Anyone else notice this: AA.com/DynamicAirAwards or am I just late to the party? AAdvantage® elite status members have exclusive access to a new flight redemption option with Dynamic AirSM awards. You can now use your miles to book any Economy Class seat for travel within the U.S.* for fewer miles than what's required for an AAnytime® award. The number of miles required for Dynamic Air awards is based on published fares and will vary as fares vary.
Interesting. As a non elite, I can't play around with it to see what the redemption values come in at. Be interested in seeing if anyone can find a ticket for less than their minimum redemption cost for a very low fare flight.
Even though Dynamic Air Awards and marketed as being a product that sits between MilesAAver and AAnytime awards, the FAQ's indicate that you can get a one way trip for 10,000 miles (less than MilesAAver). Presumably the 'dynamic' part of the program is similar to the hotel and car booking system, in that it will calculate a mileage cost based on the lowest available ticket cost at the time of booking. Unfortunately AA.com has just gone down so I can't explore further.
Hello Milepoint friends, Looks like you already discovered our new award option – way to be on the ball! For those who are interested, here are the full details. As a continuation of our 30th anniversary celebration, we're excited to introduce new Dynamic Air awards exclusively for our elite status members (Gold, Platinum and Executive Platinum). With this new award, you can use your miles to book any Economy Class seat on any flight for travel within the U.S. 48 for fewer miles than what's required for an AAnytime award. It might even be fewer miles than our traditional MileSAAver award! The number of miles needed is based on applicable published fares. As fares vary so will the amount of miles required. There are no black-out dates or inventory restrictions. If there’s a seat available for sale with cash, you can use your miles instead. However, as some of you have noted, there are a few limitations (here’s where the fine print comes in)… these awards are only available for Economy Class seats on flights within the U.S. 48 and once booked, these awards can’t be changed. Except for our Exec Plats, cancellations will incur a mileage reinstatement fee. But don’t worry, you’re still able to book MileSAAver and AAnytime awards. Now, you’ll just have an additional option when redeeming miles for travel. You’ve asked for more flexibility with your miles and we’re listening. I encourage you to check out this new award type and I’m interested to hear what you think. You can book these awards and also learn more at http://bit.ly/dynamicair. Maya Leibman President – AAdvantage Loyalty Program
Oh Maya... The most important option for me is exactly the international legs!!! Why can't you expand this for the same on AA metal only??
This is a nice option to have as long as they keep the standard MileSAAver and AAnytime options, too. However, if this is a test run to switch over completely to a fare-based redemption system, then that would really drastically reduce the appeal of the AA program.
AA's derivation of pay-with-points? If so, interesting it's constrained to Contiguous-48 only. Maybe that's just pilot before they expand to other geographies. Oh, Presumable we're "buying" a non-"T" class ticket, so would we earn miles?
You hit the key point. Extra options are always welcome. My initial reaction when I read of this program was, "this is the first step in killing the 25k mile redemption." AA has some of the best low miles award availability. I really hope that doesn't change as a result of this program. I'm usually not so negative...but this feels like writing on the wall.
Before we morph into the sky is falling mode (read ..just like FT) lets just wait a litlle or better still do some investigation as to how this will pan out. MY PERSONAL observation at looking at a numbers awards before this was put in place is that IN EVERY INSTANCE the dynamic awards have been added to the existing inventory and I have not seem any change in Milesaaver awards listed. In fact looking around the Thanksgiving holidays I have able to find additional awards at nonimal increases .. 2.5 -5k where previously only AAnytime was listed .. based on just these few data points I see the usefulness of these awards to some at least. .....many others it will just provide another thing to complain about.
Unfortunately, due to some technical limitations, we are unable to offer Dynamic Air Awards to members outside of the U.S. at this time. We appreciate the candid feedback, and will continue to work to make this available. We do value our international members, and will continue to evaluate opportunities to provide value to you.
**Total Speculation Alert** Does anyone think that maybe one reason to roll this out would be to allow burn of AAdvantage miles on B6 (and Trueblue points on AA)? There is already earning opportunity across the programs on selected routes, but no burn because the two use very different "currencies." Enter dynamic AAwards and suddenly AA has the ability to match the Trueblue structure. Y-only makes sense too since that's the only product that B6 offers. Again, total speculation, but it makes a little sense to have elites play with this for a while as kind of a beta-test to make sure they get the conversion rates down and the system set and then roll it out for cross-burn with B6 at the least on the routes where there is already cross-earning available.
Don't many airlines already allow the redemption of awards on other carriers that have redemption structures that are completely different? I'm not sure I see how "aligning" the programs actually facilities redemption any more than keeping them completely different. So if CX customers can redeem on AA using a distance method, and AA customers can redeem on CX with the current geographic zone levels, why can't AA and B9 provide awards with different systems? If anything I think this is a way for AA to get miles off its books and reduce liability. I'd say that most people probably save miles for bigger redemptions (HNL/LHR/NRT). Why use AA miles when you can just pay $150 R/T to LAX? This new system that links the miles required to the cost of an actual purchased ticket combats the CPM dilemma people seem to have with domestic redemptions.
You're probably right. It was just interesting to see that his makes at least one type of award on AA fairly similar to the way that B6 handles awards (others like WN and VX as well) and once I had that thought it made me wonder whether there was a reason AA and B6 might want comparability on domestic Y awards.
Maya/AA: The dynamic rewards option is not seeming to recognize Key West, FL as a valid destination option for the dynamic rewards, despite being in the contiguous 48 states.
This is an interesting option... as mentioned kind of like a "Pay with Miles" option, though from what I've seen so far you can do a lot better (or worse) than the flat 1cpm of DL's option Question for AA is if you are willing to sell a seat for < 12,500 miles under DM, why not make the same seat available for saver award inventory?? Of course the benefit of the latter is you can then combine that leg with other flights on international itins etc.
There's probably a number of reasons, like the one you sighted about combining with other legs, as well as only AA elites can use Dynamic with AAdvantage miles.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention Max! We looked into this and determined there was a minor bug with Dynamic Air which was creating a search result error for American Connection flights. As of Friday (8/12), it's been fixed.
And for anyone wondering, these tickets (even though issued in the Q fare class) are, in fact, not upgradeable nor should mileage post to your account for them. I just had a nice chat with AA Executive Relations about that (they wanted to make sure that since it happened for me, I didn't expect it if I booked additional DynamicAir tickets).
I am having a similar issue with the Dynamic Air Awards booking engine. It is not recognizing Wilmington (ILM) as a destination - also within the contiguous 48 states, serviced by American Eagle. Specifically,ORD-ILM. When I called last week to report this, reservations sent me to Web Services. Three different agents attempted to help, until I was told that a ticket/issue would be logged. I've also written to Web Services - which directed me to AA reservations. *sigh*
BUMP This never was addressed or fixed, in my case, despite speaking with AA web services two times and writing in to AA. In the end, I booked a MileSAAver. I generally have a positive attitude toward AA and feel that the company is responsive when I have a problem. This, however, left me with a "bad taste in my mouth" to use a cliche. 2/9/12 Problem resolved as of today. AA contacted me via phone a few times (but went to voicemail) throughout. I'm happy it was resolved, too late for me, unfortunately.
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