Rudi

American 9.8%
United 7.7%
Northwest 6.9%
Continental 5.8%
TWA 5.7%
Delta 5.4%
Southwest 4.9%
US Airways 4.9%

(Source: "Kiplinger's")

Note the spread between the most and least generous airlines.

The article is available online at: http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/?a...y/FREQUENT.HTM

Beckles

I don't think it is necessarily fair or accurate to just "compare the spread between the best and the worst".

AAdvantage is by far the biggest program, and more significantly, they probably give have more miles awarded for activities other than flying than any of the other airlines. What does that mean? Since they're giving away so many miles that weren't earned on flights they are going to need to assign more seats for free travel just to have the same level of relative availability as another airline.

MileKing

To some extent, I agree with Beckles. All things being equal, the numbers shown would be a good comparison. But of course, everything is not equal. The % of seats given for awards is only one piece of the puzzle. To truly make an accurate comparison between airlines, one would need to know what % of award requests are being filled. I have never seen this information anywhere and doubt the airlines would ever release it.

Without that inforamtion we have to look at other things. Beckles assertion that some airlines offer many more miles through non-flying activities is certainly true and adds to the competition for award seats on airlines like AA. The % of an airline's passengers that belong to the FF program is also a consideration. My guess is that AA and UA have a much higher % of passengers who are members of their respective FF programs than say US or a more regional airline like Midwest Express.

Load factors are also an issue. Delta consistently has higher load factors than other airlines - this may be part of the reason for the low % of award seats shown for Delta.

For what it's worth, I have had the best luck redeeming on AA and UA and the worst on US. I have no experience with DL, but from the infamous class-action suit and from what I've heard from others, it has to be the hardest airline to get award seats on.

geo1004

I've never had any problems getting an award flight on US Airways. BUT, given their concentration on the east coast of the US, they probably have a very high concentration of requests for the few "tourist" destinations they actually serve (Carribean, Orlando, Europe routes). After all, how often is someone going to request an award flight from Richmond, Virginia to Manchester, New Hampshire? Not too often I bet. This is opposed to UA or AA who have much more extensive domestic and international route networks and therefore probably get requests for a much broader range of award destinations. That is why it does not suprise me to see biggies like UA and AA at the top of this list and the smaller, more concentrated TWA, US Airways, and SW at the bottom. Delta, in my opinion, looks like the "tough ticket" to me. Glad I don't fly them too often.

[This message has been edited by geo1004 (edited 06-11-1999).]

philforest

I'm with Beckles & MileKing. I don't think the important measure is how many "free" (none of them are free, you know - we've paid for them through the nose) seats are available. It's how many FF requests for awards (whether they're for free seats or for upgrades) are honored. And, if the requests are for free seats, how many are for coach and how many are for first, and how many of each are honored? That's the true measure of whether a FF program does what it pretends to do. I'm going to ask Randy to look at this post (although I'm sure he already has).

pgupta011

I'm in agreement too. An important factor should be how many requests are denied. Also I thought that Southwest airlines had no capacity controls, i.e. if there was a seat was available for paying customers, it could be claimed as a FF award. Is that still true - if so then the numbers do not mean anything.

dgolds

One additional reason that AA and UA top the list is that these two programs have miles that expire. The others, to my knowledge, don't. (DL miles don't expire as long as you fly them every three years.)

If I have miles in my UA account and my CO account, I'm going to try and claim awards with the UA miles and bank the others. I have held on to my 40K miles on US Airways for years now.

ranles

For really Frequest fliers, the issue is often getting a business class or first class ticket. While we have not had any problems getting coach tickets on UA, we have found that at least one way on the last two trips attempts, we were unavailable on any flight #, during low time for the location and given a willingness to travel a week worth of spread to reserve a first class ticket! This has been true with tickets requested a year in advance (the plane had been opened for booking, not one seat had been taken yet), and more recently, 6 months in advance (still waiting for it to clear!!) and being a 1-k!

I believe the sheer percentage of seats set aside is of value in considering programs. I also agree with other posts here that it can also be very misleading. Some airlines are so agressive with the points granted, not for flights, that it creates demand for cashing those points that does not relate to the carrying capacity of that airline versus percentage seats offered.

Perhaps some airline will pledge, in some binding form, that all flights offered will provide X% seats for frequent flyer tickets. Terms would include each class of service and on a "saver/planahead basis" provided the request was made at least X days before the flight.

The bill of rights being shoved around Congress hopefully will insure that complete disclosure is made by airlines as to the availability of seats. This would be similar to disclosures on contests, etc. If you offer a program, publish the awards available, and then refuse to provide those awards, then some intervention may be appropriate. We cannot vote with our feet, as these program have us locked in when we have banked 100,000s of miles credit. The same can be said with the hotel programs.

In the meantime, each of us seem to be attempting to address this problem, with each other and occasionally with the airlines as the case arises. More on that later.

philforest

pgupta011: I'll gladly revise my earlier comment. It's not so important how many requests for "free" seats or upgrades are honored as how many are denied.. Hey, if an airline never gets a request for an upgrade, it can advertise: "We honor 100% of our upgrade requests." If that's a line that has only one class, go figure.