Originally Posted by
GaryZ
Do you have a source/link for this statement?
There's been plenty of discussion on the US and UA forums that award tickets cost the airlines pennies compared to what an actual ticket would sell for.
From what
BoeingBoy has said, airlines tended to try to keep things balanced so there wasn't much money changing hands.
I don't think an airline cares so much about what the mileage cost is to another carrier in their program. They get whatever the agreed upon fee is.
Now some carriers have put in restrictions to limit redemption to their own FFPs (SQ comes to mind). There can also be other relationship issues that can factor in, such as a carrier blocking partner awards on its own (i.e. UA used to actively block *A awards), or making more awards available to a certain carrier than is available to the rest of the alliance.
But, otoh, every seat filled with a cheapo US rewards pax, is one less seat they could sell (like if anyone is clamoring for LH J seats).
That's true of any award ticket. If it's up for an award, it can't be sold. However, the awards are capacity controlled anyway and are tickets that likely wouldn't be sold. Also makes sense that more premium seats would open up as the time to departure grows shorter.