JP partner awards Part 2 - looking at specific changes, some good routes remain

Continuing with the analysis of the changes to JP partner redemptions, I'm looking at the specifics of the changes in this post, as also good routes under the new requirements.

This is a series in 4 parts, indexed as follows:

Announcement and the changes to partner awards requirements

Preliminary analysis of the changes

Specific changes, good routes under the new chart, etc

Workarounds and hacks

As I mentioned earlier, the new construct has 13 zones, compared to the earlier 23 zones. Therefore, for ease of reference and to facilitate comparison, I've selected one city in that zone as a fixed point, against which I've compared mileage requirements under the new and old structures.

The big picture

On the whole, 13 zones represent 169 combinations of zones that could potentially be ticketed (though some of them currently don't have a published mileage requirement). Of these, the award mileage requirements have changed as follows:

• 12 zone combinations (7%) increased by more than 100%
• 30 zone combinations (18%) increased by between 50-100%
• 65 zone combinations (38%) increased by up to 50%
• 6 zone combinations (3%) have remained unchanged in terms of miles required
• 20 zone combinations (12%) have lower mileage requirements now than before
• 42 zone combinations (25%) cannot be priced under the new combination, or did not offer a route in the previous construct.

Chart shows changes in mileage requirements

Overall, the simple average of increases is around 26% in terms of miles required, though that's neither here nor there! The highest increase is within Zone 12, of 500%, or 6 times the previous requirement (up from 2,500 miles to 15,000 miles). This is the intra-US sweet spot I referred to in my earlier post, which now costs . On the other hand, reductions go as low as 33%, for routes within Zone 10 (another intra-US set of sectors, which has gone down from 15,000 to 10,000 miles).

The new mileage requirements

I've re-formatted and presented the zone-wise mileage requirement for award tickets, below. The colour shading is with reference to the From Zone on the left, with greens being the sectors with the lowest mileage requirement for an award ticket from that zone, and red being the most expensive mileage requirement. Therefore, this has nothing to do with the change from old to new; rather, it might help decide which is a more affordable destination zone from a given starting zone.

New mileage requirements effective 1 April 2016

For comparative reference, here's the same set of routes mapped to the previous mileage requirements.

Mileage requirement valid till 31 March 2016

So, for sectors ex-India (Zone 4),

• All redemptions, where available, have gone up in terms of miles required.
• Redemptions to Zone 5 (Middle East) are the cheapest at 24,000 miles. These used to cost 20,000 miles earlier, thereby representing a 20% increase.
• The most expensive redemptions will now be to Zone 11 (South West US) at 100,000 miles, a 43% increase over the 70,000 miles that were needed earlier.

Are there any sweet spots left?

That depends on how you define a sweet spot. All the extremely low mileage requirements are gone. But nonetheless, here are some thoughts on what could provide good value for the miles redeemed, now that the new charts will be the norm going forward.

• Travel within Zone 9 (Newark, Toronto, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc) and within Zone 10 (Atlanta, Daytona, Carolina, Florida, etc) are the cheapest at 10,000 miles per segment. While this isn't as good as the 2,500 mile requirement earlier, it is still the least expensive. So, depending on the actual cities that one is flying between, this zone may yield some good value.

Cheapest redemptions are in North East US and Canada...

...and the South East US.

• In addition, travel between the following zone combinations (and vice versa) are now actually cheaper than before (you can view the mileage requirements in the first table above):
• 1 to 9, 11 and 12
• 2 to 8
• 3 to 9, 11 and 12
• 5 to 11
• 7 to 8
• 8 to 12
• within 10.

• All of Europe is now in one zone, compared to before (3 zones). Therefore, some intra-Europe routes, that used to cost up to 25,000 miles (between Eastern Europe and Western Europe) will now cost only 15,000 miles, which is pretty useful, if you ask me.

All of Europe is now a single zone, which is great for routes like IST-LHR - only 15,000 miles

In the final part of this series, I will deal with some workarounds and hacks.