MilesBuzz! - Comparing fly2/get 1 free tix promos?

It seems that AA,Delta,United offer alike fly2/get 1 fee tix promos to/from NY and Boston from CA and FL. AA seems to require a Saturday night stay, has special low rates , plus has 5,000 mile bonus promo. Delta does not require Saturday night stay, nor non-stop flights. U does not allow a Saturday night stay.
Have you seen a comparison in more detail? Any other airlines? Which one do you think is the best promo(not considering the destination of the award tix)?

After enduring a frustrating 30 minute wait in the non-elite line at Delta, I think I would do the promo for whatever airline you are elite on. Get the perks now when you fly and later when you have your free ticket.

I still think AA has the best deal, others have just copied it and applied their own restrictions. UA can get you farther but again, how long do you really want to be in a Y seat to Australia?!!?

For clarification:

To qualify for the free tickets AA does not require a sat nite stay. The free ticket from AA requires a sat nite stay.

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Gumbo Cook

I beleive that on Delta "T" class does not qualify.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by idealflyer:
After enduring a frustrating 30 minute wait in the non-elite line at Delta, I think I would do the promo for whatever airline you are elite on. Get the perks now when you fly and later when you have your free ticket.

I still think AA has the best deal, others have just copied it and applied their own restrictions. UA can get you farther but again, how long do you really want to be in a Y seat to Australia?!!? </font>

YES I really want to be in a Y seat to Australia especially a free one, but I doubt with capacity control I will do too good competing with tens or hundreds of thousands of others for those prized seats.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by jerry crump:
YES I really want to be in a Y seat to Australia especially a free one, but I doubt with capacity control I will do too good competing with tens or hundreds of thousands of others for those prized seats.</font>

You can't get to Australia on AA.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by zakami:
You can't get to Australia on AA.</font>
The point was that UA DOES fly to Australia!!!


Kathy

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by zakami:
You can't get to Australia on AA.</font>

..but you can get to Madrid, Zurich and Rome (seasonal service) on AA, while you currently cannot on UA. Each program has its strong points.

What a waste to use it for Australia, wouldn't you prefer to buy a $999 ticket when they are on sale from JFK, earn 20k+ elite bonuses + use your SWU to upgrade to J. Business class and 40k miles later, that is the treat, plus you are almost Silver again with just 1 roundtrip.

The only real benefit for the free systemwide ticket in Y to Australia is for those people who are not elite, probably have not traveled out of the country and maybe only fly 5 times a year. In other words, not people like us who fly to Singapore for a weekend because it is such a good deal.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by idealflyer:
In other words, not people like us who fly to Singapore for a weekend because it is such a good deal. </font>

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

I have been reading in several posts that people think it will be difficult to get a UA award ticket to Australia. I decided to just see what the availability is right now. I tried 6 dates in June and July and there was economy class availability with about 6 options for every date I tried.

I think people overestimate the demand for awards. I have flown on international award tickets every summer for the past 4 years and while it may take some time to get dates I have always succeeded. And I usually don't book much more than a month in advance. People who earn a free award and book right away shouldn't have much problem with UA in my opinion.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by satori:
I have been reading in several posts that people think it will be difficult to get a UA award ticket to Australia. I decided to just see what the availability is right now. I tried 6 dates in June and July and there was economy class availability with about 6 options for every date I tried.
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You checked AWARD availability? (If so, how?) Or purchase availability? (You didn't mention checking a particular fare class -- and the awards are only avialable in one -- or at most a very few -- of the MANY fare classes that make up "economy" -- which leads me to believe you did the latter. On AA they're all in T fare class -- the most capacity-controlled award class there is -- but I'm not sure about UA.)

There is little correlation between the two (except that award availability is never more than purchase availability, but at most airlines it's a small fraction of purchase availability).

I'm not familiar with United's economy award availability procedures, but at many airlines they only allocate a small handful of seats per flight (sometimes as few as one or two!) even on flights with hundreds of available-for-purchase economy seats!

Furthermore, no one who participates in this promo has gotten an award available to book yet. So the question is not even how many award seats are available now, the question is: If you don't get your award (or can't pick your award date) until weeks after thousands of other people have gotten their awards (nowhere in the rules does it guarantee specific timeliness or even relative-to-others timeliness of delivering your award, does it?), THEN what will the availability be?

I'll simply say that having redeemed dozens of awards in economy, business, and first class on UA, I feel confident that I know how to look up award availability and it is there right now in economy class.

Perhaps there will be thousands of people trying to redeem awards to SYD and MEL, but I don't think so. And as someone who redeems 6 to 10 airline awards a year I think that if a person really wants to go to Australia with their free UA ticket that they have a good chance of getting an award if they give it a full effort and keep trying.

Personally, I am not that concerned if there is economy availability or not as I plan to be flying on a UA or Qantas First Class award to Australia this summer and I am confident about getting that also.

With DL you cannot quallify for the free ticket with T class fares. However, one plus with DL's offer is that it allows nonstop or connecting service from NY/BOS to either CA/FL. AA's offer only applies to nonstop FL/CA flights. As for using the free ticket, I too could not stand it on an intl in Y. I would probably use the free tickets on shuttle, commuter flights (believe it or not those fares can be very high) or I would give them to someone who does not mind flying Y over the pond. Most people would be thrilled to fly Y over the pond. We are among such a small segment of the population who has ever or let alone regularly flys in J or F.

in regards to the UA awards, everyone keeps talking about going to Australia. not everyone would use the tickets accordingly. keep in mind, FTers are a different breed and would maximize the full use of these tickets.

along those lines, while there are certain blackout dates applied to these tickets, isn't Australia's "in season" period during winter rather than the usual North American summer?

I agree with LAX Gambit, and even more after just completing my first free ticket this last weekend on AA. We, myself and three others in family, ran into 8 other travelers doing the free airline ticket trips. Five were going to use them domestic flights, 2 to Japan and one wasn't sure. NONE had heard of flyertalk, now they have. We did your flights from MCO to LGA to TPA. Granted we did get a strange look from the two ticket counter agents that wondered why going to LGA when you can drive to TPA in an hour or two?
The ealier you the flights, the quicker you'll get your voucher. I check with AA on T available seats to Europe and every city had plenty available for June and July dates I checked.
Which of the promo is better, all depends where you want to go and how much it's going to cost you to do it. On AA you can do it on any fare, DL except for T, UA (forgot). At $480 from DFW to do my free ticket, it was worth it, including the two hotel stays which gets me promo points (on a Hilton promo for 4 or 6 stays for 4,000 or 6,000 points).
I'm not one that travels for biz on the company $$, all my is pleasure travel and I fly mostly in coach, thank you. We still manage to qualify for gold every year and with a PLT challange, we enjoy those benifits now and then. If you use seatguru web site, you'll find the good seats in coach, there are plenty of them. Besides, I do recall, everyone on the plane gets the the city at the same time except you get on first and get off first if you're in First! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by AmericanFtWorthTX (edited Jan 26, 2004).]