British Airways has offered great award availability, but at a high price in cash in addition to miles. In nearly all cases fuel surcharges are added to awards when redeeming for long haul travel on BA. Some partner programs, like Cathay Pacific Asia Miles, charge less cash for these awards than others like American AAdvantage and Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan.

Over the past couple of weeks British Airways has seemed to limit partner access to awards. The space available to its own Executive Club members is much greater than that which is offered to those in partner frequent flyer programs. And this has taken both loyalty program members and executives in partner programs by surprise. Discussions are ongoing.

Since I started looking at this, Australian Frequent Flyer has posited the theory that BA award space is only available to partners when there’s more than 8 coach, 2 premium economy, or 4 business class award seats available (with no separate restriction on first class awards).

This mostly matches my experience, though I note that a U.S. point of sale for British Airways Executive Club may show less award space right now than a U.K. point of sale and as a result U.S. Executive Club members can sometimes show fewer award seats than American AAdvantage has access to, even while U.K. members see more than AAdvantage gets.

I’m hoping that this is all a big screw up and miscommunication, but it’s certainly a change where right now just because you see space at BA.com doesn’t mean that space is available to American AAdvantage (for award or confirmed upgrade) or Alaska’s Mileage Plan.

Good Availability For Costly Awards

British Airways offers fantastic award space, but it’s too costly for many to book.

• They have very premium-heavy cabins, so often more business class seats than they can sell
  
• And they have a commitment to members to make award space available as soon as their schedule loads 355 days prior to departure (on top of continuing to evaluate loads and potentially making more seats available)
  
• However these awards come with hefty fuel surcharges.

A roundtrip business class award from Los Angeles to London and back will incur $1,900 in fuel surcharges, plus $236 departure tax from the U.K. in addition to other taxes in addition to the miles. For advance purchase itineraries it can be a better deal to purchase the tickets outright, especially during a fare sale.

It’s cheaper to book roundtrips that originate in the U.K., both in dollars and in fuel surcharges on awards. As a result booking two one-ways using miles rather than a roundtrip will often save a few hundred dollars. That London-originating one-way flight will have $557 in fuel surcharges instead of $930, netting a $337 savings (about $1000 for a party of three!).

Limiting Award Space Offered To Partners Is Increasingly Common

For years Lufthansa has made more premium cabin award space to its own Miles & More members than it does to partner airlines – even joint venture partners like United where they’re sharing revenue across the Atlantic. If you want to book Lufthansa first class much in advance, that requires using Miles & More. And Lufthansa-owned Swiss only makes first class awards available to Miles & More elites.

Meanwhile Air France KLM’s Flying Blue has pretty good availability for its own members, even those just transferring points from a U.S. bank program, and very little business class space for SkyTeam partners. (Air France first class awards are only available to upper-tier elites, and then only one seat and at extortionate rates.)

The phenomenon of limiting award space to your own members has been spreading. It’s long been the case that ‘extra availability’ is only open to one’s own members, spending more miles for better inventory. Sometimes the pricing might just be 1,000 miles different, but ‘saver’ space offered to partners isn’t available.

We’ve seen airlines like Qantas release premium cabin space for their own members once Australia re-opened from the pandemic. In the past that space would regularly be available to all of its partners, although sometimes wouldn’t show correctly on the American Airlines website.

For over a decade Singapore Airlines has mostly limited long haul first and business class redemptions to its own KrisFlyer members. Oddly over the past few years that has opened up so that Alaska Airlines and Air Canada had access to the space (and sometimes Miles & More) but not other partners like United.

These are just a few examples. Negotiations between airlines over award space can be complicated.

• Airlines want their own members incentivized to earn miles, so an airline wants their partners to open up space to make it possible for their members to travel the world. They also don’t always want to pay for that space.

• Before being acquired by Continental, United Airlines would block their agents from seeing availability offered by partners whenever they ran up against the quarterly budget for awards with that partner.

• Meanwhile airlines may want to be paid by partners for the award seats they don’t expect to sell, but have a competing desire to make sure that the space is available to their own members to keep those members on the earn treadmill.

While alliances have been fraying generally, in favor of joint business ventures that are almost akin to mergers (without dealing with pesky foreign ownership restrictions), those joint ventures haven’t usually manifested in better award availability. It’s notable that partners like Alaska Airlines and Qantas are facing the same limits on British Airways availability that American Airlines has at the moment.

Complicated Negotiations Between Airlines

oneworld partner awards are negotiated bilaterally, which makes them cumbersome to change. That may be the biggest reason we haven’t seen a devaluation of partner awards at American AAdvantage (with the last change 7 years ago). So while AAdvantage miles are generally worth so much less for redemption on American Airlines flights, they’ve retained their value when spent on Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Qatar Airways flights and others.

It’s unclear whether the American Airlines – British Airways agreement on award availability specifies prices and availability buckets or has more detailed terms, but I’m hearing that British Airways award “inventory should be the same” for AAdvantage members and Executive Club members and I understand that American is in contact with British Airways over this issue. Since I don’t know the language of their agreement, I don’t know what the outcome will be.

I should add that accommodations can be made outside of the formal agreement as well. When US Airways joined oneworld, Dividend Miles redemption pricing was a fairly manual process and they weren’t programmed to add fuel surcharges to redemptions. They made an agreement with British Airways that this wouldn’t be a priority, since Dividend Miles was going to be folded into AAdvantage anyway. However when a certain big blog highlighted BA redemptions without fuel surcharges through Dividend Miles, volume increased enough that they had to make the change.