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How does dynamic pricing work?
How does dynamic pricing work?

Airlines can dynamically raise the price of their flights. This is how we handle it.

Ian Carroll avatar
Written by Ian Carroll
Updated over a week ago

When booking flights with miles, there are generally two types of redemptions:

  • Fixed-price redemptions, often referred to as "saver" level awards. Saver awards are often the only type of award that can be booked across airlines. For example, Avianca LifeMiles can only book saver awards on flights, when they are operated by United Airlines and other partners.

  • Dynamically priced redemptions, where the airline dynamically changes the price of the award based on demand. Delta Air Lines is one example of extremely expensive dynamic award pricing.

Seats.aero always shows you fixed-price redemptions, as they are usually reasonably priced. However, when a redemption is dynamically priced, we need to determine if the cost is "worth it". Otherwise, you'd see a bunch of options, but way out of your price range.

We use the following table to determine if an award is displayed as available or not. If an award exceeds these thresholds, it is like it does not exist (to us), and they won't appear anywhere on the site.

Mileage Program

Economy

Premium Economy

Business

First

Aeromexico Club Premier

10,000/hour (max 10h)

15,000/hour

20,000/hour

-

Air Canada Aeroplan

7,500/hour

10,000/hour

12,500/hour

15,000/hour

Air France/KLM Flying Blue

5,000/hour

10,000/hour

15,000/hour

15,000/hour

Alaska Mileage Plan

<150,000 points

<150,000 points

<150,000 points

<150,000 points

American Airlines

5,000/hour

7,500/hour

10,000/hour (max 10h)

15,000/hour (max 10h)

Delta SkyMiles

10,000/hour

15,000/hour

20,000/hour

-

Etihad Guest

10,000/hour (max 10h)

15,000/hour

20,000/hour

-

United MileagePlus

7,500/hour

10,000/hour

14,000/hour

20,000/hour (max 10h)

JetBlue TrueBlue

10,000/hour

15,000/hour

20,000/hour

-

Thresholds are expressed in the airline's miles per flight hour. Flight hours are rounded down and includes the combined blocked flight time for all segments; it does not include connection time.
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