American Airlines has a new "Your Choice" program that is nicely sugar-coated to make you think that you are saving money.
The initial "Your Choice" offering is a "Boarding and Flexibility Package" that:
- Places you in Group 1 of General Boarding, which allows you to be one of the first groups to board the plane for your flight. (Group 1 boards immediately following PriorityAAccess(SM) customers)
- Provides a $75 Flight Change Discount, which means that if you need to change your itinerary, you’ll save $75 off the regular service charge when applicable
- Allows you to standby for an earlier flight on your day of departure at no charge
Introductory prices (based on n/s routing) will be available through the summer months:
- $9 for Dallas/Fort Worth to Kansas City, Mo.
- $14 for Chicago O’Hare to Boston
- $14 for Dallas/Fort Worth to Orlando, Fla.
- $14 for Miami to Washington, D.C.
- $19 for New York JFK to Los Angeles
AA plans to break up the package and allow the purchase of each "choice" separately later in the summer.
With the trend of increasing airline fees, this is not a bad deal. Still, it is sad that people have to pony up to standby for an earlier flight (free just a few months ago) and to board early (on an airline that has assigned seating). If AA closely enforced their carry-on policy, people wouldn’t feel the need to hastily board out of fear of overhead space running out. The discount on the change fee is nice, but it seems to me that most leisure travelers schedule trips on specific dates that will not require changing and business travelers purchase refundable tickets. Am I missing something?
Let’s see if the other carriers match this new program.
First, I’ve been a frequent business traveler for the last three years, and I’ve never bought a refundable ticket.
Second, the discount on the change fee is the most interesting part of this. It looks to me to be a kind of insurance. There are lots of business travelers (or frequent leisure travelers) in the middle of the two groups you identified. They travel for business but they don’t have the travel budget to cover full fare. For example, a JFK-LAX non-refundable deep-discount fare might go for about $350 r/t these days. A refundable ticket — that would allow for changes — costs four or five times that. So by adding an extra $19 to the price of my ticket, I’m basically buying $75 of insurance against a change fee should I have to change my flight (so net gain to me is actually $56). I can think of times — in the last month, even — when paying that $19 would have saved me money.
(The rest of the “perks” are useless to me since they reproduce — at a lower level — perks I already receive as an elite member.)
I suspect that this is $19 each way transcon, reducing its cost effectiveness if you are elite and already have the other benefits.
One can only hope the reduced change fees will find their way into the elite benefits, but I doubt it.