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Saver Award Availability on aa.com / American
American’s web site continues to show a complete lack of saver availability (though if you switch to their “calendar” view, you’ll see “lowest prices” which includes saver redemption levels).
Is there any way to book a saver award on American at present?
Does anyone know if / when the problem will be fixed?
I don’t think it’s a “problem” – as in, a glitch – I think it’s AA purposely not releasing much award space. They are known to be stingy with international premium cabin space but even with domestic premium cabin space they seem to want to restrict it to not-as-common routes and/or regional jets.
[QUOTE=”MidSouth Skier, post: 67778, member: 184″]I don’t think it’s a “problem” – as in, a glitch – I think it’s AA purposely not releasing much award space. They are known to be stingy with international premium cabin space but even with domestic premium cabin space they seem to want to restrict it to not-as-common routes and/or regional jets.[/QUOTE]
Exactly. Define “problem”. There is no problem, this simply AA’s dynamic pricing model while still insisting that they have award charts. Please. When was the last time anyone found a [U]roundtrip[/U] int’l SAaver award? Look, I’m not as harsh on AA as some on Flyertalk, but that is because 1: I am willing to fly coach to Europe and run the risk of a SWU not clearing; and 2: I’ve burned 330k miles this year booking F travel on CX and JAL. AA has incredible value (compared to Delta) for awards, but you have to be willing to buy a coach ticket (often only $700 to Europe, and you get EQMs) and use miles to upgrade, or book travel on a partner. Good luck finding SAaver awards to international destinations or JFK to LAX/SFO. You have a better chance of seeing a unicorn grazing on your front lawn tomorrow morning.
And I don’t mean to harsh on Lucky, but when his blog posts about award travel start with “Awards start at…” 65k or whatever, that is nearly as bad as AA’s flight attendants hawking credit cards. Bloggers (not just Lucky 😉 ) should be banned from ever using SAaver numbers as a starting point. It should always be the other way around – a AAnytime Award will cost you an Arm and a Leg, and in the unicorn-type circumstance where you find a SAaver, it will cost you only an Arm.
AA is either selling those (limited) Business Class seats for cash or they’re getting 135,000 miles for a one way AAnytime award to Europe. I’m on these trans Atlantic AA flights every month in Business Class and these flights are going out fully loaded in all classes. The economy is healthy and people have money and miles to burn. If the economy goes in the tank then you might be seeing some attractive award pricing but in the meantime, it’s slim pickings.
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