A Comparison Of AA, Delta, And United Saver Award Space: Is AAdvantage The New SkyPesos?

Without even looking I would have to say yes!
They not only raised rates making it harder to book but even if you follow no a more expensive award saver ticket it’s still might be stop over. Delta is actually better domestic to go to Florida especially since they opened up 7,500 flights.-from ny

How about NYC-ORD that’s been a horror recently, can’t find anything with AA

I would like to see comparisons between aa and jet blue and Caribbean air to the Trinidad,Grenada, St Lucia

Pretty much every route with AA has turned into zilch.

On every post about BA miles that you’ve posted recently commenters complained of total lack of availability on partner AA. Thanx for listening !

@Mikey:
It’s just stunning how AA award space went from being amazing to being nil.

Dan, when I’m searching United EWR-TLV, where do I put in that I’m a CC holder to get more availability ?

This is a very interesting post. I wish you were able to figure out AA’s pricing and saver award availability rollercoaster like behavior. Any post planned in the future? I’ve whittnessed them fly half full and still not having saver space. Thanks

Besides points.com, is their any way for me to get Rid of my AA miles at a decent rate. At least 1CPP. I have almost 200K

@Yitrap:
I flew Ewr-Ord last Sunday with AA (using BA miles). Availability opened the Friday before so I swapped my Southwest ticket for AA in order to get rid of my One world miles. Returned from Chicago with Southwest as AA had nothing (in economy, plenty in first! ).

Thanks Dan for taking the time. Now I know what happened. For the past couple of weeks I kept on checking the NYC-YYZ route for July and not even a single date with saver award space! For anyone who knows this route this is a complete 360 turn. There used to be availability almost every day. Oh well.

Been sitting on a lot of AA miles and have never been able to use them when I needed them. Have used Delta and UA for J to Europe a few times in 2016 np

Aa recently has opened award space in batches. You just have to be quick when they open.

How can we hold them accountable who would have jurisdiction over this ? I mean taking people’s money (credit card users) and cheating them off. Can we start a change.org petition or call our congressman ?

Can consumer pressure help? If yes how?

@Lakewood guy: I was thinking the same thing. We should start a petition on change.org. I’m sitting on 200k miles and have nothing to do with them.

Best pressure is to complain on social media.
Retweet and favorite this post. Tweet about the issue with hashtag #AAwfulAAirline, etc.

There isn’t a single first class saver available through the end of the schedule UA EWR-HNL which is a bummer because last year I was able to grab 3 on one and 4 on another flight for my family.

This basically also kills the Avios short haul domestic options as those are primarily through AA. Do you still think Avios is the best short haul option? (I remember you constantly posted how great this was about this a year ago).

@ilherman: +1. I’ve been hoarding my Avios specifically for this route. What a bummer!

Just booked 3 seats on EWR to TLV in July in Business class. Thanks Dan.
For August there is 5 dates available with at least 3 seats on each flight.

With every AA post, please post an update on your refund claim…

In the past, I never had a problem booking LGA-DTW with Avios, but now there’s practically nothing.

This sadly makes avios worthless too

would love to see a chart of TLV-EWR for UA

DTW – LGA nothing available even till Jan!!!! British Airways is Over!

@Ralph: Fly Southwest! They have unlimited availabilty. As an exaple I’m flying to them NYC TO Chicago for 4,680 each way. It was higher when I booked but I kept checking it and eventually you’ll find it when it goes down.

We don’t fly much, but our last flights were on American Airlines, well on the way to our cruise it was US airways by the end of the cruise it was AA and those two flights were horrible. The stewardress’ were the most un nice people ever, the carry on that was accepted on the 3 flights, so far, was not accepted as carry on. We don’t want to use them again. Going their one deplane for a small layover, coming back a plane change that we almost missed do to their ineptness.

@Anonymous:
Southwest doesn’t fly direct from DTW to NY

@Deal Guy If you have a co-branded AA credit card, you should be able to liquidate your AA miles at a penny each on hotels. Without the credit card, it’s not worth it. You may want to look into signing up for one, but make sure it’s 50K miles. There are working links, just do a Google search. Just make sure to log in as a cardholder, and the rates on hotels will be displayed accordingly. Of course, getting 1 cent per mile is nothing to write home about, but it’s an option.

Would love to see LAX/LAS-LHR OR wider: SoCal/LAS-Europe

But, the charts were interesting and revealing!

