American Airlines introduced premium economy award redemptions today for AAdvantage members. There lies the key to making AA an even more valuable loyalty program for customers, not to mention a great source of additional revenue.
While some still question the viability of the business model, premium economy is proliferating. The “Big Three” in the USA have finally embraced it and airline across the world are adding premium economy cabins as a middle-of-the-road option between economy class and business class.
While the lobster and châteaubriand may be gone, the business class of today is undeniably more spacious and comfortable than the first class of yesteryear. Thus, the first/business/coach model has morphed into a business/premium economy/economy model for many carriers.
For loyalty members of American, Delta, or United it is currently not possible to use your miles for premium economy redemptions on partner carriers. Imagine if you could book these seats or a combo of these seats, just like you would a business or economy class ticket?
Say you wanted to fly from Atlanta to Hong Kong and could use your AA miles to fly to Chicago in AA’s Main Cabin Extra, connect to Tokyo in JAL’s premium economy, then connect to Hong Kong in Cathay Pacific’s premium economy. Or imagine a trip to Australia in Qantas premium economy or to Europe in British Airways premium economy. Wouldn’t the ability to make these redemptions make your AA miles much more valuable? Wouldn’t that prompt you to put more spending on your AA-branded credit card or buy more AA miles during lucrative promotions?
The answer for me is YES. I’m focusing on AA here because it introduced premium economy redemptions today for flights on its own metal, but the same logic applies for Delta and United as well. There are many premium economy products I would like to try and I would particularly like the ability to mix and match carriers on a single ticket.
CONCLUSION
View from the Wing noted earlier today that AA actually lost money on flying last quarter. Overall profit was reported only because of AAdvatange and American’s aggressive sale of miles. There’s more money in loyalty programs than flying. American, or at least one of the Big 3, should invest the time and resources into streamlining partner award redemptions in premium economy class.
Will a broad range of premium economy redemptions lead to a price increase for business (and first) class awards? Possibly, but not necessarily…at least not quicker than the process of award chart devaluation we already experience. That’s a risk I am willing to take.
Would you welcome the ability to book premium economy partner awards using your AA miles? How important is it to you?
Being east-coast based, PE is perfect for European hops. Especially on the daytime flights from Europe.
The current flaw in your proposal is that AA doesn’t sell MCE as a separate fare class; it’s just a seat fee tacked on to whatever the available Y fare is. That should be easy enough to fix, though. They could just sell it as a “W” fare like DL does with a $50 markup or whatever over Y in each direction. I’m actually surprised they haven’t done that yet.
Anyway, the answer to your question is maybe, though I have little trust in AAdvantage to actually make Mile Saver awards reasonably available. Assuming they do, then yes, partner PE awards could be a big thing, especially if you want to do something like fly J one way and PE the other to conserve miles.
AAdvantage doesn’t make saver awards available – simple as that. AAdvantage is a scam and waste of time. UA is the last US airline with reasonable to good availability. Delta just chooses at random how they want to price their awards so unless you’re really flexible and can take a trip at any given time then it’s a real gamble.
In order for AA to make AAdvantage great, they would need to roll back pretty much every change they’ve made over the last 5 years. In order to make the program better, your suggestion is a good one. And greater implies that AAdvantage is great, which even hardcore people like Gary and Ben acknowledge is absolutely not the case any more.
Is there a details somewhere how much 50,000 AAdvantage miles are worth, I want to travel to India from Chicago.
My husband and I have over 1,000,000 miles collectively on American–he is Exec Platinum (and Platinum for life) and I am Platinum. He earns systemwide upgrades (SU) annually but for the past two years have been unable to use them for upgrades even though we booked 8 months in advance and put in our request at that time. They used to confirm SU’s at the time of booking. No more. We are scheduled to leave for Paris in less than a week and we purchased Premium Economy and have not been ugraded. I was just told all the seats are taken. When we try to use miles, they usually have the most inconvenient schedules and charge a ridiculous amount to use them. I no longer see the advantage of being loyal to American. They make it difficult to use award travel or your systemwide upgrades, which expire within a year. Meh