American 'Shuffles' Its Award Ticket Prices, Stays Quiet About Dynamic Pricing

What to Know Now

There was much ado earlier this week about an apparent move that American Airlines took to move its AAdvantage loyalty program towards a dynamic pricing model (which would be horrible for frequent flyers) and it looks like the carrier is now taking extra steps to ensure the user base that that's not actually the case.

The kerfuffle started when a blogger posted speculation that American was jimmying with award ticket prices on premium routes -- a change that was generally corroborated by internal staff. For many, including myself, the logical conclusion was that the airline was setting itself up for a larger scale dynamic pricing campaign.

Since then, American has reached out to highlight that it only "shuffled" award prices on a number of higher end awards -- something well within its purview as the operator of AAdvantage. But was it all part of a larger scheme to move the system over to dynamic pricing? Crickets.

Social Quote of the Day

UAL is the clear winner here. Standardized pricing, a good group of partners, an improved business class product on their own metal (eventually), and a new CEO that clearly wants to make things better. Even with the upcoming routing changes, they still allow stopovers and they provided more than adequate notice that a change was coming. They have my trust and my loyalty.

- DB @ OneMileataTime

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Hotels

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Your Turn

Panna, the easy-to-follow receipe site, has a new Editor in Chief and it's none other than Matt Gross, the formal Frugal Traveler. Congrats Matt.

Tips and Comments

Can be sent to gm[at]skift[dot]com or to @grantkmartin

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