Lawnboytx

I called exactly 330 days out for a trip to Europe and there is not one business award anytime award to Europe from North America. Why even have these awards if there are no seats available this far out. This is shameful.:

Heidelberg Barbie

Award flights which cover only one segment is one disappointment within this subject. Once upon a time, when one booked a flight that required 2 or more segments, the entire NPR was covered (and without all these extra fees)

It is my opinion that airlines would like to phase out award flights altogether and are working on the aggravation factor to do it.

Award programs were once used to instill customer loyalty and there were good levels of competition among those airlines. Now the airlines do not care about loyalty and they certainly are not loyal to their customer base.

Marathon Man

when miles points or cash back fail to post as promised or in the case of cards like the WF, or AMEX BLUE, get taken away at the last minute and you gotta fight to get em back.

pfbloom

.
Without a doubt: fuel surcharges.... They make BA redemptions on OneWorld next to worthless. Grrrrrrrr!

RichardInSF

Not so in business or first.

awatts

Not so in business or first.

Both classes are sooooo.. expensive for revenue tickets, that Avios/FC tickets seem a steal in W/J/F - does anyone pay full price?

Availability always an issue with BA (VS too actually)

Changes - sometimes daily.

One BA agent told me they reassess every Monday, so worth keeping a look out.

Also, ask if you have one tickat but need a 2nd - VS good at being kind.

Tip: go for unpopular routes (eg: YUL, PHL, IAH) and fly on from there (US flights are so cheap), or ones where they have many flights, eg. NYC is often available almost up to the date of travel, MIA/ORD are never available (thank Disney for that), but ATL is.

Best deals are:
- pay W and upgrade to J/D, esp very long flights.
- BA AMEX, 2-for-one miles (doing F class A380 LHR-IAD return for taxes only soon).

bbkenney

IN NO ORDER[/LIST}

1. Huge surcharges on BA
2. No "anytime" awards on partners
3. Inability to upgrade on partners
4. Lack of premium inventory even at 11 months out
5. "anytime" availability is certainly worth a premium but DOUBLE the rate is ridiculous.
6. Inability to book partners online (except codeshares of course)
7. I won't even get into the Qantas Super Premium award rates
8. no lifetime "Exec Platinum" for "MUltiple Year ultra loyal customers nearing (or at) retirement when their flying frequency drops off.
   
   The things i like about our program
   Ability to upgrade from any fare.
   Although not exactly Aadvantage related: the new, everyone gets an aisle, biz class. i do however fear the coming end to International FC.
   
   The best use of miles on AA in my opinion are DFW to Europe, Japan, China in FC.lll

[/LIST]

htb

+1.

I think the survey requires you to rank pet peeves that you may not even have...

Good bye.

CJKatl

As others have pointed out, the survey is horrible. Only two of the factors listed bother me, and the assumption that the call center staff doesn't know how to do the job is wrong and insulting. I always call for assistance when booking awards tickets because the online tools are horrible. The telephone agents have always been incredible, finding routings and low redemptions on a regular basis, often when I cannot find them when I look online. (I always look online before I call to make sure there isn't something I see that the phone agent does not.) I refuse to complete a survey that presupposes the telephone agents do a poor job.

pinniped

Was it one open-jaw award (which has always been allowed on DL)? Or two separate one-way PNR's for travel in 2015?

I'm just a base level member of DL...the stuff I've read makes it sound like one-way travel only becomes bookable on Jan 1, 2015 and beyond. (Not that it matters much...I don't really need a one-way award right now.)

Overall, it's obviously great news that one-ways are arriving at DL. Be interesting to see how easy it really is to get those "Level 1" award seats in the future.

chp

Have to agree with several of the posters above. The survey is poorly designed and executed. It requires you to rank each and every one of the "peeves". Quite a few of them are complete non-issues for me and forcing me to randomly "rank" them can only skew the results obtained from the survey.

Reindeerflame

I would like to be able to see on line all possible flight combinations between 2 points that may be booked as awards with a particular program's miles. Today, in some cases not even the home carrier's flight combinations are properly displayed.

Once I book a flight with miles, I would like to be able to select seats immediately on line, without the need to make a phone call to a partner carrier.

I would like it to be easier and less costly to make a change if the transaction can be done on line. So, if a better set of flights becomes available as an award than what I booked, why should I have to pay for that? Reasonable restrictions would be fine. Something more like the Southwest program or most hotel programs.

In general, and perhaps off-topic, I would like to see a display that shows the current cheapest fare to each destination for the entire inventory of offered seats. For example, if today is October 29, 2014, the cheapest available flight SFO-FRA over the next 330 (or maybe 337) days is on (blank) date. I would accept that prices may change at any time.

dtokuda

It's been said multiple times, but airlines touting their partnerships and alliances at every turn, and then refusing to show partners in each other's availability when you know for a fact partner flights would be easier and better to get you where you want to go.

callum9999

Really? I just scrolled through the calendar from now until July and there's about 10-15 days in 8 months that doesn't have sAAver availability from DCA to JFK in economy and business.

mahasamatman

Yet another incredibly biased and very poorly designed "poll" by Frequent Business Traveler. Most of their "pet peeves" do not apply to me, yet they want to force me to rank them because these are their pet peeves and they think everyone must share them. Since that's tantamount to asking me to lie, I guess they just don't want me to participate in any of their surveys.

Whoever designs these surveys would flunk any statistics class.