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Switchfly Reward Seat Availability Survey

Switchfly Reward Seat Availability Survey

Old May 18, 2012, 7:23 pm
  #1  
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Switchfly Reward Seat Availability Survey

Has anyone ever heard of this survey or the consulting company, IdeaWorks? Here's their press release ...

http://www.ideaworkscompany.com/pres...ailability.pdf

First: Air Berlin / Southwest
Last: Delta

I thought this was a very interesting list. Apparently, the survey's in its 3rd year, though I don't recall ever reading about it.
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Old May 19, 2012, 5:26 am
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IIRC this survey was used by the Wall Street Journal this week for a feature article.
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Old May 19, 2012, 11:21 am
  #3  
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Originally Posted by sonofzeus
IIRC this survey was used by the Wall Street Journal this week for a feature article.
Oh really? Google finance must have picked up on the article, since I only found out about it after checking some of my investments.
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Old May 19, 2012, 12:29 pm
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Pretty poor juornalism effort if you ask me. They imply that legacy award availability is based on saver awards by example, but don't explicitly state so. My assumption would be that similarly Southwest award availability is based on Wanna Get Away fares with points, but it's not clear at all.
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Old May 19, 2012, 12:54 pm
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The View From the Wing blog posted some pretty strong criticism of their methodology. It's worth reading the whole post, but a couple of important points:

  • They searched airline websites only. So even though US Airways and United have access to the same award space, United offers online booking of many partners while US Airways does not. Thus United ranks much higher — even though miles in each airline’s programs can access the exact same saver award seats.
  • They’re searching different routes for each airline but over the same dates, which ignores the effects of high and low seasons.
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfr...d-availability
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