Update: American has now fixed this glitch!
For the past few days American has completely wiped out saver award space on many of their routes. As in there is no saver award space at all for any dates.
This doesn’t affect all routes, but it affects lots of routes that previous had very good saver award space.
Hopefully this is a bug, but American doesn’t seem to be in any rush to fix it or even let the public know about it. This also affects partner award bookings like BA Avios as they can only book awards based on saver award space.
American has been a mess ever since the USAirways merger, but this is a new low point.
For example if you limit the advanced award search to American flights only (in order to avoid fuel surcharges for BA flights), there is nothing nonstop available at the saver level from NYC to London for any dates:
Nothing in saver is available nonstop from Cleveland to NYC for any dates:
Nothing in saver is available nonstop from Pittsburgh to NYC for any dates:
Nothing in saver is available nonstop from Chicago to Dallas for any dates:
Nothing in saver is available nonstop from Cleveland to Dallas for any dates:
What other routes do you see without any nonstop saver award space available for any dates?
Aa saver Up again.
#ddfeffect
Any chance IB will show avlbty for a flight from NYC-YYZ while BA and AA have ziltch?
FAKE NEWS! AA’s saver awards have disappeared for over a year. No matter what when and what I look at , I always find standard awards for 35,000 to 50,000 miles one way domestic non stop. If I want one way at 25,000 miles one way domestic, then it has to have endless connections. Same thing with internaitonal awards and partner awards. 80,000 one way coach to europe or asia with endless connections or it will cost 200,000 one way non stop. It is a rip off scam
What a shame that they fixed it. Ya just have put hours into this article…
It’s been broken for days and now it’s fixed. Happy to have prodded them to fix it.
Thank you. MUUUUCH better now.
This has been my struggle for quite a while I have over 250 k and can’t figure anything to do with it I’m at a point where I sync I am just going to use it on hotels
Almost all of them. But in return, connecting routes are better than they used to be for domestic, pretty sure this is an artifact of married segment logic for awards.
All airlines will continue to devalue, as customers are still using credit cards and get points. The gov need to get involved. THey need to say that you can’t devalue points without a year notice etc. It’s insane that they get away with this.
Considering this situation, what’s a good alternative for nyc-yyz, other than avios?
Just in time as soon as the 30% bonus promo from chase ended last night.
Probably a couple of years ago already I stopped investing in AA currency. I have had very few opportunities to actually use any of their miles efficiently.
These days I focus on Ultimate Rewards or cashback.
If it doesn’t get fixed, then hidden city is the only way to go, in US. Obviously, luggage is a problem with that. I’ve been unloading my AA miles on nyc-tlv on Royal Jordanian, very reasonable at 40k + $13 coach
Is it safe to travel on RJ?
IMHO is is deceptive to talk about All Non-Stop Coach Award Space like that as ALL flights are non-stop even a one stop is made up of 2 non-stop flights. Please be careful with your nomenclature in the future. If you do mean about all, I’m sorry but, believe you mean non-connections.
This is much like the people who believe that in airline language “direct” means non-stop and it is the opposite to an airline person in that direct means at least one stop before your destination and have seen cases of actual plane changes being scheduled. Direct means a single flight number and some of those have been normally scheduled with a metal change. have had that happen when I booked a flight from Chicago to London and before twins could fly the Atlantic and we changed equipment in Newark as a regular thing as they told us. Thanks Dan for mostly good information.
Nonsense.
Nonstop means nonstop, period.
As you correctly note, direct can mean with a stop.
Just invested in BA miles for short haul domestic awards on AA. Oh well..
This is a lot of wasted effort considering AA has already acknowledged it is a bug that will fixed by tomorrow.
As I wrote at VFTW AA now says this is a glitch that will be fixed overnight.
Been looking at LAX to EWR/JFK and all of a sudden nothing :/
Does AA charge fuel surcharges on there own metal ?
No.
same thing is happening when trying to book American through BA. Cannot find any flights
Of course as BA award space for AA flights is equal to AA saver award space.
I just found and booked an award on AA saver on AA.com(Thanks for the update Dan!) for a BA LHR-JFK flight and tried going to JFK to pay the $530 in fees and fuel charges for 2 TIX, (flight is 20 days away) using a paper transportation voucher gotten from a voluntary bumped flight; ticketing agent at JFK had to call her helpline who said the voucher can’t be used to pay for the taxes on an award flight. I thought paper trans. Vouchers are like cash? Seems unfair that AA allows the paper voucher to pay for a paid flight + its taxes but not the taxes due on award tix. Any comments?
Citi gave me some miles so chatted to them thanks but what will I do with it, because AA is only doing itinerary rewards with stops now, as opposed to flights. If you search A to B, they’ll send you through C (or C+D), but when you search A to C they’ll have you make a stop elsewhere even though there is obviously “reward” space on the A to C direct flight. Got disconnected mid-chat, due to inactivity on the web page, so can’t say what their reply was.
If this is the case, the people who live in hubs like me (Charlotte) are going to essentially have worthless miles.
Yup, American has gone off the deep end in restricting nonstop awards.
Nothing to Florida, Los Angeles, or Arizona.
I now fly Delta whenever I can. They are superior in every way.
Superior in ever way? This is a discussion about frequent flyer miles in a ward space and Delta is an absolute joke. Would cost me 200 thousand miles to go from Los Angeles to Chicago or something they’re ridiculous. You must work for Delta or something
It’s only 10.5k miles but we get your point you don’t like Delta
As soon as my son’s high school (CLE to PHL) mails out the schedule for the next year, we all book flights. I got all of mine in a week ago, but a number of other families saw the space available on Friday, and then went back Sat. night and it was all gone. So something happened in that time frame.
Yup, someone flipped a switch on Saturday it seems.
AA has basically done this for YYZ-NYC & YYZ-PHL for the last few years. Bugs don’t last that long…
This news makes me sad and if it keeps up it will make me go to #AA
I was just checking from CLE-CUN this morning for November and there was no availability. Now it all makes sense. So frustrating!
NYC to yul (Montreal)
Before USAirways NYC-YYZ and NYC-YUL were always wide open.
Mergers are always #AAwful for consumers.
The new sky pesos