American Airlines has announced several AAdvantage changes for 2023 and dropped a bomb that will affect most who travel on awards.
American Airlines AAdvantage becomes fully dynamic with a “simplified” award chart. Why would there be an award chart if rewards are fully dynamic?
You can access AA’s page for awards here.
I would assume, based on the wording used on AA’s page, that only awards on American are fully dynamic and based on the underlying ticket price.
It would be challenging to implement this on partner awards that may include several airlines, and there may not always even be a reasonably priced fare filed for the city pair beyond IATA ones that are always sky-high unless there are drastic currency changes,
I would assume that each AAdvantage mile is worth roughly a cent when redeemed towards American flights under the dynamic program.
Conclusion
Airlines and hotels would prefer both earning and redeeming to be fully dynamic, that from our perspective, makes these programs boring cashback ones and suck all the fun out of them.
Why would you swipe cobranded credit cards when you would get a better return using a cashback one and then buy whatever flights and hotel rooms best fit your schedule rather than being tied to one airline or hotel program?
