It’s very simple: award charts promote accountability, transparency, and predictability. The latest hints that American Airlines will soon remove its award chart must be met with deep skepticism and indeed a reasonable assumption that sinister motives are at play.
American Airlines Removing Award Charts – Are Sinister Motives At Play?
Rick Elieson, who runs the AAdvantage program at American Airlines, told The Points Guy that the days of award charts at AA are numbered. Since taking over that role, Elieson has expressed curiosity and a degree of confusion over why award charts matter so much to AAdvantage members.
There’s very real concern on my part, two years later, that Elieson fundamentally fails to understand the program that he runs. For example, he said:
The current award charts list your mileage redemption options for flights only — there’s no mention of using your miles for other ancillary purchases like extra-legroom seats, upgrades, and more.
Elieson doesn’t even know his program. He doesn’t understand that AA does have a very-detailed upgrade chart and that for years, upgrades could be purchased with miles plus co-pay.
More fundamentally, there is nothing stopping American Airlines from adding award charts for purchasing baggage, extra legroom seats, priority boarding, or snacks onboard. Having award charts and letting passengers pay for ancillary purchases with miles is not mutually exclusive.
What we’ve seen at Delta Air Lines and United Airlines gives us a very good indication of what we’ll see at American Airlines if the airline follows through on its plan to eliminate award charts. That includes:
- Massive inflation of premium cabin redemption pricing
- Steady inflation of partner award pricing
- Loss of value on upgrade awards
The only benefits are the those occasional deals on lower-priced economy class awards that Delta and United have used to justify the devaluation throughout the rest of the program. It’s like taking 10 but giving one back and calling it a benefit.
In terms of American Airlines flights, American Airlines has already killed the award chart for practical purposes. So-called “saver awards” at published prices are difficult to find. Instead, we see “anytime awards” that can be exorbitantly expensive and “web special awards” that are often much cheaper than published prices, but only available to AAdvantage members, not oneworld partners.
But that current dysfunctional system does not indicate a problem with award charts, since AA’s partner award chart works predictably well.
Instead of looking to Delta and United for guidance, American should look to its new oneworld partner Alaska and look at its own balance sheets: there is a reason that AA does better on co-brnaded credit cards than Delta or United and it isn’t so unreasonable to conclude it is because AA offers the more transparent and valuable program.
Is “sinister” too harsh when describing the removal of award charts? No, it is actually not when you have Orwellian doublespeak coming from the mouth of program leaders. Sinister is on-point when you have a leader promising value by taking away transparency. It simply doesn’t make sense. It is illogical. Therefore, it is no unreasonable to conclude the motives are sinister…lie to members and reduce the value of their hard-earned points.
CONCLUSION
Make no mistake: there will be severe award chart inflation on premium cabin awards and on upgrades if American Airlines proceeds with its plan to eliminate award charts. If you are an AAdvantage member, please let American Airlines know that you oppose any removal of award charts…before it is too late.
Will you cut your American Airlines credit cards and stop being loyal to AA if it eliminates award chart and raises pricing on awards?
image: American Airlines
This is the kind of move that makes me switch back to Delta. If all the major loyalty programs are going to suck, then I’ll go with the airline that actually has good reliability and consistency.
Unfortunately, that is was 21st century capitalism has turned into. A dishonest system that is promoted with lies and half truths. One that assumes that they are smarter than everybody else. Adam Smith is probably turning in his grave when he sees what, was undoubtedly one of (if not the ) best economic system the world, has turned into especially during the past 10-15 years. This has gone beyond the airline industry and is pervasive everywhere here in the USA. But I have faith that capitalism will return to its glorious self once we get rid of today’s incompetent management mentality.
This is clearly an airline enhancement, which is much different from a true enhancement.
How can people protest? Write? Fly Southwest and Alaska? Urinate on the floor and walls of the lav on AA planes and tell AA why?
They have not been removed yet. Tweet AA. Write AA. Bombard them on Facebook. Call Doug’s office.
“American should look to its new oneworld partner Alaska and look at its own balance sheets: there is a reason that AA does better on co-brnaded credit cards than Delta or United and it isn’t so unreasonable to conclude it is because AA offers the more transparent and valuable program.”
Last part of the sentence… do you mean “AS does better…” and “AS offers…”?
If the non chart world offers little value, I’ll dump our AA cards next spring when it’s time to renew. If I can’t gain value from AA my efforts are best spent elsewhere
Good for you!
The average points collector forgets that the credit card companies are their customer, not the flyer. That’s who is buying the miles.
We should expect the airlines to squeeze these programs as much as they possibly can to their advantage to a point where their credit card customers start to complain. I don’t think the blowback toward AA is going to result in much – just my opinion. @RAP has the right idea .
Given all the miles building over the past year, I think we should expect massive increases in points needed to fly.
The airlines need to get these points off their books.
Not that any of this is pleasant (its awful) and like you the fact they do these without any transparency is problematic.
Rather than sinister, I’d argue that such a move is evil and stupid. Taking people’s miles that in many cases they’ve saved for that one big trip, then saying that the price got jacked up overnight without notice is simply unforgivable. The entire premise of frequent flyer programs is to get people to make irrational decisions that favor your company. Driving away those customers is simply stupid. Let’s be realistic here for a moment: American is overall a very mediocre airline. Service is wildly variable, economy seats where most people fly are simply not comfortable. Their food is pretty much what you’d expect from the pejorative term “airline food”. American doesn’t even want you to have IFE to detract you from their substantial deficiencies, which illustrates even more stupidity. And that doesn’t begin to touch on American’s massive debt, which is best serviced by garnering a revenue premium by making loyal customers happy so they come back.
But the one shining star in this bastion of mediocrity is AAdvantage. AAdvantage was once truly great, what with fairly priced award charts, reasonable stopover rules, Oneworld Explorer, etc. Sadly, while that degree of greatness is long gone, AAdvantage is still the only part of American that actually consistently earns money. AA deciding to mess with the singularly profitable part of the company is evil, stupid, and stunningly shortsighted. I truly don’t expect much out of American in the Parker era but even I expected better than this.
a bit dramatic? its been impossible to find published saver rates for any reasonable destination as of late. Even before covid especially, i never could find J-saver award space anywhere.
Sorry about the rant. It just really steams me that American is making such a ridiculously shortsighted move. You’re right about AA being super cheap on releasing J saver space. Where I find good value in AAdvantage is through partners in business or first class. I’ve flown Cathay and JAL in first class and that was amazing. I’ve also flown business and first class long haul on AA and was very much not amazing. My next try was going to be Qatar business class to South Africa for 75k AAdvantage miles. Now, who knows?
Delta did this years ago and well they seem to be doing just fine. Don’t think AA is concerned
“There’s no chart for ancillaries! How can anyone possibly understand?!”
Then make one…
It’s bad enough when companies make moves like this, but what’s insulting is the bullshit bingo wording they throw at us, like we’re too dumb to know this is a move that will be good for us. Just be honest.
The sooner people wake up and realize points chasing is fools gold, the better. I dropped my UA and AA cards in the last year.
#Matthew Klint:
What is “co-brnaded”? I guess you meant “”co-branded” and “AS”:
“AA does better on co-brnaded credit cards than Delta or United and it isn’t so unreasonable to conclude it is because AA offers the more transparent and valuable program.”
AS Alaska offered me MVP Gold 75K, so now I fly AA using my AS MP#. I am Platinum with AA but will never fly on my AA profile again and expect that I will soon lose my now-unwanted AA status.