After writing up my post about the AA award chart changes, I took a quick glance at Twitter.  There’s not quite the sharp response that was elicited by United and Delta during their recent devaluations, but I caught notice of American Airlines promising that all would be revealed in the morning.

Well, okay, they didn’t quite say that.  They went for:

You’ll see some changes to the AA and US websites. We plan to officially announce some new policies later this morning

Then the other shoe dropped:

US Airways has a new award chart out, increasing the price to 110k miles roundtrip for business class to North Asia.  Somewhat oddly, first class remains at 120k miles roundtrip.

While it’s not quite as bad as the feared fuel surcharges of last August, One Mile at a Time discusses how AA has quietly restricted its AAnytime awards.  In between his original post and my write-up of this, AA has released a new award chart with “five” tiers:

• MileSAAver Level 1: This looks like AA’s old off-peak awards.
• MileSAAver Level 2: These look like AA’s traditional peak MileSAAver awards.
• AAnytime Level 1: Old price
• AAnytime Level 2: New higher tier
• AAnytime Level 3: A very vague asterisk.

One commenter on FlyerTalk suggests that this is the start of market-based awards for last-seat availability:

It is meant to be announced tomorrow. AA did everything in their power to keep it hush hush until they sprang it on us. AAnytime awards will now be dynamic, meaning we will have to pay a premium on high demand dates/periods, and less on off peak periods. What is also unannounced as of yet is that International Gateway City Stopovers are also gone.

Emphasis mine on the real nugget in there.  Edit:  A quick search of NRT-LAX (stop)-BOS shows that this is pricing as two separate awards: