My heart sank yesterday when I saw that American Airlines is restricting the number of segments permitted on award travel.
The new one-way limits include:
- Domestic USA + Canada: Three [3] segments
- Other destinations (including Puerto Rico + US Virgin Islands) Four [4] segments
Gary lays out nicely why this policy change is so disappointing and cites specific examples in which the segment limits makes award travel from a small city to a small city virtually impossible.
Put simply, American Airlines offers such poor award availability on its own flights that 2-3 connections are often necessary simply to get to an international gateway. Thus, this new segment limit serves as a penalty for AA’s lack of award space and arcane routing rules that prohibit many natural routings like flying to Asia via Europe.
The Anti-Matthew Rule
Here’s the thing, though. AA awards were actually quite generous in two ways. First, AA allowed (and still allows) you to exceed the maximum permitted mileage (MPM) between two city pairs by 25% as long as there is a published route between the origin and destination. Second, AA had no segment limits prior to yesterday.
And while most people are horrified at the thought of unnecessary extra segments, some people (like…ahem…me) relish them. They truly relish them.
Last year, I wrote about flying from Mumbai to Reykjavik the “scenic” way, pointing out that under AA’s routing rules the following routing was permitted as as single award:
- Mumbai to Abu Dhabi in Etihad First Class
- Abu Dhabi to Bahrain in Gulf Air or Etihad Business Class
- Bahrain to Doha in Qatar First Class
- Doha to Paris in Qatar First Class
- Paris to Helsinki in Finnair Business Class
- Helsinki to London in Finnair Business Class
- London to Reykjavik in British Airways Business Class
How? Plug BOM-AUH-BAH-DOH-CDG-HEL-LHR-KEF into Expert Flyer:
The MPM from Mumbai to Reykjavik is 6,994 miles. My routing above is 8,167 miles. Since 25M (25% above the MPM) is 8,742 miles, the routing was validated by the AA system.
Excessive?
I ended up booking a slightly less convoluted routing, but not by much:
- Mumbai to Abu Dhabi in Etihad A380 First Class
- Abu Dhabi to Bahrain in Etihad Business Class
- Bahrain to Amman in Gulf Business Class
- Amman to Kuwait City in Royal Jordanian Business Class
- Kuwait City to Doha in Qatar First Class
- Doha to Paris in Qatar A380 First Class
ExpertFlyer also indicated this routing would be less than 25% over the MPM. Sure enough, I spoon-fed this routing to AA agents, the system validated it, and I ticketed it. I’ll get to this trip report sometime in the fall. Obviously, it involved unnecessary backtracking.
So I can see why AA would choose to limit routing based upon my own award booking history (I have other examples…). But let’s be real — this routing was too much even for many hard-core AV geeks at Frequent Flyer University. I doubt even 1/100 would ever go out of their way to book something like this.
CONCLUSION
I call the new AA rule limiting segments on awards the “Anti-Matthew Rule” and truthfully I don’t fault AA for cracking down on routings like the two I presented above. But I do have a huge problem with the fact that poor domestic award space on AA will make awards more expensive for anyone traveling from a small city in the USA to a small city in another part of the world. AA could simply have enforced its existing rule to take the most direct routing possible. I could have flown from Mumbai directly to Paris non-stop on Jet Airways but chose to add in five additional segments. Others don’t have that luxury and add segments by necessity. Now they’ll be punished.
i’m the 1/100 how many miles was that booking ?
That was only 40K miles (before March 2016)! Still a good deal at 60K miles for first class.
When it comes to AA awards, it feels like we’re constantly in the “bargaining” phase of the grieving process. Every time AA devalues, our response is “if they increased availability, I would be OK with this”. Availability remains the same, they make another devaluation, and we have the same reaction.
Stop trying to make availability happen. It’s not going to happen.
Perhaps you are right. I miss US Airways.
Nice post. My big complaint is that I don’t see any value to many elite AA flyers. I’m a non-hub AA elite and most of the time my simple award tickets to simple placed in Europe like say LHR or CDG, etc. are AT LEAST 3 and many times 4 segments. What I wanted to go to TLV or someplace more complicated like Africa. A simple example for me is to Dublin. Not really a hardcore out of the way place but when dealing with rare AA award space it’s usually a connection at LHR and a connection in the USA if not two. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during the meeting that came up with this. Why 4, why not 3 or 5 or 2?
As someone based in DFW, the new rule doesn’t really affect me, but I agree this is highly problematic for those living in smaller, non-hub markets. Some passengers are going to be effectively forced to purchase tickets to a hub city in order to redeem an award from there. AA should at least carve out an exception in the event that a) AA Saver space is unavailable, and b) the passenger still takes the most direct routing possible. Just one more reason to validate my decision to ditch AA – AAdvantage is now literally impossible to actually use in too many cases.
It’s just become so much less valuable without domestic space. It’s sad.
UA was already on the segment-abuse crack down a few years back. Trying to rein in the FT types but ended up hurting small town folks that need to hunt for flights even to arrive at the long-haul gateway.
The issue with your middle east scenic detour isn’t number of segments as number of REALLY short segments. The constant take-off/landing will really start draining your enthusiasm by the 4th leg, if not earlier. And that’ll really suck cuz QR F DOH-CDG is supposed to be a fun ride … but the exhaustion from the first legs will dampen your mood.
And i’m speaking from experience as someone who really just wanted to arrive there early by the 3rd leg when traveling JFK-FRA-SIN-HKG on Singapore Air A380 Suites. I literally asked myself inside SQ’s famed “Private Room” – “am I there yet??!!”
Believe or not, I truly enjoyed every leg of my trip. But it helped that I scheduled long layovers in between each flight. 23 hours in Doha…all spent in the Al Safwa Lounge 😉
I can understand why AA is doing this due to A-holes who take clear advantage of the system. I on the other hand had to get form Bali to fort Smith last year and needed 5 segments to do it and next year may not be able to.
DPS-HKG-SFO-LAX-DFW-FSM
This was actually a direct routing but had to have an extra segment because:
No J seats from HKG-LAX or DFW
No seats at all from SFO-DFW (Would have gone coach to avoid the connection in LAX)
So for me that would mean having to spend an extra 7500-15000 miles or buying a ticket from DFW-FSM. The people who take advantage don’t actually care or think about anyone but themselves. More power to them. The screw us all in the end. Im sure many people were doing what Matthew was.
btw.. lounges are awesome… when they have use. (layover, get to airport a little early) But i wouldn’t ever tell anyone by any means that staying in a lounge for 23 hours vs seeing a city or moving on to somewhere else is a good idea.
When it is 105ºF in Doha and I can get a free hotel room and five star dining in the Al-Safwa lounge as opposed to dropping $200 at a Hyatt or Hilton, the choice wasn’t bad. It’s not like Doha is brimming with culture. Besides, this was a work trip and my job is to review airlines + lounges. It gave me a chance to recharge, refuel, and get work done between flights that did not have wi-fi.
AA is simply addressing the fact that their most profitable customers live within 3 segments of the most traveled destinations. The rest are forced to use avios to obtain the domestic segments.
Add in the fact that if you have to buy a revenue ticket to get to the first award segment city, AA won’t promise to check your bag through if you are unfortunate enough to have to check one.