This is what Doug Parker and company have wanted all along. The AA pilots put Parker in power. They must be so proud of the “New” AA.
On the other hand, let’s not go into catastrophe mode. I have been at this 30 years, it is cyclic in nature with constant erosion of benefits. Reminds us of the seven fat cows, followed by seven skinny cows, followed by seven anorexic oows.

@DoC followed by 7 dead cows.

I met that February “fly 35K and get ExPLT”, and even with their completely useless, and I mean useless “enhanced availability” for ExPLT on Milesavers, I can’t use my miles for flights from SFO or LAX to NYC. It’s shameful, and all the CS agents can say is “we hear that all the time”. Pathetic

I love this post and would love to see more routes just to bring more awareness to how awful the availability is on AA. I’ve been waiting for months for 2 AA first class tickets from DFW-OGG or DFW-HNL and there is literally nothing. It is ridiculous.

I have close to 600,000 points. What can I expect if I sell them?

…and the availability of seats to LHR you spotted are almost certainly on BA if you click through and really check – so not even really on American, and then with the obscene surcharges.

GOOD HARD DATA. Hope you’ll keep unding this drum long and loud.

@Annie,

Expect AA to shut you down if your caught selling and they are very good at catching AA Sellers.

@Dan what co branded credit card would recommend? British Airways, United? or rather than an airline card, an Amex or something else?

Dan
How about including Phoenix in your airline and deal notices.

Another AA hoarder here – was hoping to use them to bring my kids in from Israel for a simcha. Is there any benefit(other than using them up) to booking them to an AA location in Europe and then flying them from there with the AA miles?

Dan, you’re forgetting one major point: UNITED BREAKS GUITARS! Delta/AA don’t.

I fly all the US airlines A LOT (100 plus flights a year) and your other complaints about AA are wrong. It’s actually a pretty decent airline, and US Airways management has been improving it. But you are correct that their award availability is quite poor. This is NOT a “US Airways management” thing though — it had gotten poor in the last couple years of the old management. Is it worse now? I’m not sure, but for at least the last 2 years UA availability has always been better. DL availability seems to be getting better these days since they went to revenue accumulation, and I do think AA is now the worst in availability of the 3.

This is not to say you can’t use your Avios/AA miles. I use them all the time. For example, just a few weeks ago I booked 4 coach seats to HNL transiting LAX for Easter: I see from your chart that there are no such seats for all of April now. Things change. What you really need are miles in all the programs. For example, to get back from Hawaii, I booked with DL miles — no AA or UA seats available. It’s foolish not to get the credit cards to get you miles in all the programs.

Dan–

Just a compliment. I like this site because it is facts, facts, facts. I don’t want anyone’s opinion–but I love facts.

keep it up!

I just got off the phone with American after 3 HUCA’s. Their policies are very clear.

I booked a flight last year for one ticket. I called within 24 hours to cancel it and they were only willing to send me a voucher. I used it in the airport to book tickets for the summer. Then it came out that the unveiling for my father’s grave was three days later.

I had tickets one way with Westjet and Delta, and the return was only with American.

Westjet gave me a fully usable credit in 5 minutes. Delta wanted the name and address of the funeral home and the name of my father. Then they transferred all five tickets to the date I needed and were even willing to change the routing for only fare difference.

American had me on hold on average for 20 minutes each call, and were not able to do a thing with the thousand dollars I spent on their flights. They were not apologetic or sympathetic. And their complaint system doesn’t work. Last time I complained, they begrudgingly gave me a thousand miles. That might get me down the block if seats are available.

Update: My wife called them about reinstating miles that were credited with a fee but didn’t post to the account. After realizing the sheer incompetence of the previous reps, the customer service agent on the line credited back all of the miles, taxes and fees. She then told the same rep about the five nonrefundable tickets. She applied an unconditional waiver to the account, and we got full credit back, spendable until February.

American award space has deteriorated astonishingly; good luck trying to get a round trip Saver award. The new management has finally got around to crushing the life out of the Aadvantage program.
For instance why do they push to sell so many miles to credit card companies and even more often directly to their Aadvantage members, when they have consciously reduced availability and increased the ‘price’.
This is a bait and switch tactic that begs for government intervention and I would welcome it. Selling miles are a major revenue source for American. Giving less than promised in return is immoral and should be illegal.

Last few years I’ve been using airberlin on AA miles to avoid BA ridiculous surcharges. Now they are very rare showing up; all that usually shows is BA flights with surcharges higher than ticket prices.