In between timeouts, I read a couple of TPOL’s old posts. The noteworthy one is called Goodbye US Airways, Hello Devaluation? and is reproduced below.
Woke up this morning ready for the new American Airlines to take flight. Step 1 was to check my shiny, new AAdvantage balance to see the treasure trove of miles. AwardWallet showcased the demise of Dividend Miles. However when I went to American Airlines, the balance had yet to update. I’m slightly nervous as to how smoothly this transition will go especially since my British Avios have disappeared, hack or no hack.
I’m sure eventually the miles will show up making me feel good about having hundreds of thousands of miles that can take me anywhere around the world.
That feeling will quickly pass when the inevitable AA devaluation hits leaving us all scrambling for Etihad Apartments from JFK to AUH. The fact that I still had any US Airways miles in my account means I did a poor job of following my own advice: Shut Up And Book!
So before every blog goes crazy and condemns this for profit airline for making our miles worthless, ThePointsOfLife recommends spending a few minutes planning imaginary trips for when disaster strikes.
That was posted on March 28th, 2015. TPOL isn’t psychic. We’ve all been in this game long enough to know that devaluations are inevitable. What’s striking is how every merger promises more options for the consumers but without fail, within a year, there are always less. Luckily, we don’t have to fall for Marriott’s promises in 2016 only to be searching for aspirational bookings in 2017.
I just booked all my 400,000 Aadvantage miles on non AA flights 😉
Whoa. Where to? Or maybe where not to
Etihad: F Amman-Abu Dhabi – JFK- LAX
Qatar: F Paris – Doha – Amman (you should do this for your Amman trip) (x2)
Cathay: F to Hong Kong
JAL: economy off peak to Japan (x2)
Hmm. You may have outdone me
now the issue will be squeezing time for all those trips in the next 331 days!
so much for going to the gym
ok im working on something, AA says it will take 2 hours to call me back…
i passed on the cdg-amm because i’d be going from moscow and it’s $243 direct flight in economy versus 40k.
i did put it on hold just in case you convince me otherwise
I would stick with direct on economy cause I also paid around $170 in taxes.
yeah it was $106/pax! jerks
yeah I connec thru frankfurt too so thats why its higher. This is the last time I go out of my way for premium seats since sometimes I direct economy flight makes much more sense. You can use those 40k miles, well 45k now for a round trip to europe off peak in the future.
exactly! i was like wait, what am i doing? do i care that much about the doha lounge? it was worth the exercise to evaluate the booking. once i have my certainty, i will book houston to moscow on singapore then pay to fly to amman. morocco may be cut because it’s not convenient.
Use BA avios next time you’re in Europe to go to to Morocco. I want to fly houston -moscow but suites class is nearly impossible to find!
avios still wasnt a great deal. i ended up finding that routing via ukraine was the best way somehow
So you’re going US to morocco via Ukraine and then onto Amman?
nah i cut morocco. i think it’s houston to moscow to amman…morocco for 2017? too many imaginary trips to keep up with. And isn’t it only 777 to moscow, no a380? so i was thinking maybe i do business not first…
yeah I am going crazy too with the “need” to book trips when I should focus on something else. The Houston – Moscow should be A380 although from what I recall business to first its a small difference in miles (small difference in service too since they both are amazing anyways). Morocco is so close to Europe that you should do that when you do a European trip.
Of course I should go to Morocco but it’s not priority #1. And it’s 777 from everything I’ve checked and a380flights.net doesn’t have it as a a380 route.
I don’t mind burning TY points for SQ but I don’t think I would spend the extra 10k for first on 777.
also its 17k for economy which is sooo tempting! i just hate paying $200 for taxes though whichever way you slice it. 777 is nice too, maybe they rotate the A380 on that route.
yeah and i dont have any arrival credit to offset that. 17k haa so cheap
And yes I need to do work too. Booking a flight doesn’t count.
and i like how u added the lax segment, maximizing first!