8tir

I think back to 8 - 10 years ago when LH F was pretty wide open and I think it was like 80k.... long gone I guess. Fortunately I took advantage dozens of times over the years. Don't think I'll be dropping 150k on this..... especially considering the 75k mileage earning cap which is VERY easy to hit these days with the high biz fares.