I know I just got into trouble for the way I titled a post, this one also is for a reason, and I hope it works out better than the last. The reason here comes at the end of the post.
So it happened…. ‘without warning’ American Airlines changed their award chart, as did US Airways, they devalued certain routes. Taking everyone by surprise, thankfully none of my readers were caught by this because I have been talking about how this is coming for months, and reminded everyone constantly to earn and burn their miles.
Two airlines merge, they attempt to find parity within programs, and neither has had a serious annual inflation adjusted change in quite some time, coupled with industry high 100,000 Signup bonuses for points to flood the market, one could say that the writing was on the wall.
Let’s take a realistic look at what happened to the new award chart <link to official chart>
When I reproduced this chart I was thinking to add a ‘changed’ column to show an expert eye on what has happened here, but really, does it matter? The chart has changed, it changed before and will again, it will get worse, so save your moaning til later when it gets really bad, and appreciate the url that it comes from: http://www.aa.com/i18n/disclaimers/free-ticket-award-chart.jsp (bolding mine)… it is a FREE ticket folks, ok there is a little tax in there, but still, it is free and whats more there is a ton of value in the chart.
It was the AAnytime Awards that changed – , for example, North America to Japan used to be 125,000 Miles (one way in First) now that will be either a low or high price of 170,000-200,000 one way in First. Solution Don’t fly on these AAnytime Awards. It was a waste of miles before, it is more of a waste of miles now. The MilesAAver awards are the same price, 50K Business and 62.5K First for the same route.
One could argue that with the price of anytime Awards increasing there will be pressure on the award space for Saver level Awards, frankly I doubt it will make much impact as it would only be the people who were already desperate or incredibly wasteful with their miles, a very small subsection of travelers, out of which not all will suddenly stop booking anytime Awards.
The really bad news.. I hear from Dansdeals that AA is not allowing stopovers anymore, so no more ‘free’ one ways again, it is a bit crappy, but I guess we can always just accept that they were great when they were there and get on with life without them. Personally I am in the middle of one of these right now as I flew back on the AA321 from LAX-JFK in F last month, and in December head to Madrid on Iberia in Business, nice, but without the stopover rule I would just use another domestic ticket.
How to maximize AAdvantage Awards Now
Don’t use your miles for AAnytime awards- bad idea before, worse idea now.
The best value in American Airlines Awards remains in the International journey, both Asia and Europe offer the greatest bang for your buck. When you fly on these routes remember that you can book on Partners too, and they don’t always show up in the search on AA.com as well as they should, so take some time to look at other search engines, and be prepared to call in to book your seats.
For shorter flights, regardless of region, consider Avios. You can book now using the distance based award chart and fly on AA, US Air, LAN and TAM which depending on your location in the US can be excellent value, covering Domestic US, South America Hawaii for those on the West Coast and even Europe for those on the East Coast. Allowing you to focus your AAdvantage for flights on JAL, or Cathay to Asia.
Should I shut the hell up?
Not only are some people throwing their toys out of the pram going through a period of mourning on this devaluation news, there is some wisdom to being a squeaky wheel when it comes to things like this, I have in the past called people out for writing a post like this because there is a chance that if an airline sees that we are still happy with the devaluation they will be encouraged to do more next time. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the people behind the award charts would read this blog and say ‘hey we should really bump up the price of Asia from North America’ because Matt thinks it is a bargain still, but if enough people are ‘happy’ that it happened it makes you wonder if that can influence it or not.
I have an nagging instinct that brought up this final thought, that from a purely selfish reason, we should shut the hell up about the positives, focus on ranty nasty posts, emails and tweets, what do you think? It may appear that we are more upset and taking our business to a competitor, and that may influence the future direction of devaluations.
You can bet that if you say Asia is cheap, they’re paying some marketing associate to read that and advise the brand manager of the opportunity to make more money. Having said that, as a newbie to travel hacking – how am I to know when I am getting a good deal? So in effect, there’s no way to protect that I can think of without putting lots of time into it.