Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan - 2012 Ranking: Best and Worst for Awards

Recently read the May 17th Wall Street Journal and gleened some facts about Air Awards. I know many of us have commented on how difficult it seems to get low miles awards. Here is the data from the Journal (have left out the non domestic airllines).

Airline / % available / Change from 2011

Southwest / 100% / +0.7
United / 87.1% / +15.7
JetBlue / 86.4% / +7.1
Alaska Air / 59.3% / -5.0
American Air / 45.7% / -17.2
US Airways / 33.6% / +7.9
Delta Airlines / 27.1% / 0.0

Based on two seats on the ten busiest routes on each airline using fourteen different dates.

Kind of misleading in the case of Southwest, since their transition to points. They have a seat on any flight, but since the # of points required is directly tied to the airfare available at the time, you might have to shell out anywhere from 7,000 to 70,000 pts.

For me, it's taken away any motivation to rack up points on Southwest at all.

If you look at what's available on AS between ANC and anywhere outside of Alaska, it's a very low percentage at the 25K level - stingy would be giving it a high rating!

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If you look at what's available on AS between ANC and anywhere outside of Alaska, it's a very low percentage at the 25K level - stingy would be giving it a high rating!

I've heard that many flights between SEA-ANC are full of mileage redemptions. Upwards of 30% - this is from a MVPG lunch several years ago. Granted may not all be at 'low' levels but there are a ton of miles in the State of Alaska :eek:

The data was based on the lowest, be it miles or points, award level for each airline

You should also consider the impact of the United / Continental merger. Possibly backing out some of the +15% increase

If you look at what's available on AS between ANC and anywhere outside of Alaska, it's a very low percentage at the 25K level - stingy would be giving it a high rating!

I'm sorry getting out of Alaska doesn't have the low award redemption that coming in does! Just finished a trip SEA-ANC-BRW-FAI-SEA, all for just 25,000 miles!