I was out of the office last week (see Out of the Office: Member-Guest Golf Tournament) and didn’t open my laptop one time. While it was a great break from work, I missed out on what is being called the deal of the decade. Apparently, AA miles were on sale for next to nothing and many bought millions of miles in the hopes that the deal would be honored. I can’t say I’m too disappointed because I do not like buying miles. At the same time, the cost of buying miles and what I could do with them, provided that travel returns and AA doesn’t massively devalue its program to correct this gigantic sale, had me feeling bad that I didn’t at least know about the promo to do my own research.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been away and have missed something while out of the office. But having been in this game long enough, I can tell anyone else out there that didn’t capitalize on this offer that it’s okay not to always be on top of every breaking development. So many people who are points obsessed amass a large fortune of points and do nothing spectacular with them.
I hope the next time I decide to disconnect that this doesn’t happen again, but if it does, I’ll get through it.
AA has about 1 trillion miles outstanding, so this promotion shouldn’t have much impact on devaluation.
The will devalue regardless but this will just make awards tough (tougher) in 2022 and 2023. It’s OK to miss out. I have missed out on many error fares but did manage to get in on this for about 650k in AA miles. I was afraid to invest more because my risk appetite with AA is less than my risk tolerance.