Last month, Etihad made an unannounced change to their award chart for Royal Air Maroc flights, deciding to now charge segment by segment and making any award that connects in Morocco cost more than before (as previously any point to any point even via CMM was one award and maxed at 44,000 miles.
In this article
American Airlines Awards on Etihad May Now Be Pricing Segment by Segment
Today, a MilesTalk Facebook Group member (HT: Julian B.) let me know that they have twice now been told the same applies to American Airlines
flights. Specifically, I am referring to when you use Etihad Guest miles (usually transferred from a bank partner) to book American Airlines flights. This has long been a sweet spot of the Etihad Guest program, especially since you can book an AA transcon in First for 25,000 miles while AA would charge 50,000 AAdvantage miles. You can similarly fly from the US to Europe for 50,000 in First vs. AA’s 85,000 AAdvantage mile price.
He tells me “After calling 2 times and having each rep confirm, they have decided to price international flights with a domestic connecting flight segment by segment. So, if you were going AUS-LAX-PEK, that prices out at 12.5k for AUS-LAX and then 35k for LAX-PEK.”
He then says a memo was circulated internally back in August per another Etihad agent, but adds that he was able to get a third agent to price it the old way. As with when the Royal Air Maroc change was first being made, this seems to be the kind of thing that an agent can (somehow) price the old way if you get lucky. Their system always seems to be pretty manual, which is why I think this can be done with the right / helpful agent, but I suspect many more will simply not allow it.
Have you booked connecting AA itineraries using Etihad Guest miles lately? Same result?
Let me know here, on Twitter, or in the private MilesTalk Facebook group.
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