The coronavirus crisis has thrown the entire travel industry into turmoil and it can be confusing how brands respond. American Airlines, however, is dropping prices while United is increasing them.
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American Airlines Web Specials
American Airlines offers web specials in its response to dynamic pricing from other carriers. This allows the carrier to offer discounts for flights or classes of service that aren’t selling as expected, without throwing the award chart out to do it.
American Airlines charges 140,000 miles for a “saver” roundtrip in business class from the US to Asia, 375,000 for standard awards. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that charging 375,000 miles for any long haul flights in the near future was borderline criminal.
However, they have some dates that offer 90,000 points roundtrip in business class and even 110,000 in first class on American Airlines.
We will probably just use Hong Kong as a jumping-off point for other destinations in the region such as Bangkok, Sanya, and perhaps a return to Laos. But if you’d prefer a direct approach to other destinations in Asia, they may be available. Some business class flights to Europe are even cheaper.
United Airlines Increases Prices
United Airlines increased the number of miles required for Star Alliance partner awards. Kirby’s trademark lack of availability for saver-level premium awards has taken hold at United at the least possible opportune time.
Award prices on United metal price at 80,000 in coach but increase to 88,000 for partner awards for the same route.
For the time being it’s just 2,000 miles more to fly American Airlines business class to Hong Kong than it is to utilize United miles in coach. There’s no way we could pass up this two for one business class deal when compared to United Mileage Plus.
American’s Old vs. New Search Tool
A word of caution when searching for fares like this. You will need to search American Airlines new award booking tool to find web specials and premium economy flights. For the avoidance of doubt, you want to search this site specifically for deals. The old site (sometimes populated automatically from aa.com) will not provide the same options.
Conclusion
In a shocking turn of events, American Airlines is the airline offering terrific value for flyers while United Airlines is gouging customers. There is very little likelihood that the carrier has sold very many seats at all, the flights are only a few months away. The pricing increase is indefensible. Anyone with a sufficient balance on American should scoop up deals if they can. Executive Platinums are exempt from any cancellation and redepositing costs.
What do you think? Does this move make sense for United? What about for American?
At least American is trying to get some liability off their books. United would seemingly prefer to keep the liability of additional miles on their books, which seems crazy to me since United has used this crisis to consistently screw over customers and employees to benefit the company. Why not benefit the company and the customer at the same time by ridding yourself of liability on flights you’re operating anyway? I guess the concept of aiding the customer is just too alien to Kirby’s way of thinking so he refuses the concept out of hand.
Why would he do that if he can just devalue the miles in a year or so and have the liabilities of the books anyway? Benefiting customer is such an outdated concept in the aviation world.
On a more serious note I think they are waiting it out till the dust settles to see how the aviation would will look before discounting there tickets. AA has been almost the only one currently slashing fares deeply.
I guess in this climate if you want to position yourself to PIT and IND to take advantage of AA “Flagship” business class, be my guest.
I have no idea why anyone would want to continue to be a loyal member of United. I’ve switched my carrier of choice to Alaska who have a far superior programme (of course that could change with joining OneWorld). I’m totally fed up with the continuing devaluation of Mileage Plus and the fact that United simply don’t care about their customers. It’s sad that Scott Kirby panders to Wall Street.