As nice as redeeming 5,000 miles to fly from Los Angeles to New Zealand using AA miles sounds, please don’t take your eyes off the bigger picture. These gimmicky redemptions come at great cost.
Last night, American Airlines ran a web special that was quite compelling; flights between Los Angeles and New Zealand were as low as 5,000 AAdvantage miles each way. This morning, the space is all gone.
But I’ll tell you what isn’t gone. Higher prices across the aboard on AA flights. A lack of premium cabin saver fares. A broken award search website. Put simply, we were thrown a scrap last night. Think of Stromboli giving Pinocchio a metal washer and keeping all the gold coins for himself.
American Airlines, like Delta and United, is in the process of transforming its loyalty program. Fixed-price awards still exist, but its new award search website undeniably foreshadows an era of dynamic pricing.
I’ve always said that dynamic pricing will help some people on some days. Part of the concept of dynamic pricing is to offer occasional deals like 10,000 mile round-trips to New Zealand. Such promos provide cover to the more pernicious changes going on, namely that if you want to use your miles for premium cabins or to travel during peak times, it will cost, on average, more than ever before. Significantly more.
See, American was happy to unload some economy class seats that would have gone empty anyway. But how about if you want to travel in business class on the same 5K LA to Auckland flight? 375K miles for a one-way ticket.
American is now approaching Delta pricing and United is not far behind. It will only be a matter of time when award charts are altogether gone and our AAdvantage miles are worth even less than they are today.
CONCLUSION
All hope is not lost. There are still sweet spots in every loyalty program, including AAdvantage. But let’s be realistic when thinking about the occasional very cheap fares using miles. Those come at great cost. As for me, I’d rather pay more, knowing that a fixed award chart sets the upper bound for how much an award will cost. But that is no longer the world that we live in.
> Read More: Dear American, Your New Award Search Engine Is VERY BAD
Why do you assume AA meant to publish 5K LAX-AKL fares? The average Joe would have been just as excited about a 12,5K fare to AKL. I chalk this one off to AA incompentence, rather than strategy
Could be, but I think AA meant to do it. We’ve seen 5K net fares before.
Obviously no AA FF member here. I will not fly them again. Not paid, not by making use of OW miles elsewhere. They could offer the flights at 0 miles and I still would not fly them again.
Experience was sufficiently bad to not have to do it again.
I’m sure they’re up late at night missing you.
do you think AA or anyone here cares? lol
Agreed The program is going down the tubes rapidly.
I did see some 80k biz savers For an AKL-LAX return when I bought the 6k outbound, but I didn’t have enough miles for it. I’ve already burned off my 400k hoard of AA miles over the last 12months
I literally had 6,006 miles remaining in my AA account when this LAX-AKLdeal popped up. Bought a one way for 6k miles +27 taxes. Balance is now exactly 6 miles 🙂
Oh, and since my Plat status expires in Feb 2020, I was still able to book an MCE window seat at no extra cost.
I have never flown AA, and I never will. I can never forgive them for the … 😉
… death of fixed award pricing!
“if you want to use your miles for premium cabins or to travel during peak times, it will cost, on average, more than ever before”
As someone who uses miles for economy seats during off-peak times (who needs crowds anyways), I gladly welcome our new, dynamically-priced overlords!
Did you book anything last night?
Well for me it was a great deal. Just came back from Beijing on American’s $305 deal and earlier in the year took advantage of United’s $525 fare to Sydney. Now I will be going to Auckland. These are places that were in the future for me. To be able to send less than $800 per trip is an awesome opportunity.
The idea of flying AA in Y class on a nonstop from the US to New Zealand for any amount of miles sounds like a special kind of hell. There aren’t enough drugs in the world to make this flight bearable.
And don’t forget you would be flying to New Zealand during peak tourist season so have fun trying to book low cost hotels.
The best use of AAdvantage miles is oneworld redemptions. I always find good deals flying CX J.
Of course it was not meant like a 5K redemption. Search engine was crashing for those that tried a bit late. yes, awards will be worst, but you are mixing two thing here.
OneWorld is in terminal decline: American is directionless and pathetic; BA has to heavily discount F just to fill seats because the standard is so poor; QANTAS tries to screw its customers at every turn, including dynamic pricing by stealth.
It’s by far the worst alliance. I hope QR jumps ship: that should be the end of it.
I used to think Star was weak but OneWorld has become pathetic.