Ever since our backlog of miles ran out, we've been buying one or two flights and using air miles to book one or two flights each year. Over the years the number of miles required to redeem award travel has inched its way up so that it now takes 80K miles to travel to London and back from Dallas. At least that's what it was last year.
American Airlines announced last fall that they would be making changes to the frequent flyer program. I thought they were going to double the amount of miles needed to book award travel. So I was surprised when I went online and looked and the number of miles required for a one way trip to London was still 40K.
But then I tried to book a trip. I've got to hand it to those programmers over at American Airlines. Those are some really complex algorithms. In theory it's 40K miles each way. It was April and I was trying to book for August - four months out. Their system displays a calendar with the number of miles required for the flight on the date you selected. I selected a non-stop flight out of Dallas. (We did the Chicago layover once - never again! You have to pay for a hotel in Chicago AND you arrive in London so late that you can't get food. But I'm rambling now - back to the point.) It was all well and good but when I tried to select a return flight at 40K miles, my choices were all in the following month. We planned to be there for three weeks, not a month. That just wasn't going to work. We're flexible, but not that flexible. Another option was to use more miles. But because our miles are not evenly distributed between us, one of us could use more miles but the other could not. They charge an exorbitant amount to share miles. They charge even more to buy the extra miles you need. You might as well buy the ticket.
I checked the price and it was over $4000 each. I was shocked. This is the price we paid when we got the call about Mark's dad last year and had to get on the plane the following day. We were four months out. It should be cheaper when you book that far in advance. In the end, I booked a flight through Iberia Air - $1200. Not cheap, but more in line with what I expected. But here's what I didn't expect - when my flight confirmation came through, I learned that the Iberia Air flight is operated by American Airlines. That means it's the exact same flight that I'd have paid $4000 for if I'd booked it through American. The primary difference other than the price is that since I've booked with Iberia, I won't get those American air miles.
And that's not such a big loss because I'm not sure you can do anything with them. I thought that since we couldn't use air miles to go to England, maybe we could use them to book our Hawaii flights. But it was the same thing - we'd have to be gone a month, stop all over the country or use three times the number of miles.
I have now taken those credit cards that were giving me air miles and converted them to something useful - cash back or points that can be redeemed for restaurant or hotel gift cards. I hope I can use those nearly 200K air miles on something, someday. Doesn't look like they will be used on air travel.
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